Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring
mercurynews.com
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Ive turned down more bay jobs than I can count because at some age you begin to accept the fact that SFBay isnt that great. Rising levels of increasingly aggressive homeless, the inability to afford any housing, and the price of food and public transportation in general are just a few factors that led me to say no.
Still, I’ve had amazing experiences here and this is a place of magic in many ways. It’s defi worth experiencing in my opinion.
Ask HN: What audio resources can improve my technical skills during my commute? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170121 (Sep 2017, 93 comments)
Women being paid less means they are forced to live in the crappier parts of towns: the squalor, the commute and the danger are significantly more.
When that movie "the Social Network" came out is about when I noticed it changed. It became literally overrun with sleazy easy-money landlords, big corporate entities buying up the apartments, jacking the rents, etc.
There are thousands of better cities than any one in SF bay area. Technology works anywhere, you can work anywhere. My quality of life improved 1000 percent when I left California.
[edit]
I'm not quite sure why it's so hard for readers to fathom that women being paid significantly less than their male peers would be a key factor affecting what is "affordable" to them, and thus their ability to live safely in the Bay area.
The question I was responding to was: "Is it worth it?" and my advice is that it is not. It is especially not worth it for women. Why would it be worth putting yourself in danger where all you can afford is the worst apartment in the worst neighborhood, 70-125 minutes away (each direction) from your workplace?
The golden era of opportunity in Silicon Valley has passed. The real estate factor is now baked too deeply into every facet of life there. And as long as the AirBnb model ensures that only the landlords thrive, the problem will always be bigger than the solution.
Working in a big city at a variety of companies and roles is always a good thing for experience and personal growth.
Unless this is an unrealistic aim, in which case you are throwing your future away on a false hope..
This flies in the face of basic economic theory. If everyone in the bay area "made so much that rent doesn't matter anymore" the rent would go up until it did matter. The reason it doesn't is that quantity demanded goes down as rent goes up precisely because people are price conscious.
downvoters: "If everyone in the bay area "made so much that rent doesn't matter anymore" the rent would go up until it did matter" is a red herring. we are not discussing everyone in the bay area. We are discussing specific types of people that are trying to maximize their career outcomes in the tech industry.
My advice: live there for a few years as cheaply as possible, work at 2+ companies, learn everything you can, then get out of dodge.
It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will struggle to attract more senior folks.
They leave for more affordable cities or head back home to be close to family when they decide to have kids.
EDIT: May I offer up Tampa as a yet-to-get-expensive locale? I'm making SFBA wages in security, but bought a 4 bed 2.5 bath house with a pool on a quarter acre lot twenty minutes from my company's office for ~$200k (and I have fiber to the home for $45/month).
The highest rated beach in the country is in Clearwater, ~30-45 minutes away, we have an amazing craft beer scene, lots of parks, beach/water recreation, very nice international airport (30 min away, $5/day (!!!) for parking), etc.
It’s why Austin/Portland/etc grow in these areas.
Realize you're being colloquial here, but I think it's a bit SF centric to credit SF with growth occurring in other areas of the country... In the case of ATX you have at least UTexas & Michael Dell not playing a small part in the tech growth there, for starters..
Also if you look at the businesses, networking, and where the VC money comes from, the SV connection is clear.
Flight from the Bay Area has absolutely powered a lot of growth in those places.
They were cool places in the first place of course, but that is why they were attractive to move to.
So yes they did - due to that one.
I'm making 80% of the SFBA wages and I live in the rust belt. I had a 1 bedroom, 800 sq. ft apartment a block away from work for <$1000/mo - which is actually pretty high for the area. I can rent a house for ~1,200/mo if a 20 minute commute were fine.
I've talked to a few recruiters in the Bay Area but the crime and cost of living are highly unfavorable. As far as I can tell, the only reason one would go out there is to do something state-of-the-art. I don't know why people would do anything else there unless they were already wealthy.
* winter isn't that bad if you have a heated garage at work and at least an insulated garage (if unheated) at home
* winter is that bad if you park outside
* the downtowns of most major rust belt cities are shockingly cosmopolitan with brunch joints, breweries, and art galleries
* the art scenes are shockingly good because the costs are pretty low
* the airfare can be kind of expensive
* the spring and fall are very, very nice
* the cities are generally managed poorly but the first / second ring suburbs (esp. the wealthier / more conservative ones) are really, really nice places to live
I think Paul Graham made this point, but it's good to live in areas that used to be rich. St. Paul MN, Columbus OH, and Erie PA fit the bill - the old mansions and old town neighborhoods can be really really nice and shockingly affordable if you're used to coast prices. There's less ethnic food generally available but there is pretty authentic stuff in the immigrant neighborhoods and the prices are authentic too.
The biggest 'quality of life' thing is the ease of getting around the low storage costs. In California, it seemed like people could really only have one or two hobbies - in the midwest it's not uncommon for folks to more than half of these items: kayaks, bicycles, motorcycles, boats, fishing rods, tents, cameras, skis/snowboards, hammocks, golf clubs etc. Having winter makes it easier to get outdoors during the warm months, and if you have kids, the schools in the richer areas tend to be very good.
The downsides are the roads can be pretty bad (esp. in Illinois and Michigan), winter can be brutal, the salt can make car ownership expensive, car ownership is critical unless you make it otherwise, and it can be tough to find intellectual engagement.
NYC has the same problem as SF: it's hell to get in and out, and no one is building new units with easy access to the city center. (LA likewise.) But Boston, DC, Houston, and other very big cities are way more forgiving to people willing to commute 20-50 minutes in return for some decently-priced housing.
It's definitely cheaper than SF now, but even more interesting is that it doesn't look to be set for a price spike; there's plenty of land to develop further, and for all the stupid housing laws there's not too much NIMBYism.
(Now if only the existing land wasn't so horrific to build on...)
Maybe all those little ways of doing things that you think are backwards immoral or inefficient are part of why the place had qualities that drew you there in the first place.
I won't lie, during my time in Portland I def experienced some schadenfreude when California-native drivers complained about tickets for failing to yield to pedestrians.
(More realistically, I'll be most of them just hated a few specific aspects of the Bay.)
Other tech hubs. Portland, Seattle - even little Bend has plenty of people from California who are attracted by the (for them) low housing prices. They, in turn, put pressure on housing prices for 'ordinary' people here.
California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast.
It's a visible issue in some neighborhoods in DC. Blocks that were nearly 100% minority 15 years ago are predominantly young, white, and affluent. But, the corner church is still run by a minority pastor, with a largely minority congregation, all of whom want weekend parking on the street (as they now "commute" to church from the outer suburbs).
And I'm sure Satya Nadella doesn't have a problem paying for a house anywhere, even though he's a minority.
Anyways, I agree that viewing poverty solely through a racial lens is not productive. But, race does play a part. At the very minimum, blacks are more likely to be poor than whites. They are more likely to experience downward economic mobility. And more likely to experience multi-generational poverty.
I left California right before the last housing bubble burst to take advantage of the real estate arbitrage.
I'd love to do it again.
Besides jobs, California offers open minds and much a much friendlier atmosphere for brown people.
Ironically, I feel that California offers much less in terms of "open minds" - I am strongly liberal on social matters and advocated for homosexual marriage rights in AZ. Here I feel legitimately scared to mention that I have conservative views on business affairs without fear of potentially losing a job given how quickly people are to lambaste anyone they can for any opinion that doesn't conform to the acceptable limits of non-conformity.
I'm just keeping my head down and doing my job until I can go back to a more sensible location.
As far as the political views you highlighted, my guess is you're part of the vast majority of the electorate that's socially liberal and financially conservative.
Question is, can that vast majority ever organize?
There isn't a vast majority on controversial social issues or they wouldn't be so controversial.
I'm a trans lesbian, born and still live in Texas. When I move out of state, it's going to be a state with trans-inclusive protections at the state level.
Spending this entire year worrying about Dan Patrick shoving transphobic legislation down our throats was emotionally harrowing, and I don't want to go through it again. I hope to be out of the state by the time the 2019 session begins. And Patrick promised to do this long before the legislative session ended, so I spent all of 2016 worrying too.
Finding a place to move to has been like solving a puzzle. A red state is out of the question. I don't want to risk another bathroom bill. And statewide LGBT protections are needed even if a local government has its own protections because a) being protected in one city is worthless when none of its suburbs have protections, and b) the state can revoke local government's ability to protect minorities at any time (look at Arkansas or North Carolina).
I also love southwestern-style suburbs and I'm fairly conservative in a lot of areas that don't involve LGBT rights (namely that I love suburbs, I utterly despise hipsters, I'm a very proud neoliberal globalist Jew, and I'm an establishment Democrat that despises the Bernie wing), so that's making it hard to find a place that's exactly like what I want. I'm looking for a conservative, sprawling suburb that isn't riddled with hipsters and is located in a blue state. I also insist on a place where AC is universal, and for food-related reasons, I want to live somewhere there's a lot of Asian people.
I've basically narrowed it down to parts of the LA and Vegas areas (OC and Torrance in LA, Spring Valley in Vegas).
You're describing Westchester or Long Island, down to a T.
I dislike how old the houses are, and the way it's laid out, the residential areas feel like they're out in the country. And central AC isn't universal there: the house in Bronxville my aunt and uncle lived in when I was a kid didn't have it, though they installed it shortly before they sold it in 2003 (and like most New York Jews, moved to Florida). Not sure about the house in Harrison my cousin just bought; I'll have to ask her.
I'm also not a fan of how the suburbs of NYC all orbit around the city. All of the good shopping is in the city. All of the jobs are in the city. When my aunt came to visit me for my college graduation, she was shocked at the massive amount of restaurants and shopping in the suburbs of Dallas, because where she comes from, the suburbs are just bedroom communities and all the businesses are in the city. I'm also used to working in the suburbs; in Dallas right now, I live in the burbs and commute farther out in the burbs. You can't do that in New York.
And the suburbs there are laid out like shit too: Dallas suburbs are all built on an arterial grid, where the suburbs contain endless six-lane divided arterial roads placed one mile apart from each other both north-south and east-west. On the other hand, major thoroughfares in Westchester are two-lane roads, and nothing is laid out with any rhyme or reason.
