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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

> I'm leaning more towards stacked micro-houses, aka micro condos, as the "future of housing" in urban centers.

This is already a thing, it's called coffin cubicles or cage homes: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed...

What I'm trying to say is: No, you should not lean towards this. You should lean towards jobs and opportunities spreading out over the country. To appeal to the HN population, instead of thinking in the binary thought of "SF (or some other tech hub) or fully remote!", consider another option: opening up smaller offices. Bring work where housing is affordable.

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The price of housing is only one factor. You can probably buy a nice, cheap house and open some office in the arse end of nowhere. And then you can spend your day driving around to get basic shopping done.

Some cities are certainly more affordable than others, but in my experience they are also much less desirable.

I've lived most of my life in places ranging from a monastery to a town with around 20k people. I never needed to spend a day driving around to get basic shopping done.

I now live in a place an order of magnitude larger, but that really does not cut down on the time spent on basic shopping.

The issue is that once a job can be done remotely or moved to a cheaper city, it can usually just be moved to a different country where the labor is much cheaper.

We will likely not see jobs move to less expensive areas in the US(or any other high wage country), in any meaningfully significant number, because those cheaper areas can never compete with cheaper countries overseas on cost.

The big issue with moving jobs to other countries more than anything else is timezones and language.

Distributed teams across the US isnt much of a problem, but try working with people that have an 8 hour timezones difference and it's much more difficult.

> No, you should not lean towards this. You should lean towards jobs and opportunities spreading out over the country.

Can someone say 'urban sprawl'?

Have you done the math for your company? No one I know wants to do that because the talent wants to be where the other talent is. Perhaps you’re targeting the niche who wants to live somewhere as your hiring pool? How has that worked out so far?

Why not? I don't see any reason why young individuals looking to experience inner city life wouldn't be happy to exchange loving space for easy commuting and urban culture (which is what they already do).

>Why not?

Because your equity is now at the mercy of other people who you cannot control. No one wants to default on a mortgage.

I think we're talking about two different things. The parent comment was referring to micro apartments, which are generally rented to tenants.

Considering that many college students have two to four dormatory roommates, I don't see what's wrong with renting a small living as a young adult - provided that the living space itself is up to code.

Ah ok, I thought it was the shared mortgage idea. I see no issue with shared housing, not exactly a radical idea.

Shared housing is one thing. Shared housing with which you share major financial responsibility with someone else is another matter. Houses also require maintenance, are often upgraded over time, etc. and reasonable people can disagree about what needs to be done when and how—especially if people have significantly different financial situations.

I feel like we're going in circles. I said the same thing and was corrected (these are rentals.) I then agree, and you come in saying they're not rentals. Which is it?

Here's my stance:

Getting into a mortgage with roommates = bad.

Getting into a lease with roommates = no problem.

I was agreeing that shared rentals are fine. Well, they can have problems too but people mostly manage. As you say shared mortgages seem very risky in general.

Yeah, I think the issues that arise with roommates are well understood and generally acceptable given the benefits. Shared mortgages are insane.

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