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> a detached single family home, though often inside the city limits

Wow, to even have that as a viable upgrade path.

I don't even live on the coast and in my metro, with the local range for a middling middle-class income, having a detached house within the city limits is an absolute pipe dream.

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It is weird how a house in Minneapolis has ended up costing more than a comparable house in the Jacksonville, despite the latter having twice the population, being in the tropics, and located on the coast.

Jacksonville is a weird case, because the city limits include a freakishly large area compared to almost every other large city in the US: Jacksonville's city limits span ~875 square miles, vs. ~58 square miles for Minneapolis (and another 56 square miles of St. Paul). Jacksonville essentially includes a huge chunk of its suburbs within the city limits. If you drew an 875 square mile region around the MSP area, you'd find houses that were comparable in cost to the ones you're referencing in Jacksonville.

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