My ultimate fantasy is for somebody to dig Plano, TX out of the ground and transplant it into a blue state. I want to live somewhere that's exactly like where I live now, except in a state with state-level LGBT protections and a 0% chance of electing a government that will reverse them.
To give you an idea of what I'm looking for, here are some Street View shots of residential neighborhoods in Plano. I'm looking for some place that looks identical:
https://goo.gl/maps/d9shDtPFxZ62
https://goo.gl/maps/6pLpYCtpW2R2
https://goo.gl/maps/QWRw3rVfMPr
On the other hand, here are some Street View shots of the Westchester I'm used to. I'm not a fan at all of how this looks:
https://goo.gl/maps/KKk9JrbsJ3N2
Lotta immigrant communities in a lot of "red states" that've largely been making progress on their own just like everywhere else, and now we're helping hang them out to dry.
If I move I want it to be to such a place for just that reason. You don't win over anyone, or win any battles, by retreating.
You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that the situation in California has wider repercussions, it's that there is a wider problem whose symptoms happen to manifest themselves earliest in California because it's one of the nicer places to live: there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice places.
For example?
> you just don't want to live there.
Obviously, it's not just me. If lots of people wanted to live in these supposed cheap, nice places they'd all be moving there instead of norcal.
It doesn't have to be "lots of people", just the executives that build and lease office buildings and set remote work policies.
Most people could be ambivalent-to-averse to living in the Bay Area but if the high paying and attractive (1) jobs are there, they'll end up moving there anyway.
(1) That is, jobs working for companies who consider technology a competitive advantage, not an expense.
Fort Bragg is on the coast, and Redding is inland - they have wildly different climates. Redding is pretty damn hot, actually, and supposedly very sunny:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redding,_California#Climate
The politics are probably not something most SF people would like, though (nor I, really).
There are a ton of beautiful places around there, though, and in southern Oregon as well. The oak/madrone/pine forests in that area are extremely beautiful in my opinion.
Yes, Redding is uncomfortably hot.
In fact, that's generally true: everything inland is hot, and everything on the coast is cold. In between there's a narrow strip that is "just right". SV just happens to be in this sweet spot.
There are over 300 million people in the US. What is this generalization supposed to mean? Try to look past extrapolating the 20 mile radius you live in to the entire country.
As much as a lot of non-SV folks, myself included, enjoy ragging on California, the nice weather and good job prospects make it a very desirable place to live, and as such makes people far more tolerant of the hilariously awful housing situation and political climate.
Just heard a lady in my neighborhood in L.A. complaining about the development of a parking lot and crackhouse into a modern apartment building. Didn’t even bother to argue, sometimes the divide is too great.
The problem is that there are (as I said) more people who prefer to live in less dense development than there is space to accommodate them all. At that point, the market takes over and decides who gets to have a back yard and who has to settle for the fifth floor walkup. Given the problem statement, isn't that the best possible outcome?
The land itself is privately owned, sure, but undeveloped land is not very useful.
I love hiking in redwood forests. I love peace and quiet. I love not having to deal with traffic. So I think undeveloped land is very useful.
But redwood forests are a distraction. The main problem is SFH which can and would be replaced with duplexes and fourplexes if the market were allowed to work.
Much of the forest land on the peninsula is privately owned, not by individuals, but by conservation organizations.
> The main problem is SFH
Except that people like their yards and pools.
All else being equal, denser housing is better. But all else is rarely equal. Almost invariably, increased density comes with increased population. The SFH it replaces doesn't get turned back into open space, it remains SFH. Or it turns into more MFH, so now you have N times as many people living in the same space. That is the problem.
Immigration is not a problem. It is an opportunity.
N people live in a place. K people want to move there. You can either find ways to accommodate N+K people, or you can choose not to and have the richest people drive out the poorest (or the middle class if you start building affordable housing). Only one of those two options is classist and xenophobic. Take your pick.
The topic is development of single-story housing into apartments. The Bay Area is rife with short houses around transit terminals.
You would have less traffic in the Valley if there were more apartments, so employees could bike and walk to work. They now commute from neighboring cities.
This assumes that all of the houses vacated by currently commuting employees moving into apartments near transit (and thus becoming non-commuters) would be replaced by people who don't commute. But that's extremely unlikely to be the case.
Furthermore, all of the people living near transit would still drive on occasion, so traffic would almost certainly get worse.
Other potential nudges would be to waive parking requirements for such development, thus denying parking places for the residents.
And the best way to do that is probably via a market-based, incremental approach: not everyone is going to sell out and turn their SFH into flats right away - it'd be gradual.
Then again, my assumption is this some old lady that has been in the neighborhood for a while. Her kids won't give a shit about the growth when they can live in or sell her house for a shit ton of money.
I don't really get that. Where I lived in Italy had about 300,000 people in roughly the same size area as Bend (less than 100K), and I thought it was a pretty nice place in a lot of ways. We didn't have a yard for the kids, so we went down to the local park with them, where they saw their friends and we'd get to chat with parents. Because most people live in towns, they're able to protect some natural areas close to the town that I could ride my bike to.
I get that some people really want the 'country' experience, but then you shouldn't live in the middle of millions of people (the bay area). There are shit-tons of small towns with lots of cheap-ish land outside them that are nice in their own way.
By letting cities be cities, we get to protect more land, which I think many of us support.
Sure, Peninsula is expensive, but its proximity to jobs is the major driver of its housing costs.
You can have all that and more in Salinas or San Luis Obispo, but you’ll find that the lack of jobs makes property values far lower.
You don’t have to tear down parkland or pave the horse trails to allow a few more large apartment complexes next to the already noise-polluting Caltrain line.
Tokyo added more housing than the entire state of California:
https://www.vox.com/2016/8/8/12390048/san-francisco-housing-...
And as someone who lived in Europe for a while, I think we've had the technology to house a fair number of people in desirable area for several hundred years. It's the political will that's lacking.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/disposable-...
And I don't write that as a fingers-in-ears, market-will-solve-all-problems libertarian, but as a fairly left-wing guy.
There's a project at my former company that will redevelop a part of downtown SF. There was a massive back and forth and iterations that had to be done because the numbers guy at the real estate development company wanted to cut out all residential since commercial would be more profitable.
Those are the people you have to incentivize to make it work.
And anyone who wants to live in a 250 square foot apartment and get stuffed (literally!) into a subway every day to get to work is free to move there. But the people who find SV desirable move there in no small measure because it's not like Tokyo.
I don't argue that we should cover all the land available with houses, I like wild grass, but I just point out that if we really hadn't enough space -- we would have settled it already.
I've never heard the now popular "Earth is overpopulated" rant from anyone who lives outside major metro. Going by train in Russia or Japan (yes, Japan) and watching empty fertile lands for hours is a really useful educational experience.
Also, 1. Americans love to live in private houses. And that takes up way more space, and energy to maintain than condos/flats. Yes, some people in other countries just cannot afford private house, but I've noticed often they just feel anything bad about living in a condo.
2. Americans like their cars. And parking/highways take a lot of space, obviously.
And that is the problem. You're not the only one. Yes, if we turned the San Francisco Bay area into a clone of Manhattan or Hong Kong or Tokyo we could accommodate a lot more people. But a lot of people would not consider that a good outcome. People who like that kind of lifestyle can have it in any of the dozens of dense cities on the planet.
The SFBay area is desirable precisely because it is not (yet) dense. People move here because they like yards and redwood trees and vineyards and hiking trails. Manifestly there are more people who want these things than there is space to accommodate all of them. That is the problem.
no, they want jobs. you can get outdoors anywhere in the US, but only a few places in the US actually have a super vibrant economy.
and NOTHING precludes turning SF into a stack of 120-story high-density towers apartments for all family types and leaving the redwoods and grassy fields alone.
nothing but the unwillingness to go density, thus ensuring the grassy fields will slowly be turned into cookie cutter suburbs
The moment Proposition 13 gets repealed that will no longer be a problem.
False. San Francisco has an entire quadrant of non-walkable non-mixed use areas that need to be rezoned and connected to its light rail transit network (Richmond). Density does not preclude green spaces. All residents have a park within a 10 minute walk[0].
http://hoodline.com/2017/05/san-francisco-is-nation-s-first-...
If they didn't consider that a good outcome, they would stop paying money to move there, or move out, and cause housing prices to drop, thus solving the problem.
Changing the single-family zoning to just allow 2 or 3 story housing on 1 out of 10 blocks would be enough to alleviate the shortage, provided developers had few enough regulatory obstacles.
It boggles my mind that the Palo Alto Caltrain abuts single family homes with 5000 sq ft yards. Their quality of life is low due to the noise and traffic. That area really should be apartments.
Going to Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, or any other similar city will show you that a little density in the right places can accommodate many people.
Paris isn’t a sci-fi dystopia. It’s still pleasant, and has more than 2x density as SF.
They are around here. I have three redwood trees in my own yard, and I'm a half hour bike ride from multiple redwood groves. There are even a couple of vineyards around here.
> an apartment building next door does not threaten your yard
You haven't seen my yard.
I think people in the Bay Area got their's and don't want others moving in... they love the high prices... it suits them just fine.
There have been many threads recently which blame Amazon and other tech companies for creating Seattle's problems, yet other communities all over the US and beyond are clamoring for the exact same problem.
Seattle has gone a long way to accommodate the growth, but it still isn't enough. Too much of the city is zoned for single family residences. And the Bay Area suffers from the same issues.
I personally know I will never be able to afford housing close to work based on how things are now. Currently I'm just saving my pennies and hoping I can move to another job with a lower cost of living somewhere else in a few years.
Edit: For reference, I am just a just above 'entry level' engineer at Microsoft. I'm paid well, but not well enough for the housing around here.
Rents are included in cpi, but home prices aren't. Now, of course they are correlated, but that's certainly one of the arguments against using cpi.
edit: answered my own question, the bureau of labor statistics has more numbers than you can shake a stick at.
Even if everything you can buy suddenly got 10% cheaper, the houses in those areas would immediately increase back to the old level because the prices is driven by a high demand relative to supply.
Inflation is generalized increased of nominal costs, not particular to an asset, nor in 'real terms' which is what is happening here.
