Hacker News Reader

Comment by fratlas | Hacker News Reader

Especially when rent for young people is around one third to one half of their income (I would know, it's about 1/3 of mine). Would take me about 6-8 years to save for a deposit on an older apartment.

View on HN

If your rent is 30-50% of your income you are living in too expensive of an area for your means or need more housemates.

I've found that 30-50% of income being used for rent is fairly normal, regardless of where you might be living.

It's also the market rate in the affected cities.

You begin to see the nature of the problem.

I've lived in 2 of the affected cities. When I was making less I had housemates to bring the rental costs down(Sydney) or lived outside the city and commuted(Toronto). Both would work for either city and allow you to not have to spend 30-50% of your income on rent.

The existence of ways to work around a problem doesn't mean there isn't an actual problem.

I don't consider high demand locations having high cost a problem personally. But if you want to live in a high demand area and you don't make enough money there are ways to do it without spending excessively on rent.

Don't underestimate the costs of living outside a city and commuting. Not just the opportunity cost of lack of socializing, but commuting measurably decreases people's happiness, quite apart from how much time it takes.

It's also not morally wrong to pay more for accommodation that suits your lifestyle better.

I've not said it is morally wrong. Though I think it is wrong to complain about the costs of high demand areas if you're not willing to take actions to decrease those costs.

30 to 50% of a high take-home actually leaves you with quite a lot of disposable income. 30 to 50% of a low take-home is probably unsustainable. Not all costs are directly proportional to housing costs in a housing bubble.

Particularly for younger people, it makes a lot of sense to suffer the higher proportion on rent. Quality of life is much higher living centrally, and income will probably grow, while rents are usually a bit sticky.

I gave an option for lowering cost and living centrally too. Housemates.

I live with two other housemates, in one of the cheaper, older apartments in the area. I chose it because it's only one bus away from my work/uni, where a cheaper location (much further away) was only $30 a week cheaper, and saving 2 hours a day of commuting is worth $6 a day to me. I see other commenters saying 30-50% isn't that bad, but that's not taking Sydney's high cost of living into account.

What area are you in now and what area were you looking at because your experience really doesn't match up with mine of living in Sydney.

The east (think Kensingington/Kingsford), was in the south last year.

What about somewhere like Ultimo/Glebe surely they would have housing >$30/week cheaper than your area? And be ~20 minutes commute time.

When I lived in Ultimo my rent at both places was less than half what it was for my places in Bondi or Clovelly.

What price range? Mine's around 250, but I haven't checked the innerwest. I mostly like the east because it's close(ish) to the beach and a lot of my uni friends stayed in the east. I could never justify Bondi or even clov, too much money, and the culture is too far up it's own a@@. Coogee is liveable though.

I was paying ~$100/week for a 3 share in something called Dalgety Square in Ultimo which was a really nice building. That was close to a decade ago now though but I'd be surprised if it had more than doubled but even if it had it was one of the nicer options in the area so I'm sure there is a lot for less.

Understandable on wanting to stay east. Once I moved east I didn't want to go back but there are definitely options available if you do.

Though I did end up moving to Yamba this year for more space for my money.

I have friends in Glebe paying $300, but I think they're close to good bars/transport.

I love Yamba! It has always been my dream to get a remote job and move somewhere on the north coast. How much do you pay in Yamba/which part?

Glebe is the more upmarket of the two. Ultimo always seems to be overlooked though. Must just be drown out by Pyrmont/Glebe.

I pay $550/week for a 4 bedroom house with a separate full apartment(bed/living room/kitchen/bath) downstairs that I use as an office(for comparison I paid the same for a 1 bedroom apartment on Melrose Pde in Clovelly that was smaller than my office now). We're pretty much dead middle between Pippis/Main so a few minutes walk to 3 beaches and 15 or so to the river.

We had a floor of $400 when looking so not sure what the lower end is like here to be honest but given the work situation I'd assume there is a fair bit available around your price range.

Remote work is definitely required up here. When we were looking at houses the most common phrase we heard was "There are no jobs in Yamba".

You would be surprised how much Ultimo has been gentrified in the past decade, it's quite trendy now.

That's a good price for proximity to the main beach, and especially with the separate apartment. Have you considered subletting it out (maybe even just the holiday season?), could probably get a good price for that location. Do you find Yamba a bit dead? I grew up in Grafton, and know how slow-paced rural Australia can be.

Yeah probably, I've not gone to the area in a long time to be honest so I could be all wrong.

It is, it was a toss up between this place and one over by Coles which was far from the beaches but had a private dock and a pool. There was certainly a lot around though as I was told many many times "no jobs". :)

For subletting not really though I think we're the first people to rent the whole building. I like having the separate office space too much to give it up and we'd need to furnish it down here with more than desks/bookshelves/filing cabinets and whiteboards.

Yeah it's pretty dead here but that aligns pretty well with our interests. I like running/gym/working and my wife loves the gym/beach. Then we both like hiking which there is ton to do within sort of a 1-1.5h radius.

The slow paced part is definitely a problem but we lived in Chang mai for most of 2015 so we have had experience with it to an even worse degree fairly recently.

If your rent is more than 30% of your income and you are between the ages of 25 and 34, you are normal (46% of the renting population). Even at above 50% your rent to income ratio is still fairly common (23%). Having a rent to income ratio above 30% is also correlated with having an income that is very low [1].

If you are at 30%, you are also meeting one of the most common recommendations in personal finance (regardless of whether that recommendation is _good_ or not).

It seems obvious to me that recommendations of either moving or finding additional housemates both can have significant short and long term negative impacts on financial stability, emotional, and physical health (I didn't bother looking for a source for this because this is hacker news not a dissertation).

1. https://www.earnest.com/blog/rent-and-the-30-percent-rule/ which cites http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jch...

I didn't say it was uncommon I said it was too much.

I would think the feeling that you're never getting ahead will have a more negative mental health cost than a housemate ever will.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com