New Redfin sign
New Redfin sign

Walk around many Seattle neighborhoods these days and it may not feel economically diverse, but a new research report from Redfin shows that the Emerald City’s neighborhoods rank second in the nation when it comes to being home to people from different economic classes.

Boston ranked first, with 51 percent of its neighborhoods showing a “balanced home price mix.” Redfin found that 31 percent of Seattle’s neighborhoods can claim the same.

“Sure, these neighbors live in different homes. One is bigger than the other, and it probably has a nicer refrigerator. But out in the neighborhood, local families share the same safe parks and sidewalks. And they’re in the same school district,” states the Redfin post.

Redfin ranked several U.S. cities on their balanced home price mix. Not a surprise, San Francisco ranks near the bottom for being unaffordable for most working families with only 2 percent of the city listed as “affordable,” but other cities rank low, too, for the opposite reason — Detroit, Baltimore and Columbus, Ohio, have a lot of affordable areas.

Photo via Redfin
Photo via Redfin

Redfin ranks about 59 percent of Seattle as “affordable.” Here is a chart of the city’s most balanced neighborhoods when it comes to home prices:

Photo via Redfin
Photo via Redfin

To compile the data, Redfin says it tallied the number of “affordable” homes by comparing sale prices to the purchasing power of a local, median-income family. They then labeled addresses as “affordable” or “high-end,” and looked at where the homes landed on the grid.

If an area had “more than three affordable houses or condominiums sold for every expensive one,” it was labeled “affordable.”

According to U.S. Census data, the median income of a family in Seattle, using 2009-2013 data, was $65,277.

You can take a look at Redfin’s mapping of major cities affordability below:

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