Our house in the not-super-desirable area of NE Portland was worth ~$265k when we looked at the data in late February/March of this year (strong data supporting that number). When we finally put it on the market in the beginning of May, it sold in 1 day, with multiple offers, for a sales price of $312k.
Yes, that's a $47k increase in value in just over 2 months. When spring hit, real estate prices went bonkers in Portland this year. Also, we bought the house for $160k ~five years ago.
Purchase price was $145k. Sale price (after only 16 months) was $190k.
We used to proceeds from that sale to buy a two-bedroom house for my parents move into for their retirement. Paid $250k last October; recent sales in the neighborhood suggest it's worth $310-325k now.
So yeah, agreed re: bonkers Portland housing price inflation.
Inflation is generalized increase in prices. Im sure beers and miso-fries have barely changed prices if at all.
Now if only employers embraced remote-work fully, I'd move to Gold Bar or somewhere else in the Cascades and dispense with the city altogether.
This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.
Companies should be incentivized (by us, software developers) to hire remote workers for jobs that don't need to be physically in an office.
I just want to see the logic of this. You think I can put downward pressure on property prices by insisting on a remote job?
I don't think hiring companies take joy in making your life difficult. They would hire more remote workers if they felt it could work. I prefer working remotely but find it much harder to manage.
Been remote for 10+ years. Make bay area salary and live in a huge house on the beach.
Note only will that time become productive time, but it might reduce traffic on the roads and reduce congestion.
I'll arrive at work at 11 for my first meeting, having gotten a solid 1.5 hours of uninterrupted work done already, and be wrapping up any collaboration in order to return to my mobile cubicle by 4.
Of course, I'll still be available via skype. The morning stand up may happen while everyone is leaving their driveway.
Soon enough this new daily routine is going to be about as disruptive to productivity in the office as taking lunch, since almost everyone with a car will taking advantage of it. The start and ends of business days are going to become 'private', with people keeping their heads down, and interacting via video and chat/mail as the norm, with face-to-face work performed during the middle of the day.
We may even have to do away with lunchtimes as we know them, since they take away from prime face-to-face work time. Or perhaps, with all the other communication going on, daily team-bonding time over food might be one of few on going reasons for direct interactions.
And vehicles are going to start being designed to be really comfortable to work/play in. Every mid-morning, people are going to have to choose between getting up from the work they are stuck into and moving to the desk in their office, or staying focused on the task at hand. Eventually, people are going to start choosing the privacy and comfort of their car over the relative space of a cubicle, and more and more people are going to start working from the parking lot. Companies may even start expecting a portion of their workforce to bring their own vehicles, in the manner of 'bring your own device' and alter/reduce their use of offices.
Of course, things could go the other way: in the city, you'll want to the car to go pick up the groceries and do errands, and then find a in a nice empty shaded spot out of town for the day, and to find a new spot if anyone sketchy shows up.
This is just one tiny, tiny change as we move from a civilizations of vehicles to a civilization of intelligent transport. Cars and buses are about to be replaced by the equivalent of very small mobile homes/buildings.
There are deep seated biological and cultural reasons why current technologies don't replace physical proximity.
Some of the more important ones, such as networking, remote technologies can't even try to address. It's terrible for job seeking, lateral career changes and building connections.
Sounds like a terribly inefficient and unsustainable lifestyle. Commuting just for stand up?
How is this inefficient, unsustainable?
It provides the combination of private work and group interactions that are parcel of most white collar jobs. The vehicles will be electric, and many will probably spending any idle time at solar farms, to save on energy distribution costs, if they aren't being used as private offices. It is going to allow people to live where the want, and still do they work they want to.
Moreover: the cadence of business just won't let this happen, or it would be widespread already.
The chance that is coming is that cars drive themselves. As a consequence, part of the business day is going to be spent working during the commute.
I think it's the kind of setup that works best, for some kinds of software projects.
I wonder how many people are like this.
My family probably wouldn't be too happy to suddenly have roommates. Hah. But yes, if you're young and single, that's a solid option I would think.
This is exactly my situation as well. The neighbor to my left bought his house 3 years ago for 320. The neighbor to my right just bought an equivalent house for 570. No can do.
Unlike SF, however, the balance here does seem "worth it". I looked at the job market were I to return to Virginia right now, and while the land is cheap and plentiful, it took some digging to even find a posted role that felt promising. Tech hub job markets are no joke.
Sacramento!
Leaves problems: very high housing costs, overly legislated lives, high taxes, traffic, etc.
Facebook recently opened a datacenter in Fort Worth. [0]
I heard something like 100k people are moving into the DFW metroplex a month? I haven't verified that but the real estate market is definitely crushing right now.
It's only a matter of time.
[0] https://code.facebook.com/posts/1014459531921764/facebook-in...
High real estate prices & rents are the price we're all paying for keeping JPMorgan & Goldman Sachs solvent during the financial crisis.
And I'm pretty sure low density zoning is in effect in every city in CA.
If the price of one thing increases relative to the price of everything else (including the price of labor, i.e., how much you get paid) that cannot directly be explained by a money supply change. A shortage being caused by something else is a much simpler explanation.
Shouldn't real estate developers be able to make even more money on top of this by increasing the housing supply? Wouldn't the "banks" have cheap loans for real estate developers? This can't explain a shortage.
Capital dollars (from VC's) are easier to come by in SV than wage dollars. You prefer to think of the shortage as one of houses. I ask you to consider the idea that it is a shortage of wage dollars.
Simple shock to demand can create shortages if supply is inelastic(which it is on RE in general due to the length to put a unit on the market, and it is so in San Francisco with its constrained supply)
There is a consensus that 'everything is overpriced', its just doesnt look like it will have a hard correction.
The capital gain on housing then becomes a self-reinforcing loop as capital seeks yield in a low interest rate environment, and investment flows towards these unproductive assets instead of creating productive capacity. Regular buy-to-inhabit buyers are dragged along in the cycle as long as they can obtain sufficient credit.
In a system like ours (the world's that is - I'm not American) where money is created when banks write loans, debt increases more quickly than the money supply (because debt has interest, money doesn't, and in a housing boom relatively little new real value is being created). So the debt can never all be repayed, and at some point there must be a financial crisis.
Unless this time is different?
As someone that worked in RE, housing has been sensibly overpriced based on wages since at least a few years ago and globally. But its also not clear it would crash, because housing has met genuine demand.
The idea that these banks were perfectly healthy is a lie propagated by bailout apologists.
Then they turn right around and tell all their employees to move to the area, then to get in their cars, buses, trains and start commuting to a physical location, in one of the busiest, most expensive city every single day. So that these workers can then sit on chairs in a building and do probably the easiest thing to do with a remote connection -- write code, documents, email, monitor servers.
Maybe they are eating it? Facebook, Amazon, and Google just have a very large buffet and it would take a while for them to notice.
Heck, I am taking little bytes (pun intended) every day ;-)
But seriously, I believe that could be the next revolution in the economy. We had the industrial revolution, the technological one (internet and such). Maybe remote work can be the next one. If it starts happening and large employers start to adopt it, it could change how cities and whole regions evolve.
consume_remote_work(<<Byte:8>>) ->
Do_something(Byte);
consume_remot_work(<<Byte:8, Rest/binary>>) ->
do_something(Byte),
consume_remote_work(Rest).Consider: agile frameworks at their core focus on improving communication, but remote increases the barriers to communication. For humans, online social contact doesn't provide the same benefits as as f2f. It makes depression worse, not better. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915/
I know someone at Amazon who gets flown halfway around the world over 4 times a year. They're not remote, but a frugal company like amazon decides it's important enough for them to visit headquarters regularly.
Timezones make communications harder as well, etc.
However I'll take these downsides vs the upsides.
This isn't just a modern phenomenon. Note the whole point of outsourcing was that given how well the world is connected, it barely matters from where you get work done from. But what it is in reality is basically a cost equation.
Early IT departments in most companies were considered a back office expense so remote/outsourcing work used to make sense. These days most tech companies have a lot of money, so the cost thing doesn't make sense.
Good connectivity was never reason for remote/outsourcing work, so it doesn't matter how good it gets.
80-10-10 mortgage on a 1mil home is only 100k down. And the monthly payments split by 2 people (aka a couple) is ~2k / person / month. That's 4k/month all in once you include the tax rebates.
I'm good on that, thanks.
The per-capita GDP variation between large American cities is larger than that, and there's no good reason to expect housing to cost the same in very different cities.
Some cities having housing cost at least 50% more (or double) the national average seems like something that would be the case in pretty much any country in any period of history.
I will be spending less than $2k total a month. West coast is crazy.
Bankrate calculator says it’s $700k more expensive for the same house in SF.
By the rule of thirds, that's $60K/yr meaning $180K+/yr salary is necessary. This is for suburban living in a remodeled 70's ranch home, not in an urban area.
How much do those cost in the Bay Area?
That’s for someone fresh out of a top school who hasn’t even negotiated at all. There are many new grads in the bay area that recieve this kind of comp.
Assuming 40% tax bracket, a 30k salary difference gives you 1500/month extra after taxes that you can spend on your apartment. If you consider a couple with in demand tech skills they may be significantly better off financially moving to SF, where they are likely to both find very competitive salaries. In many other areas they may have to contend with one person getting into his best career path and the other choosing from limited options to be nearby.
I am not advocating SF living, e.g. this is not my kettle of fish simply due to the quality of life choices, but from a purely financial viewpoint it is not that hopeless (yet?).
That's not a very good assumption. $130k is on the low end for anyone with enough experience to be looking at a home purchase.
I don't know why an absolute value is ever considered "insane." If salaries support it, it's not insane.
Even with the high housing prices (caused mostly by regressive zoning policies), senior engineers at a big tech company or late-stage startups should be able to afford a home.
Amongst people who think this is reasonable are probably
- Dual earners hoping to bite the bullet before it gets crazier
- Those with <8yrs experience who have never seen a downturn or jobs go dry
- Lawyers, VCs, etc to whom this is nothing.
Law firm partners are in a much better position, but you can't make equity partner (not just "income partner", which is basically a glorified title they give so you can go get more clients) until you're about 40. And nobody wants to wait that long to buy a home.
Basically, "law firm partners" can be clumped together with VCs, since they both hold stakes in (hopefully) profitable businesses. But most lawyers are not partners.
