The Real Deal New York

From the August issue: Longtime businesses shutter. Workers get axed. Neighborhoods turn to ghost towns. For decades, this story line played out dramatically in cities across upstate New York, which seemed to suffer more than most communities as America’s industrial economy shrank. But as the rest of the country experiences the pains of a collapsing housing market, longtime Rust Belt mainstays like Rochester and Syracuse are surprisingly showing strength in their housing markets. In the first quarter of this year, for instance, the median sales price in Rochester was $108,500, up 1.5 percent from $106,900 in the year-ago period, according to the National Association of Realtors.