Buffalo Niagara Homes

Buffalo pumps it up

Western New York's largest one-day cycling ride. The country's biggest Gus Macker 3-on-3 basketball tournament. World-famous, five-time Grammy Award winning pop-punk performer Elvis Costello -- live at the harbor.

This weekend Buffalo is going to be bursting with activity.

Sure, there might be a little bit of rain around today. National Weather Service meteorologists were predicting a 40 percent chance of showers, with temperatures in the mid- to upper 60s today. Sunday should be dry, with comfortable temperatures in the lower 70s.

Mild temperatures and a little sprinkle here or there might work out just fine -- compared with a scorching humid day -- for the thousands of athletes turning out today for two major outdoor sporting events: the Ride for Roswell and the 2011 Gus Macker.

More than 7,500 cyclists are slated to hit the road this morning in support of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and another 1,500 volunteers will be helping out throughout the Buffalo area.

The event, expected to raise more than $2.9 million for cancer research, includes an array of rides, from a three-mile family fun ride to a 100-mile trek, with most of them starting at Baird Point on the University at Buffalo's North Campus.

The routes will snake through parts of Buffalo and the towns of Amherst, Tonawanda, Clarence, Newstead and Akron, organizers said.

Cyclists are instructed to be "mindful and respectful of traffic and property in the communities that welcome them," said John Hannon, chairman of the fitness club committee for the ride.

He asked drivers "to avoid parking in bike lanes, to proceed with caution if they know cyclists are in the area, and to follow the advice of the police, fire officials and riding marshals who donate their time to keep our routes safe and support this worthy cause. We depend on that cooperation between our participants and the Western New Yorkers who live on our routes."

Also getting going this morning will be the Gus Macker tournament. Thousands of amateur basketball players and fans will gather downtown for the two-day event, which concludes Sunday. A thousand games will be played each day. The games will be played on courts set up around Niagara Square and Delaware Avenue.

Last year, nearly 4,000 players on 966 teams participated. Buffalo has hosted the largest Gus Macker in the country for the last three years.

Registration for teams begins at 7 a.m. at the New Era Cap Co. headquarters, 160 Delaware Ave.

High Marks for Housing Affordability - Buffalo Niagara Enterprise

If you're in the market for an affordable home, the Buffalo Niagara region isn't a bad place to look around.

Two new surveys give the region high marks for housing affordability, largely reflecting the relatively low home prices here and mortgage rates that are near 40-year lows, which make houses here within the financial reach of a wide swath of potential homebuyers.

In the broadest, and most comprehensive of the reports, the Buffalo Niagara region ranked 36th among the nation's 100 largest housing markets for affordability, according to researchers at Harvard University.

That study, the annual State of the Nation's Housing report released last week by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard, ranked housing markets based on the relationship between home prices and household income.

In the Buffalo Niagara region, the median home last year sold at a price that was 2.74 times the area's median household income.

That means housing here is a much more manageable financial burden than it is across the country, where the typical home sells for 3.4 times the median household income even after the collapse in home prices nationally over the last three years.

"We're a great place to live at a reasonable price," said Sam Talarico, the owner of Coldwell Banker Talarico in Lewiston. "If you're in Western New York and you're in real estate, you know we're affordable."

But the Harvard study also showed that affordability in the Buffalo Niagara region has been slowly eroding since 1995 as home prices here have gradually increased and the area's housing market avoided the boom-and-bust cycle that hit many other parts of the country.

According to the Harvard study, homes here were less affordable during the second half of 2010 than at any time locally in the previous 15 years. The median price of homes sold during the first four months of this year rose 2 percent over the last year to $111,500, according to the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors. That's up about 23 percent since 2005.

A second, more narrow, survey released Wednesday by Coldwell Banker Real Estate ranked Niagara Falls as the most affordable market in the country for homebuyers looking for a four-bedroom, two-bath home.

Buffalo and Cheektowaga also fared well in the rankings, with Buffalo finishing 42nd and Cheektowaga 67th among the more than 2,300 local housing markets included in the survey. Tonawanda ranked seventh in the state and 173rd nationally.

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