It's also worth noting that these figures are for a mortgage, which is in part an investment. When the trend of SF area real estate is factored in, it doesn't look as crazy. If you purchase in very popular areas (Palo/Menlo/north MV, on the Peninsula), you're pretty well insulated from downside market risk. Even during the '08 recession, things mostly just flattened out for a couple years (and have since gone on a tear). People used to joke about million-dollar-fixer-uppers. Now even the fixer-uppers are well over a million...
The median full-time job in the US pays near $45,000. The median household income is near $60,000 today.
There are 127 million full-time employees in the US.
Or put another way, approximately 39% of all people in the labor force (~161 million) are earning at least $45,000 per year.
If you're in the top 1/3 of all full-time earners (40+ million people), you can afford a $2,000 mortgage by yourself. If 40+ million people in the US can afford something, it's not insane.
Two people with a full-time job, earning only the median, can very safely afford that $2,000 mortgage. The typical full-time median income person in the US will commonly not even have a four year degree, so this isn't a stretch premise in terms of requirements. If you want to hit $4k per month (the parent's scenario), the top 1/3 of households can manage that (tens of millions of people fall under that umbrella).
If you want to get into insane mortgage territory as it pertains to the median income, you're talking much higher. $8k-$10k+ style mortgages.
I think it is crazy that two high earning people would be spending possibly 50% or more of what they make on housing.
The problem in the Bay, and increasingly in other popular areas, is there are few options for less. Especially in places like the south bay, where it isn't really urban - it's a giant suburb that lacks dense, affordable housing options.
An average employee shouldn't have to live hours away from their job. Or spend 50% of their income on housing.
I'm going to need a minute to let that sink in.
20% * $310,000 = $62,000
Emphasis that that's just the median down payment for a new home in the US today.
The median existing home sale is closer to $250,000 for 2017. So you're looking at a $50,000 down payment just at the median.
For example, I looked at comparables for my current home in a recent job hunt. My reasonable sized (1700 sq ft) house in a good area of Michigan (western Wayne county, bordering Washtenaw and Ann Arbor) is about $250k if we sold today. As far as I could tell, this would not be the down payment on a roughly similar house in comparable neighborhoods in the Bay Area.
[added]
When I was looking up the mortgage costs to help in my negotiations, it was looking close to $100k/year in payments (6500-8500/month). Which meant, when I looked at that in terms of after tax income, we didn't have much money for things like food, sending kid to college, cheap clothing .... stuff we might like to do like going to movies ...
So, yeah ... there's that ...
140K, 40% for taxes, leaves with 84K, 3K a month for housing (assuming you don't want to shack up with some rando Craigslist'er), leaves 48K.
Another 20K for food and booze, and you're left with 28K.
So with your estimate, you're actually left with $4k saved for the year..
So, you're telling me that the $1MM home (which will be roughly $5600/mth) will give you nearly $20k in tax deductions (in order to meet your ~$4000/mth)?? Effectively making your property taxes free for you? You're either delusional or I am going to have a very exciting tax season come next April...
See my comment below.
“so 900k mortgage at 4.1% interest is ~3k of interest and 1.2k of principal for first month. Now you have 1k/month of property tax, 0 HOA (i was not talking about a condo), and 180$/month of insurance. I've been quoted 80-10-10 which have 0 PMI fees. Let's be safe and assume that you're taxed at 30% at your highest level. Its likely you're being taxed at 40% though. Now doing some math.... 3k*0.7 + 1.2k + 1k+0.7+.180k = 4180$/month. Obviously there's maintenance and other costs but that's how much its actually costing you.”
Something like that.
Federally, local property taxes and mortgage interest on the first $1 million of principle for first and second mortgages for your primary residence are deductible from your income. For California, the rules are slightly different, but I think that they are close enough to use the same rules for estimation purposes.
Using the interest rates from your example that would be a deduction of 4.5% * $800k + 6.5% * $100k = $39.7k for the mortgage interest deduction and roughly $12.5k for the property tax deduction for a total deduction of $52.2k. If you can afford a million dollar house, you are probably in either the 28% bracket or the 33% bracket for federal taxes and in the 9.3% bracket for California taxes so that will save you $14.6k-$17.2k on federal taxes and $4.9k on California taxes.
I know a non-tech dual-earner couple who managed to save a down payment like that in the Bay Area, but they were living rent-free in a house owned by one of their parents well into their 30s.
Basically I've never personally paid more than 2k/month in rent in the bay area.
Their responses were ... well ... sad. I don't blame them. Or the companies.
I was amused by the offered salaries, after I explained the basic economics to them. Pointing out that the net income after taxes/expenses is so low as to effectively put me and my family into poverty.
The smart ones responded positively to "keep me where I am, have me hop a plane N times per month."
The dumb ones said "but BA real estate only goes up." Which, is a large part (but not the root cause) of the problem. If this were true, then BA real estate would be little more than a barely concealed Ponzi scheme. Which, maybe, it is. I dunno.
What is interesting to me is that the rest of the country has been wising up for a while. So now you can get the benefits of BA salary/comps working locally. This is a welcome development, though rent seeking behavior seems to follow this, so it is only good for a while.
nitpick: Ponzi scheme = fraud, giving people fake investment accounts, like Bernie Madoff's operation.
It's more akin to a pyramid scheme, greater fool theory, speculative bubble, etc.
And even in your calculation, means that after 4 years you can do the downpayment. Its not unreasonable for house prices to be where they are in that calculation.
The back of the napkin numbers on those parameters; each of those people need to have a salary of 130-150K/year. Certainly not crazy for the well placed Apple, Google and Facebook employees but pretty much a pipe dream for the unwashed masses.
forgetting property taxes?
Your normal family property (approx 1500 - 2000 ft/sq, ~1 acre land) goes for $200k - $250k. Still expensive, but doable, especially if both parents are making decent money (>= $50k/year is what I count as decent money). Less than $30k down payment brings your monthly expenses to less than $2k/mo. Exactly half price for what I'd imagine to be similar living conditions in SF Bay (albeit Bay Area public schools are probably better than NH's, though New England has very good schools).
It's clear that you're making a lot more money than I am for similar experience -- I too am less than 30 years old -- but I wonder the difference in percentage our savable income is, given the difference in costs we both pay for housing. I too wonder for others in our age and job demographic what they're able to save when living in SF Bay vs. elsewhere.
The cost of living there doesn't seem worth it to me. Heck, NE I think is too expensive! Been looking to move down to Raleigh, NC after I get married, but that's neither here nor there.
My commute is ten minutes on a bike, I live alone so I don't need a big house, and I have no use for a lawn. Your values are clearly different, so New Hampshire is the right call for you (or NC, or whatever). But they're not apples-to-apples comparisons.
If you want to live inside the Beltway, add 20%-50% to those figures, depending on neighborhood.
All those will be in livable, reasonably safe neighborhoods with decent public schools. I'm sure there are options that cost less if you look hard enough.
FWIW, I chose "nice, older town-home" for a bit under $500k. That's on two mid-career, white-collar salaries. We have enough left over to max our 401ks, take vacations, etc. The loss of one income wouldn't drive us to homelessness, but it would hurt. I walk to work, bike to grocery store, and my spouse has a 7 mile commute (it's also bike-able, which she does occasionally).
Yeah, I'm catagory #4. Been here long enough to get on the escalator when it was possible, living in a modest house in a neighborhood I could never buy back into. And I understand what the money would do elsewhere, I moved here from Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and would be shopping for lakeshore if I moved back there.
Housing is broken. Sunnyvale is at least building new high-density housing, but not at a fast enough rate. Units are sold before the dirt has been scraped clean to start construction.
I just 'did the math' in Redfin's mortgage calculator on a $990,000 home. The total monthly cost came out to $6,495 or $3,247 per person (in a couple). That's almost exactly 1/2 of the take-home (after tax) pay of someone making $120,000 a year in California.
-- Monthly expenses on a $990k house in SF --
Principal and Interest: $4,185
Property Taxes: $1,015
HOA Dues: $551
Homeowners' Insurance: $183
Mortgage Insurance: $561
1) That's far more than your $2,000 per person number
2) I'm no expert but, throwing 50% of your income at a mortgage seems foolish. So whether or not you can afford it, depends on your definition of "afford"
so 900k mortgage at 4.1% interest is ~3k of interest and 1.2k of principal for first month.
Now you have 1k/month of property tax, 0 HOA (i was not talking about a condo), and 180$/month of insurance. I've been quoted 80-10-10 which have 0 PMI fees.
Let's be safe and assume that you're taxed at 30% at your highest level. Its likely you're being taxed at 40% though.
Now doing some math....
3k*0.7 + 1.2k + 1k+0.7+.180k = 4180$/month. Obviously there's maintenance and other costs but that's how much its actually costing you.
FANG companies often pay 200k+ / year total comp. Getting 100k of capital between 2 people in the bay area is doable.
They tell me about how guards have been placed at their local train stops to cut down on the number of suicide attempts by stressed out high school students who feel insane performance pressure.
- traffic
- airport traffic is flying above residential areas, so even when you find something affordable you have to check
- affordable creche for my kid
- SFO is one of the worst airports to arrive from abroad
Interesting - I find it a lot better than a number of other large US airports. While the immigration queues aren't great they're better than JFK, EWR, IAD, LAX, DFW, ORD and much better than YYZ. And you usually can just hurry past a lot of the other flyers, to get at the front of the queue. And departing the security queues are less bad than a lot of other airports too.
These days I've global entry, making this less painful...
Explain?
Very well said. So often, some (usually older) person will tell me, "well I know this [choose your civil servant profession] and they get by fine in SF on a 60k salary, so stop your whining."
Yep, I'd get by fine with 60k and a TIME MACHINE.
It is quite easy to get along on 60k when you've already banked a megabuck.
It is much easier getting along on 60k when you're on a 1995 mortgage of $700/mo with frozen property taxes. Doesnt matter if you sell -- you are living in a million dollar house without paying for it. You get the space now. You get the easy commute now. You get it all for a tenth of current costs.
It's not uncommon for people to rent. Buying just isn't affordable, if for example you prefer good public transportation. Forget about buying houses though - even rents are becoming crazy.
