I want to have a place where I have room for a chicken coop (30 chickens) and a 1-acre fish pond. I'm willing to commute by car for a maximum of 15 minutes. A slightly longer commute might be OK if I can afford to commute by horse and the employer doesn't mind.
Which tech hub should I move to?
(in german) https://www.immobilienscout24.de/expose/108629168
(Though even if serious, I would not do that as you can get more land further out much cheaper and why do you need a pond directly at your house, having it within 1 hour reach for the weekend should be enough)
The pond is so that the kids can go fishing out in the back yard. They don't need transportation, they can be watched from the house, they can have friends over, and there is no performance pressure to catch fish before it is time to go home. They can float on the pond with a canoe or a makeshift raft.
Having a little creek is fine too. Kids can build damns, dig for crawfish, catch frogs, pan for gold, make waterwheels, and so on.
The kids can camp in the backyard, complete with a campfire. The larger back yards have room for shooting.
The point really is personal land to enjoy.
Double those pay numbers to determine the price of a house that a person can afford... and it is not looking good. I looked around on www.trulia.com a bit. An empty lot of questionable geological status goes for $1,500,000. A small empty lot far from the tech companies goes for $500,000. Most of the actual homes go for millions.
So I guess yeah, it could work for the experienced person earning $950,000 per year at Facebook. That would allow building $500,000 of house on the $1,500,000 empty lot, assuming you can solve the geological issues and get the permits redone.
That is the top pay listed though. It's the top level at the top company.
The mortgage on a 2 million dollar loan (which would be a 2.4 or 2.5 million dollar home) is 10k/mo or 120k/year, which is solidly affordable on a 400k income.
I know of 5 and 6 bedroom houses than can be gotten for that much in Palo Alto and Cupertino.
People overestimate their max credit payments... And financial system incentivizes that (why wouldn't you borrow from 401k? It's just your retirement savings)