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Comment by WarOnPrivacy | Hacker News Reader

In mid 2021, looking for a rental in W.Cent.Fl was brutal. Listings typically received ~400 applicants, each day. We beat out 50 applicants to score our current rental, which was listed for 2 hours. We are fortunate that our rent is only 70% higher than our last place.

It got worse after our move. People with stable jobs and money in the bank had nowhere to go. Homelessness has exploded in this region.

Tougher still is the insurance crisis playing out. Biz and homes that are financed are finding the mandatory insurance is skyrocketing. Their monthly payment has recently doubled or tripled and the rate of increase has yet to slow.

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Exact opposite for me moving to SF mid 2021. Plenty of availability, barely more expensive than Chicago, landlords were bending over to get us to rent. Ended up landing a lovely 2 bedroom for 2800/mo with parking included and rent control in a great neighborhood.

That isn't barely more expensive than Chicago; that's more than $1000 more than the median 2-bedroom apartment in Chicago.

All of my friends who live in 2 bedroom apartments in decent neighborhoods in chicago are paying $2300-2500, without parking included. Chicago median rent is artificially depressed because there are a lot of very bad neighborhoods you would never live in, while those in SF are quite rare (Tenderloin, SoMa)

You can get a 2bdr in Logan Square for under $2000. Same with Uky Village. Edgewater? Well under $1500. You can pay over $2000 if you go looking in Lakeview; just like every big city has rough areas, every big city has nosebleed areas, too. You're just much more likely to be able to afford living in the nosebleed parts of Chicago.

I couldn't even find prices for the south side (I checked Auburn and Grand Crossing) or west side (I checked North Lawndale and Austin). Nobody's suggesting you can get a nice 2bdr in Chicago for $450/mo, which I assume you could in Belmont Cragin.

> Plenty of availability,

The east coast of SF is an outlier; it has long been the least affordable region in the state; I could see where Chicago sized dollars might work there. For the folks working typical jobs, it's a place to leave.

2800 for a 2br. Ouch. Until recently, that would have been 600-1200 for most of the state - an amount people working typical jobs could afford to pay.

Do you know why? I don’t know enough about Florida in general to understand why that region would be in such high demand.

Taxes, politics (for the people that agree with them), weather, cheaper housing outside of the major cities until recently.

At least those are reasons I think people are moving there. It's not for me personally.

The weather in florida is pretty awful, and the taxes are basically the same as elsewhere. If it isn't income taxes, then your property taxes are just higher

This pretty much nails it all the way around. FL is fast running out of things that don't compare well to Hell.

The one positive thing might be that FL never did mandatory vehicle inspections (individual owned). The results are fairly strong evidence that municipalities could end those without meaningful risk to the public.

The new move-ins seem to be drawn by all the recreation marketing. The ads seem to leave out the ever-increasing heat for some reason.

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