Wine industry is similar, my wife gets a lot of interns from out of the country through an Ag exchange program. Between the lower pay and higher cost of living here, recent grads who are able to save up money working in Australia, NZ, ZA, or Argentina in the Southern Hemisphere harvest actually end up losing money just living up here for the Northern Hemisphere harvest. A lot of them are looking into ways to work for a more extended period of time in other countries as they are able to live much better in very similar regions climatically.
I'd change that to where _do_ they go. This trend is becoming more pronounced but has been around a while.
As other posters note, they leave for other tech hubs, or other industries. Even if they could earn even more in the Bay Area they recognize that it's a long path to a quality of life that would be more accessible somewhere else.
There's also a weariness folks in the industry get after a while. On the one hand, it's an amazing place to get 20 years of experience in 5. Put at some point the bubble grates on you.
As somebody who worked in the US(Bay Area, CA) and then returned to India. The general idea among immigrants is to make it big via stocks and bonuses. Get a green card and move to somewhere in the east coast.
For some people that takes forever. So you just get conditioned to stuff there and live forever. Plus most don't make it even to that phase, for most Indians and Chinese, green card never happens and they return to their countries. Those who survive do it due to a unique combination of work and luck, if you are that lucky already, and are ready to do the work- you will likely go further.
Also whatever the situation is in the Bay Area, its always a huge upgrade from the home country you are coming.
There was a revisionist history episode on it: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/11-a-good-walk-spoile...
If Prop 13 wreaks havoc on housing, it’s much worse on commercial RE where it literally it spawns a class of rent seekers.
Turns out they used the same amount as one large golf course.
1. One of the things Prop 13 does is to cap the maximum rate at which a property tax grows per annum to 2%. However, due to housing demand, the property values grow at a much faster rate (7% is not unheard of). The property tax can change when there is a sale.
2. Bay area prices have skyrocketed.
3. The peninsula topography and zoning laws make it hard to expand housing capacity.
So, if you are an aging home owner, sure you can cash out of a sale. But where would you go? Unless you can afford another place in the same area, existing home owners do not have incentives to sell their property, which results in a very low inventory. And, low inventory further puts pressure on the prices and drives it up.
Just because it’s a real phenomenon doesn’t mean they had to adopt the most destructive solution I’ve seen.
Other states have a deep discount for seniors’ property taxes, while others have a lien on the property that the buyer has to pay (thus reducing the sale price). Other states just have very low tax increases due to stagnant property values.
Here's how a corporate Prop13 exploit goes: first identify land you want to own that's owned by another corporation. Make a private agreement to buy the property. Over time, replace board of directors of property-owning corp with folks from buying corporation. Eventually you have full control of old corporation, with old tax rates. This happened with Ernst & Julio Gallo for millions of acres of arable vineyards.
You don't sell the boat, you sell the LLC that happens to own the boat. And when buying a business entity or business interest, you don't pay sales tax. The boat was always owned by the same LLC, it never changed hands - it was the business that changed hands.
What would actually happen is they'd sell their house for 5x the price of the same house in a more reasonable housing market, and 10x what they paid for it, and move to a different location with a nicely multiplied bank account.
I'll acknowledge that some stability is good. But it has a cost, and that cost is currently much higher than the benefits it provides.
Anecdotal, but I've heard this is happening in Hawaii now with vacation home prices skyrocketing, causing natives to get stuck with property taxes they can no longer afford.
You say they don't want to move out, can't they simply refinance? Take out $1M against the house. Then draw down on that money to cover the excess taxes you owe and pay the mortgage, this should get you 20 more years in the house, maybe more depending on how the market plays out, could be less if there is a recession but then you the alternatives are you lost the house already since you couldn't afford the higher taxes or the current system where all the new comers/people who relocate are covering for you.
Cities change. It's inevitable. If you can't make use of the resources your city or town provides and someone else can then you are forced out. That's a good thing for society overall and it benefits you too.
Honestly, Prop 13 created an unsustainable market distortion that pulls out the rug for anyone wanting to start a family.
It's not very fair to give someone a break on their property taxes and then when they die/sell get an absolute windfall.
https://sccassessor.org/index.php/tax-savings/transferring-y...
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Bill-wo...
young wannabe "rockstars", and perhaps a few actual ones.
- Increase salary to livable wage for janitorial staff, etc
- Lobby for housing reform, progressive zoning policies
Across the street from my old house in San Mateo (Silicon Valley mid-peninsula), there were what appeared to be a husband and wife, the wife's sister, a cousin, three or four children, the sister or cousin's live in boyfriend, and a renter, all in a two bedroom, one bath house that was about 1200 square feet. Oh and a couple of dogs as well. It was notable because there were six or seven cars for the household, and there were only a couple of parking spots in front of each house, so they ended up parking their cars in front of our house often, forcing us to park down the street somewhere.
If you have four or five adult wage earners at low wages you can make it work. Otherwise you have to live very far away from your job.
I can't speak towards family living, but as a single person willing to live with roommates, you can find pretty nice places in the heart of Silicon Valley for ~$1000/month. Now add in compensation-packages well over 6 figures, brand-name companies for your resume, networking locally with other great engineers/techies, and the ability to switch companies every 1-2 years if you're unhappy. I wouldn't ever recommend a 30-year-old giving up all that to work in Kansas.
As a married person with children now, having roommates is absolutely out of the question. I know people suggest it as a "solution" to the housing crisis but in no way is it acceptable in my mind to have strangers living in the house with my wife and children.
People making different choices than you aren't "living in squalor." You're going to have a hard time convincing me that a luxury apartment with separate bedrooms is squalor.
...oh wait, you mean $1000/month PER PERSON? Ha, no. In Kansas, you can pay $1000/month to own that whole house.
If someone really wants to emulate your lifestyle, they would be best served working in SFBA for the first 5-10 years of their career, so as to build out their resume. Once you're more established and have an impressive resume, it's so much easier to find lucrative remote gigs.
That would fall squarely in the 'living in relative squalor' category. making 200-300K and living with roomates in a small place? Pretty atypical for most of the world, and completely discounts most people over ~25 years old.
SoCal is not exactly cheap. That's completely and utterly insane.
In my previous job hunt, I had numerous recruiters try to explain to me that the Bay Area was the only place to be. I helped them work the math to show the CoL differences between where I was and where they wanted me. This didn't phase them.
Then I discussed this in terms of required compensation deltas to make this meaningful, using the rubric of not slipping significantly backwards in quality of life measures (house size, commute, food prices, taxes, etc.). This got their attention.
A few times when I replied here on similar articles noting that the Bay Area was simply pricing itself out of competition for talent and companies, the responses varied between sympathy to ... well ... (paraphrasing) you are a fool to expect higher comp to live and work in this utopia.
Well, no.
There are many reasons why the Bay Area is in the state it is in. It isn't quite catastrophic ... yet ... but IMO it is moving there fast.
Burn rates for newcos are massive compared to other regions. General costs are high relative to other regions. Economic theory suggests that this will eventually fix itself, the invisible hand of the market and all.
For me, I took a position that enabled remote work, and can hop a plane to HQ when needed (1/month or so). This is far more cost effective for the company and I than it would be to move me.
Just my $0.02. There are those whom might leap to the defense of the region, but its worth asking if the critique is founded or not. I believe it is.
The top funds, the press, the special talent, the specialized talent, the customers, the early adopters, yada, yada.
When everything is in 'one cluster' - there is a very good reason to be located there, and it almost always makes economic sense.
Very few companies grow gangbusters outside the clusters.
I know plenty of new grads in the South Bay/Peninsula living in apartments or rented houses that would be considered decent or nice in the rest of the country with plenty of money to spare. Mostly at bigger, established companies though. Anecdotal, I know, but it definitely seems like there's a portion of new grads living comfortably in the bay area.
Living somewhere and owning property are very different though.
Lots of people stay here despite the costs because of the positive externalities that come with living in the bay. There are many alternatives to a highway commute (bike in the city, Caltrain, work from home) that many new grads are able to take advantage of. There's easy access to nature, culture, and for a lot of people, an extended network of family and friends that probably wouldn't be so welcoming in other places that don't have the same strains on housing.
I expect that many will move away for opportunities elsewhere before ultimately returning, but that seems to be a desire for exploration rather than dissatisfaction with quality of life. Certainly, few of the people I know are itching to leave the city for even low-density suburban living, and that's a preference that just can't be squared with many of the commenters here that rave about living on their 3 acres of land for $200k in the middle of nowhere while working remotely.
There are a lot of problems in the bay (and even more in the city) that I hope we can address, but making it out to be unlivable for young engineers (again, a very privileged class) is ridiculous. Are there better places to raise kids? Yes. Are there cheaper places to live? Yes. Are there other urban areas that provide some of the same benefits? Yes. Do I want to live anywhere else? Not right now.
Living with roommates is fun when you’re young, but nearly everyone tires of it eventually. You can also get a one or two bedroom with a partner and good salaries, but try adding a kid and that place is packed to the brim.
To counter your anecdote, I’m 30, and have been in the bay about 4 years. I believe I grew my career in the bay faster than I could have anywhere else, and am very happy to have come here.
I’m still single, so have no plans to leave, but _none_ of my friends my age looking to start families are expecting to stay here.
Those types of jobs (think Retail, Government, Construction. Manufacturing, Education -- all major employers) are probably much more impacted on average than tech.
One of the most ineffective, corrupt and unresponsive Governments in the country. Its like a failed state.
Citation needed. The most recent data on this disagrees with you.
"Just-released numbers from January’s homeless count, conducted every two years as a requirement to receive federal funds, show a very slight decrease. The drop is attributed to fewer families and youths among the homeless, while the number of single adults living on the street — the most visible — has risen."
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Despite-money-an...
Don't get me wrong, my daily 30 minute commute on BART isn't the worst. The worst part is that I make $185,000-$238,000 (with bonus and all) and still can't afford to buy a home because I can't compete with other investors that have deep pockets filled with cash, not to mention buying a semi-decent home in a semi-OK neighborhood sets you easily back by $850K-$1.2MM. It's insane! The best I'm able to do is to pay for a $3550/mo rent and tuck away as much money as I can while providing for the wife and kids, which isn't the cheapest.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Back to work.
Edit: Armenian. Also, I'll check myself, there are others in far worse financial/living condition in the Bay Area. Comparatively speaking, I have it easier than most.
