A Field Guide
Relocating to Cleveland.
For executives, physicians, and creative professionals leaving New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, Cleveland presents a proposition that has quietly become one of the most compelling in the country: world-class culture, exceptional architecture, and proximity to one of the great medical institutions of the world — at a fraction of coastal cost.
What $2M Buys
In Manhattan, $2 million is a two-bedroom apartment with a partial view. In San Francisco, it is a modest single-family on a postage- stamp lot. In Los Angeles, it is a tear-down in a desirable ZIP.
In Cleveland's Little Italy, $2 million is an award-winning Robert Maschke residence — 5,475 square feet across four levels, with a private elevator, rooftop terrace and outdoor kitchen, a glass-walled stair, an interior courtyard, a guest residence next door, and a view across the museums of University Circle.
Cleveland Clinic & University Circle
Little Italy sits at the eastern edge of University Circle — one square mile that houses the Cleveland Museum of Art (free admission, one of the country's great encyclopedic collections), Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra), the Cleveland Botanical Garden, Case Western Reserve University, and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Cleveland Clinic main campus — consistently ranked the number-one hospital in the United States, with the top-ranked heart program in the country — is a five-minute drive (1.2 miles). University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center and the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine are inside the same one-square-mile district. For physicians and researchers being recruited to the Clinic, the Lerner Research Institute, or UH, the proximity is unmatched at this price point in any major U.S. medical city.
Read: Housing near Cleveland Clinic — the full guide for relocating physicians →
Little Italy
Little Italy is one of Cleveland's most intact historic neighborhoods — a walkable district of family-run restaurants, espresso bars, galleries, and the Holy Rosary parish. Mayfield Road on a summer evening feels closer to a hill town in Tuscany than anywhere else in the Midwest. The neighborhood has anchored the same Italian-American families for four generations while quietly attracting a new wave of architects, physicians, and academics.
Flights & Distance
Cleveland Hopkins is roughly an 80-minute flight from LaGuardia, two hours from Washington-Reagan, just over four from San Francisco. For executives splitting time between markets, weekly commutes are entirely feasible — and the airport is twenty minutes from Little Italy, not the ninety it takes to reach JFK from Manhattan or SFO from Pacific Heights.
The Tax Picture
Major Buyer Incentive
Little Big House carries a 5-Year City of Cleveland Tax Abatement.
Under Cleveland's residential abatement program, the new buyer pays property tax only on the pre-improvement land value — not on the assessed value of the residence itself — for the remainder of the abatement term. On a property at this price point, that represents tens of thousands of dollars in annual property-tax savings. Contact Adam Kaufman for the exact remaining term and projected savings.
Beyond the abatement, Ohio's state income tax tops out at 3.5%, against 10.9% in New York State (and another 3.876% in New York City) and 13.3% in California. For a household earning $1M in wages, the annual state-and-local tax differential alone exceeds $100,000 — enough, over five years, to compound into another house. Property taxes in Cuyahoga County are higher than the U.S. average, but on a substantially lower assessed base than coastal equivalents.
This is general context, not tax advice. Consult your CPA and the listing broker for the precise abatement terms.
The Cultural Arc
Cleveland is in the middle of a quiet renaissance. The Cleveland Orchestra is widely considered one of the five great orchestras in the world. The Cleveland Museum of Art rivals institutions in cities ten times its size. The food scene — long underrated — has matured into something genuine, with James Beard recognition and a generation of chefs who chose to stay rather than leave.
The city is no longer the punchline it was in the 1980s. It is increasingly the answer for a particular kind of buyer: one who values architecture, culture, and quality of life over the zero-sum status game of the coasts.
The Listing
Little Big House is offered for private sale.
Two residences on Random Road in Little Italy, by Robert Maschke, FAIA — offered separately or together. Showings by private appointment with Adam Kaufman of Howard Hanna.