You may make less money in terms of income in most other cities, but your retirement savings will grow a lot faster regardless. I work on a traveling/remote team. One of my teammates lives in Chattanooga. His 3 bedroom house with I think 2 or 3 aces of land put him back a whopping $200,000.
Not that there aren't a lot of places in the country with good schools and affordable housing prices, but for a lot of people with kids schools matter as much or more than housing prices.
Can confirm. Founder in Chattanooga. About 13 of our people live here / TN.
Housing options (that appear) much better than in this thread with good public schools and sub-30 minute commute available. Specific ethnic communities may be harder to find.
Pretty great housing from $250-600k all over the place
If you can save that much, it's not really 'squirreling'..
I'm also interested in REI, but not sure where the returns are in this market.
Like, tuck away the money to buy a place somewhere else? Or are you waiting for a housing correction?
Also, If your commute is 30 min, then you are probably living around Fremont. Is the rent for 900sqft that high over there? This is touching SF territory.
I'm only half jokingly considering becoming an off the grid hermit.
Can you expand on what this means? Have you faced a lot of racism in SF?
Here in North Texas, I make around 100k/yr, and due to cost of living I can squirrel a lot of that away. We have no state income tax, and our property tax, while high, isn't nearly as high as California's (and will vary depending upon which county you live in -- massively expanding counties like Collin will charge more than rural ones like Johnson).
With that income I was easily able to buy a ~1800sqft two story house in a good neighborhood. My total consistent expenses for each month are maybe 2/3s that of your rent, which includes non-consumables like mortgage, insurance, utilities, etc.
In all of this, of course, I don't have kids and my wife doesn't (currently) work. If your spouse does work, then your spending power here becomes so much greater.
Trust me. Get out. It's the best decision I've ever made and there's absolutely no fucking way I would ever live in CA again.
Texas seems so far behind when it comes to things like parks, transportation, and publicly available goods that coming to California is like a dream.
I'd happily pay more taxes to be able to have these things be available for everyone.
Been to a lot of very nice parks out here, nearly every city has one or more. Some of which are huge with large trails.
>transportation,
You might be confusing the Bay Area (or perhaps even LA) with all of California in general. I'm from San Diego originally. Public transportation there is a joke, plain and simple. BA and LA are both special in that regard.
>and publicly available goods
What is this?
Erm...guess you don't count some of the largest metroplexes in the country as "cities", do you?
>when it comes to recreations, vacations, day trips, road trips
That's fairly accurate. We don't have a ton of touristy crap, but that's no big deal for me.
>Acceptance of LGBT lifestyles
Did you live in the country or something? Never seen a problem with it here. In any of the urban/metro areas it's no big deal.
>Very church oriented
So? I'm an atheist and I've never had any problems with it. You'll only find a problem if you're actively combative with people about it. Otherwise most people don't care.
>Low salaries, tech opportunities
Houston I can understand. But not Dallas. You must not be looking very hard is all I can say. Even when I haven't been actively looking I get hit up by recruiters all the time. Either that or you're in a very, very specialized field with very low overall demand. My salary has also been going up constantly, and with the cost of living I can live very comfortably with what I make (and I'm not even in the top parts).
>>That's fairly accurate. We don't have a ton of touristy crap, but that's no big deal for me.
I get what you're saying (though Texas definitely has a fair share of tourist traps). I think it's worth mentioning this is potentially a large lifestyle component for some (possible deal breaker too). The difference between California and Texas is vast.
Texas has extreme weather compared to the west coast and it should not be ignored. There is less geographical variety through the entire state, and what variety there is can potentially be very far (Dallas to Big Bend Park is an 8 hour drive!). If you enjoy the outdoors and outdoor activities and your only reference is California, you may be surprised in the summer when the temperature does not cool in the evenings like a coastal city (even on the gulf coast). The gulf coast water temperatures in the summer can be 90 degrees! A July beach trip in Galveston is not enjoyable and potentially deadly just from temperatures. No mountains or large points of reference can be dizzying. Living in an air-conditioned bubble for 8 months of the year can get frustrating. If you live in southern California, you can go from the beach to snowy mountains in the same day. You can drive an hour or two and be in some of the most beautiful coastal cities in the country, or wineries with some of the best wine in the country. You can go hiking in December without a jacket and you can go hiking in July and need a light coat. You can basically switch any month of the year and still be comfortable. Obviously there is some hyperbole in my examples but the main points stands.
It's worth mentioning that if none of that matters much to you, then you'd enjoy Texas a great bit. There is a ton of culture. Depending on the city, there is a mishmash of everything social you could want or imagine. Food is great and cheap (or expensive, they can suit any taste or appetite to spend money or not).
>Acceptance of LGBT lifestyles
>>Did you live in the country or something? Never seen a problem with it here. In any of the urban/metro areas it's no big deal.
I have a good friend who still cannot come out at work for fear of mistreatment - in the city. I agree that it's generally friendly and accepted in the cities but nowhere near the same as the west coast. I'm gay and I've lived in California and Texas and there is no comparison on the two in terms of acceptance. I would hesitate to hold my partners hand or come out to new acquaintances in Texas. Not so much in California (or the west coast in general). You may not see it but the pressures exists and the difference is real.
>Very church oriented
>>So? I'm an atheist and I've never had any problems with it. You'll only find a problem if you're actively combative with people about it. Otherwise most people don't care.
Agreed, I've never had problems with it, but it is more in your face. There are benefits to being atheist in Texas, travel is lighter and shopping/etc is much easier on Sunday mornings. I got asked what church I attend much more frequently. I've also witnessed more extreme views in Texas that I don't appreciate, but this is what shapes a person, so it's not all bad. One anecdote comes to mind: Driving to work at 7am and seeing a large line of people (maybe 100). Turns out they were all protesting abortions outside of a clinic. Normally I wouldn't think much about them but they held giant signs of unborn bloodied fetuses and encouraged their children to hold signs and yell violently as well (kids no older than 5, 6, 7). This scene affected me more than normal because a family member recently needed a late term emergency abortion which these people found despicable.
Anyway, I lived in Texas and found my way. I met some of my best friends there and know they will be there for life. I made do with hot and cold weather. I enjoyed the amazing food options and wonderfully low cost of living. It's central to the US so getting to the east or west coast is not a big deal. Airports are huge and you can fly a lot of places direct. I've seen some amazing storms in Texas, more lightning than I thought was possible, and some great sunsets.
I encourage people to keep an open mind about Texas. There are great people there and it offers a lot of opportunity, but it's not for everyone.
However..remember that buying a house does not save you rent. You become an owner, so either you pay rent to the owner, or you stiff him, which happens to be you.
being harassed and ridiculed endlessly for being non-white (i'm guessing asian or indian) somewhere inexpensive and 90% homogenous (white or hispanic or black) will produce extremely negative results, to put it mildly. dealing with racism on TV and in movies is one thing, dealing with it in real life is an entirely different proposition.
Contrary to apparently-popular belief (based on some other comments in this thread), the Bay Area is not the only place in the United States with ethnic-minority communities/enclaves, or the only region in the entire United States where "brown people" are not, apparently, shot on sight. Otherwise, how could there be articles about how "white" is on the verge of becoming a minority?
(I won't deny that the Bay Area is very, very liberal, but you're really in a filter bubble if you think it's the only one, or even remotely close to describable that way.)
There are a lot of Indians in Dallas; GP can come here. Or if GP doesn't want to live in a solid red state, there's always Millbourne, PA, which is over 40% Indian.
Edit: there are other communities on the East Coast AFAIK, but I would be trading this for that.
Because the people writing those articles are full of shit.
California has a number of Asian communities, but depending on which culture you want... there are plenty of other cities out there.
Filipinos are basically everywhere in the USA as far as I can tell... Vietnamese and Koreans are a bit more rare but still exist in virtually every major Metropolian area in the USA (New York, DC, Austin).
A bit of exploration / tourism can go a long way. Visit other cities and look for a new home. Locals often can point you the way towards "Chinatowns" (even if they're mostly Vietnamese or whatever).
Now it'll likely be a condo, not a single-family home (that'll be more, or further way, or not as nice) but it's doable for sure. Not in SF, but just outside (Oakland, Fremont, Daly City, etc)
What you can get will depend on what you can wrangle as a deposit but there are plenty of options if you can get 10% down.
Source: it’s what I did recently and I pay less than that for a 1300sq ft place in Oakland
There are some really nice places that show up in Rockridge that are reasonable and if you're ok with a little less nice of an area the NoBe area is good too. In Oakland you can do surprisingly well near Highway 13 in the foothills or nearish Mills College.
If you don't mind the commute (I would) then Pleasanton is affordable (just) for large single-family homes, but it's a long ass commute.
There's a ton in the Fremont/Hayward area if you're doing a South Bay commute tho, and that opens up Pleasanton a bit more too.
If you're already driving to work then look to neighborhoods nowhere near BART as reasonable proximity to that can add a 1.5-2x multiplier to the price.
Whereas I live in Oakland and door to door it’s about 45mins if I time it right.
So I’m not sure what your objection is. Working in a big city (be it SF, NYC, or London) means you’ll have commute time.
My payments are insane, basically 4k a month. I'm able to get by because my wife works too so we aren't entirely living hand to mouth.
Since I bought in June, an identical condo in the same complex sold for around 600k.
It really burns when you consider that even in Sacramento you could probably get a full sized single-family home for what I paid...just at the cost of being further away from work.
I've been living in the Bay Area since I was 7, and I've almost been priced out of it. Does not feel good.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1052-Montgomery-Ave-San-B...
Here's a 1200 SQFT 4 bedroom home in San Bruno for only 700k.
The fact is that you are looking at homes over your budget, especially if you haven't saved a sizable down payment. Yes it's worse than other areas, but there are a lot of opportunities for people here.
But yes, the OP should be able to easily afford it.
You have too little of something, and it's causing prices to skyrocket because demand is increasing. So make more of it, reducing the price.
I just got back from a visit to the Bay Area. Outside of SF itself, not a single building over 4 stories tall. All that air space that could be condos, homes for people, anything at all, wasted so that "people can see the mountains better". Meanwhile, my friend and his girlfriend are paying $4000/month for 1000 sqft. Their rent is more than the median total pre-tax income in large swaths of America.
This is a self-inflicted wound. I have little pity.
That said...
San Jose and Oakland both definitely have downtown portions with 20 story + buildings. RWC has been building bigger too.
My guess is that, if significant amounts of extra housing were added in the Bay Area, software devs salaries would fall. Right now, software companies need to pay insane money in order to offset the insane cost of living (as otherwise, they'd lost their workforce). So, filling BA with high-risers would not help members of this forum that much (it would likely be very helpful for people in low-wage jobs though).
So all these people who have already paid millions for their homes will suddenly find their homes devalued by a huge margin.
Needless to say that won't go down well.
Social Finanace (SoFi) | Helena, MT
Oracle | Bozeman, MT
OnXMaps | Missoula, MT
Zaneray Group | Whitefish, MT
Submittable | Missoula, MT
Applied Materials | Kalispell, MT
I hope you enjoy crowded national parks and a high cost of living.
Be careful what you wish for. Denver used to be what you've described. Now it's just California's ski lodge.
Generally Montanas seem to have a "you mind my business and I'll mind mine" attitude. So while there is a large right wing component they seem to be mobilized more by gun rights and logging/mining jobs then being anti gay/trans.
Our rural county did stop taking federal money for the women's health clinic as a tea party grand stand which is unfortunate.
I would very much like to see real solutions to some of the problems the US is experiencing wrt concentration of "good" jobs in a few places and them going utterly to hell because of it. I keep kicking around ideas and starting various small websites that often go nowhere. But, I think the internet is a potential means to start giving pushback against this trend and start creating a healthier fabric than we have currently.
I am not trying to dump a project in your lap. I really appreciated your comment. It makes me want to do something with the info.
Before my life was derailed, I was studying to become an urban planner, but was really more interested in regional planning. I have a sincere interest in trying to find real solutions that are lightweight and use existing resources. I am also a recent California escapee.
If you are interested in seeing something more done with this info at some point, please drop me a line. I don't know where to go with it at this point in time, but having a contact on the ground that could feed me info to help jump start something might be useful.
Thank you for making the comment and answering questions here.
You mentioned you are bad at this, just a little unsolicited help - I am not the guy you responded to but even initially got my back up reading that. I was thinking jeez this guy puts his hand out to help, agrees to meet one other local dev, comments how he knows half of them and basically gets accused of laziness / slacktivism!
It’s clear you didn’t mean that now, tone from text is really hard to judge and people default to assuming the worst, even subconsciously so perhaps leading with your clarification in the second post or somtheing lkke it may increase your conversion to conversation rate!
Sorry if this insults you, it is not meant to.
Also, I’m putting words into the mouth of the OP of this sub thread too which are more than likely wrong.
I have run multiple websites for years, but I can't figure out how to develop them more effectively. I had a Fortune 500 job. I have a Certificate in GIS. Etc. But, I can't get anyone to take me seriously. It makes me want to spit nails.
Which is probably the wrong way to say all of that too. I appreciate you chiming in here, but what can I do? Knowing what not to do isn't enough.
When someone doesn't feel the same passion that I do about a particular issue or topic, I can get frustrated, too. I have to consciously remind myself that people prioritize things differently. I'd love to be able to infect people with the same level of commitment I feel, but there's no sure-fire way of doing that in my experience. Edit to add: I do think there are ways to become more effective (e.g., Dale Carnegie's methods), and they take practice. I know that's little consolation when things don't seem to be going your way.
This is a long way of saying I think this is only an example of mismatched levels of interest in action, no fault on any side.
As an aside, I really appreciate your self-reflection!
But, it does not matter what I do, I cannot get serious traction with anything I do, much less turn it into serious money.
I was homeless for nearly 6 years until very recently. I got accused of "panhandling the internet" (Not on HN -- only metafilter would stoop so low) and my constant requests for help in developing an online income were largely ignored. And It does not matter how I ask, how I work on that. It seems to only get very marginally better, extremely slowly. At the rate I am going, I will be 100 years old before I have a middle class lifestyle again.
And I'm broke as hell today and I need more income. This is a serious problem for me. I've been patient. I've worked hard. I've done everything I know how to do. It is never enough.
What is the goddamn secret handshake for being let into the proverbial old boys club so I can be allowed to earn more than a pittance?
/totally ineffectual rant that will either be completely ignored, downvoted to hell or pissed on for some reason, no doubt. But I am at wit's end. So have at it. It won't make my broke ass life any worse.
One concrete thing I'm doing that helps me is find someone to meet with on a regular basis to talk about progress on things we individually find important, things we want to work on. We use this to hold each other accountable for progress in these areas and to bounce ideas off each other. I know there are groups out there where people support each other in their entrepreneurial endeavors (I think I've heard these referred to as "Masterminds" groups); that's not what I'm doing, but the common thread is people (or just two people, in my case) getting together to get feedback and support on their personal goals.
I know how frustrating it can be when you feel stuck. (There are stronger words, but I'm purposefully not using them). I hope things get better for you and that you can find a way to feel that you're making progress.
Counter-counterpoint: Visit Missoula when they are naked biking.
Gallatin GOP Women official says she 'would have shot' reporter Gianforte assaulted
http://helenair.com/news/politics/state/gallatin-gop-women-o...
Briefly, I had to deploy what is now a pretty standard WISP setup but back then almost nobody was doing that so I had to learn everything from scratch. I'm an EE by birth so it wasn't that hard, and I've worked in the networking/network application development sphere most of my career so that part wasn't too hard either. Being your own ISP is basically just a problem solved only by the application of a subtle combination of time and money.
We exited the ISP market a couple of years ago though since it had turned into a deep money pit with the rise of Netflix. Today the network is still in place but only serves my home, fed by a traditional residential copper coax connection to our office building in town.
The biggest downside is a lack of employment options. When the company had a huge layoff I started looking around for other jobs in the area and realized there weren't any.
I ended up taking a great job 1000 miles away in a major city. That's when I realized another downside to smaller markets - it's really hard to sell a house and house values don't change. Even though we bought a foreclosed house in 2007, the value in 2014 was unchanged. After looking at what we had spend on improvements and upkeep we would've been far better off renting a house and putting more money into savings.
Regarding job movement, MT actually has a number of high tech companies per city, but it's a much smaller handful. Using Helena as an example (valley population ~80k), we have: Northrup Grumman, the State Agencies, SoFi, TSI&T, Boeing, Tempest (they work on KOA.com), Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc. Layoffs are not as usual here as we have a significant talent shortage. For instance I believe SoFi has ~200 devs in Helena when they would like 400 devs -- hiring being the biggest barrier.
Throw in decent internet and companies which hire remotely, and you're in good shape.
That said, Bozeman is currently experiencing a housing bubble that doesn't seem to want to break (we attribute it to the older Californians who are trying to avoid taxes on the houses they sold there). Nothing like SF, but 2x-3x the rest of Montana.
Hillmap.com | Hamilton, MT
(I work for the first remotely and founded the second so the presence isn't big but we're here!).
Its actually a few years old and I was thinking of trying to make it more of a money maker at one point but other interests have proven more profitable so I'm not sure I'll ever really push for it to become a true business.
I and many of my friends do get a ton of pleasure out of trips planed with it which is its own reward.
Might be hard to really monetize anyways, its really nice that you keep it available for people to use. If you don't plan on making more money from it, you could always open source it, and let others contribute too for fun.
I have been back in Missoula since 2001, and worked a number of different tech jobs here from local government to remote to public companies and startups.
The tech scene has grown a ton here over the last 15 years. There are good opportunities. The biggest hurdle I've seen is being able to find good work for your SO.
http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/maps/...
And San Francisco is the 3rd most densely populated city in America, if you look at cities with over 100k people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
So I disagree with the narrative that Bay Area NIMBY-ism is out of control. It's probably similar to anywhere else in America.
There are two unique factors at play here:
(1) Massive growth of high paying jobs in the tech sector, with typical wages for an engineer ranging from $100-200k. This has caused housing to double/triple in cost over the last ten years.
(2) The Bay Area has very unfortunate geography: there is a giant bay in its geographic center, and mountains/oceans all around. This makes traffic and commuting more difficult, and also makes development "outwards" harder.
There is substantially cheaper housing in the East Bay, compared to SF/Peninsula. However there's no good way to get from the East Bay to where the jobs are: you are limited by one of three bridges, all of which have terrible traffic.
Imagine if we filled up the entire SF Bay with concrete, and demolished all the mountains surrounding the Bay Area. I'll bet you would see improved traffic and more even prices between East/West bay.
If they allowed housing to develop they'd have to expand their school, police, fire, garbage and other departments.
Vancouver 2010: 603,000
Vancouver 2016: 631,000
Vancouver increase: ~28,000
SF 2010: 805,000
SF 2016: 864,000
SF increase: ~59,000
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver [2] http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/san-francisco-pop...
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002808-world-urban-areas... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area
The last landlord I had was a decent fellow - the property was well maintained and he fixed problems promptly. But my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property, and I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him. One time he was showing off the little 8-unit complex to someone he wanted to go into a partnership on another property with him.
My cousin has a few low-end houses that he rents out. He's jokingly referred to himself as a "slumlord", but... rent is what economically strangles his renters.
My grandparents owned both their homes free-and-clear, and stayed in their homes for 40-50 years. This is the hope of anyone who buys a house: independence from the landlord & bank.
The cooperative I'm envisioning would channel rent payments into a fund. After long enough, you'd be able to live there for just maintenance costs, or you could "work off" the monthly fee by contributing somehow. And if a person moves out of the coop, their "equity" could be returned to them over time... Or something like that.
(minor edit on 'work off')
Um, yeah. That's the way it works for property investors. Find a property, borrow money to purchase, rent out property to cover mortgage costs. This happens at low scale (individuals) and high scale (property investment companies, REIs, etc.).
> "I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him"
Presumably, you had a job at the time, for which you decided it was an equitable trade to have the job and not buy a property to live. You made a choice, and the outcome from that choice is what you have to show.
You do the math on the rent/buy decision. In places like New York, San Francisco, etc. it's very common to come out on the side of renter instead of buyer. If you're in the mid-west, you are probably buying. But don't say you didn't have nothing to show for the rent.
Relatively few people are in the position of being able to choose freely between buying and renting.
You had a roof over your head while you paid him. That's not nothing.
> my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property
Whereas the alternative is for him to not have the property at all because he can't afford it, and you're stuck finding somewhere else to live?
People love to say "if I had only owned my home I wouldn't have thrown away so much in rent." This is typical in areas that have seen large increases in home prices.
You rarely hear about the opposite which is "I'm $100K underwater on my house" because people don't talk about it when things go south.
Renting and not owning removes you from the whims of the housing market. If your landlord took a 30% hit in the value of his property, as a renter you get to walk away and let him/her deal with it. That's worth something.
Equity is never returned to members, they just contribute to cooperative living. Also, members cannot just sell the coöp to profit from increased real estate values; part of the founding charter of the non-profit corporation which manages the coöp says that if it was to disband, the main assets would have to be donated to charity.
http://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-life/03-29-17-us-cens...
- Seattle has more diverse industry. I toured the bio-science companies down at the harbor and was really impressed. Seattle is more than just "tech".
- SF is way too restrictive with allowing new housing to be built. I did not perceive the problem to be as bad in Seattle.
- In SF, a lot of the streets reeked of weed--It's like when someone cranks up their music too loud forcing everyone to listen to it. I don't care if someone smokes weed, I just don't want to smell it everywhere--it's not family friendly. Meanwhile, Seattle's streets appeared much cleaner to me when I explored the city (on foot).
What? Where did you live? I never once had that problem. It's not like the entirety of SF smells like weed 24/7, I think that's a pretty absurd strike to give a city (especially since it's legalized in WA).
And that's not the worst thing I constantly smell / see being done on the streets.
They're the go-to people if you want to be involved in fixing things.
If you want better infrastructure, invest in light rail.
http://www.iwillride.org/what-200-people-look-like-driving-c...
I spent ~10 years living in Europe. While there was still a lot of traffic, huge numbers of people took rail. To me, the cities were much more livable than the average NA city.
I would bet most people have to drive in primarily because there manager did it that way when he/she was in the developer role.
Working remotely is friendlier on the environment and saves time commuting. It's also cheaper for the company and more easily scales as head count increases.
Also, the Domain development has somewhat eased the traffic situation by shifting a lot of new businesses slightly closer to the Northern Suburbs. Which is a welcome respite: the traffic situation would have been a LOT worse (if that's possible ;-) ) had the Domain not been developed.
I'm pretty optimistic about Austin's future. It offers an extremely high standard of living on a developers salary. Most suburbs are not too far away. There is a lot of undeveloped land. And the City Government is proactive and responsive to the needs of citizens. I think it can evolve into another Tech hub, maybe rivaling Seattle. For it to rival Bay Area, I think we would need a lot more VC's to set up shop here.
Disclaimer: lived in Austin for 5 years now, loved every year so far.
I'm looking into buying a house but anything that is affordable is out in the suburbs or neighboring cities. And I say that as someone who makes $100k.
Austin does unfortunately have a terrible record when it comes to public transit. The rail system is a joke. Although, I am hoping that future infrastructure projects will focus more on creating a viable train/rail/subway system from suburbs to dt/domain. The density of dt is skyrocketing with recent developments, and I can only hope that it will spur a rethinking of transportation policy.
As for the cost of housing... unfortunately, all the outsiders coming in are flooding the market and driving prices ridiculously high. I don't really see an end to the boom... which is why I too have stayed away from considering purchasing a house for the time being.
I wonder how self-driving cars will impact conurbation size when compared to other advancements like boats, horses, carts, roads, canals, trams, steam-engines, trains, tarmac, subways, combustion-engines, bikes, cars, steel bridges, and mechanized roadway construction?
[1] http://www.best-cities.org/2014/best-performing-cities-repor...
You either need to get huge promotions in 7 years to double your salary which is very difficult (and this is just to keep your living standards) or be forced to move to somewhere farther and face a crushing commute of at least 2 to 3 hours everyday.
Roughly speaking, buying a house is also not a win since houses closer to where you work will usually be more than 1 million dollars. Mortgage would be around 4k-5k with 20% down payment. So again, you'd be forced to buy somewhere farther.
There's really not much to do about it, it's supply and demand and you need to accept it. There are a couple of things though that tech companies could do: either working with local authorities to help improve public transportation or decentralize the workplace.
Companies, however, are doing exactly the opposite: Buying lands which were previously residential areas and building huge mega-structures so everyone can work in a single place while not having the best from public transportation (e.g. Apple).
I naively thought that making the lives of their employees easier would be in the best interests of tech companies but I just see things getting worse every year.
Perhaps I am naive, but it is my understanding that many of the wealthy people of the Bay Area made the majority of their money through commerce and technology, not by purchasing a house a few years or decades ago and quashing any attempt at increasing the housing stock.
Would it not be in the self interest of all tech corporations, executives, venture capitalists and angel investors in Silicon Valley to ensure the development of housing for their future tech employees - and thus spur their future profits - and the greater economy's service workers?
Even if one buys the insane argument that service workers perhaps ought not to live in the expensive Bay Area, one still must acknowledge that these line chefs, janitors, security guards, hairdressers and many others must live and commute in from somewhere, which affects everybody in the Bay Area, regardless of their wealth.
Everything about Silicon Valley makes sense to me but this.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/oct/02/rise-of-the-y...
Added: I think the hype might have pumped the job market too full, and net outflows are the only way for the system to concentrate more desirable candidates, with employee compensation being the signal.
Added: Three-dimensional land parcels would solve a lot of the problems with properly valuing natural beauty, direct sunlight, and underground access.
Added: Environmental (noise[aggregate peak SPL, loudness], ground vibration[aggregate peak amplitude], air pollution[aggregate peak particulates, ozone, maybe fuel fumes, maybe heat], ground pollution, EMR [including radio and light]) sensor networks could be used to make it simpler to uphold agreements and ordinances, or litigate environmental property devaluation or damage (reduction in air quality, disturbance of quiet, excessive night time light, ground shaking). You could also include on-board detectors for things like gunshots, car crashes, or desperate cries for help, to aide emergency services. Data like these could be made completely public so that public offices don't need to waste their time determining access.
What do you think?
Singapore also has the problem of being tyrannical in basically every way except the economic, I figure it should be legal to walk around nude in your own house, and also legal to chew gum.
And that's how you keep the market up for $2.4 million homes that would go for $300k elsewhere http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/12/now-this-is-ridiculous...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
They tend to become exploitative though.
I mean, you increase housing but don't increase retail units or parks in the same area, thereby creating a cultural/food desert. Even if you do, if you don't increase road capacity or install better public transit (which since it's usually at county level requires a lot of coordination), then you're simply increasing problems.
NIMBY is the simplest solution - often folks who end up in that camp have tried advocating other solutions and have failed at them because no-one wants to foot the bill for all the planning bits that make a decent (or even livable) neighborhood.
Just one example: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-housing-menlo-park-2...
Also, note that SF isn't the fastest growing housing market anymore, it's Seattle (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-no...). Seattle didn't feel as much housing-pressure with Microsoft due to the remote location of its campus in Redmond/Bellevue. That's changing with Amazon; the sales giant is located in prime real estate, just like the tech companies on the peninsula.
I'm glad we did it, but I'm also glad that I moved back to Ohio now.
Beyond having my extended family around here, it just feels like a better place to raise a family and be part of a community, whereas SF seemed more geared towards single or childless folks who were very focused on their carriers.
The Bay Area is also incredibly expensive. After moving back, I went to a movie with a friend, asked for two tickets, then tried to correct the attendant because the price was so low that I thought she must have rung me up for a single ticket. That's just one example, but nearly everything costs more in SF.
Oh, and our house in Ohio cost slightly less than my current annual salary - I had an apartment and the mortgage overlapping for a couple of months here, and even paying both was less than what my rent was in San Mateo.
Of course, now we're bidding to get Amazon to move here. Sigh.
If you want the companies, you must take their employees. If you don't want their employees, you shouldn't have the companies.
What's supposed to happen is inflated prices take up an unjustifiable portion of income and make things like families impossible forcing people to move.
Wages are supposed to keep rising to keep pace rendering some business unprofitable, making others expensive and forcing others to move altogether, all adding up to cause a correction in prices.
But in the real world its not really working that way. While wages are rising there is also large import of labour keeping wages in check with people resorting to more and more desperate measures like sharing rooms.
Without that perhaps the labour crisis would become unmanageable forcing businesses and government to rethink some policies. At the moment its the financial and real estate sectors making out while the average person faces the brunt. This is replicated worldwide in most major cities.
Lack of housing and traffic are familiar complaints, but it bears repeating. I remember when there was never any traffic on 280, now it's a parking lot during rush hour.
If you're just starting out in your career, it's simultaneously the best and worst place to work. Best in that there's a lot of opportunity and you're kinda bathed in the tech ecosystem, worst in that you'll probably be paying 40k (after taxes) for a one bedroom apartment in the city, or stuck commuting for an hour easy way.
> Over the 12 months that ended in September, the Bay Area added 50,400 jobs, a 1.3 percent increase in total payroll jobs during the one-year period.
The interesting part is the percentage slow down over the year, which is what requires more thought than headlines about "hammered job losses" that included area-wide growth.
Just making overpriced metros ineligible for foreign buyers could ease the pricing pressure.
So SF could stop exporting with some sort of ban on foreign buyers. For what's it worth (not much), I think such a ban would have almost no effect, as unless the US bans all Chinese capital wholesale, all the same money can makes it way to SF real estate through less direct means.
Or we could fix our taxes and regulations. The current regime of taxes and regulations actively incentivize speculation, and penalize land use. We need tax revenue, might as well collect it in a way that discourages speculation.
This is the good news. Home prices in the East Bay are 50%-70% of SF prices, and the infrastructure for employers is comparable to SF (public transit, internet, hospitals, restaurants, culture).
The way this reached #1 with no comments (until yours) makes me think that people have strong opinions about it but said opinions are too divergent from what's popular/accepted around here for them to feel comfortable expressing them.
It has a sort of "everyone expects the bubble to pop but nobody wants to admit it" sort of vibe to it.
Maybe Elon or someone else should be city below the sea.
Yogi Berra and San Jose Mercury News on Silicon Valley.