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Comment by Grimblewald | Hacker News Reader

It doesnt help that current quality of life is pretty grim, downright terrible if youre young, heck even if youre pushing into middle age. Possibly beyond but I dont have as much perspective for that demographic.

things that give you the mental resources to take the time to have fun with things are simply not avaliable to most of us these days. As a simple example, young folks have near no chance of ever owning a home, and it is sold as a personal failure. As it being a failure to grind sufficently. Natural human urges and desires, like having a family, are increasingly out of reach and are again sold as personal failures.

Everyone is grim, because the situation is grim. If we dont take the time to recognize how grim it really is, we will be in no position to start fixing it.

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I don't know. It's not hard to buy a home if you're an American software engineer though, and aren't tied to the bay area or NYC. There are even places commuting distance from NYC where you can get a $250k single family freestanding home.

A few years ago I lived for a while in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was pretty easy to find a $110k software job that was pretty chill and well, not so exciting or conducive for the ambitious. Numerically pay isn't what faang might pay in SF. But faang workers in SF claim they can't buy a house, yet this lower salary easily could have bought a mansion in Tulsa. They could have even cut my salary in half and it still would afford a nice average house.

Probably not a coincidence I saw a lot more families with children across all social classes there than in my prior NYC life. Hm.

So I don't think America has a cost of living problem, I think the bay area, core NYC and a few other major metros have a cost of living problem. That's bad, but those are two different things.

I'm in Pittsburgh right now and struggling to buy a house. Everything on the market are estates and get bought within a week of listing. This past one I put an offer on was sold in less than 24hrs of posting...

I'm surprised to hear this, I would never think to lump Pittsburgh in with big metros. Are you being picky or something? Do you have kids and thus school district is a major consideration? Do you have a specific neighborhood you want?

Really, Pittsburgh of all places? I know a quick search from someone from out of town is kind of shaky and there's a lot of local knowledge you have, but are houses like https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4411-Gladstone-St-Pittsbu... at $170k or https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1404-Marlboro-Ave-Pittsbu... at $154k or https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/107-Lilac-Ave-Pittsburgh-... at $160k not good enough for you or something? Zillow shows hundreds and hundreds of decent looking houses under $200k within Pittsburgh city limits.

These are incredibly affordable even on a 5 figure household income. You are very lucky to live in a place with such a reasonable CoL. I've known people to move there from eastern PA for the sake of that.

If I'm missing something, I'd love to hear it, but I'm pretty sure what I'm gonna hear is that you're filtering out a lot of the affordable stuff due to some interesting self imposed restrictions.

Many rust belt cities are de facto segregated by class and race. I’m not familiar with Pittsburgh specifically but just glancing at those listings I suspect they may be in “the ghetto”.

As a white man living on a very black block in Philadelphia, it's extremely difficult for me to relate or sympathize. People move from here to Pittsburgh because of Pittsburgh's famously low housing costs.

Sucks to suck I guess.

PS: Regarding safety, I went back and looked at street view for all three properties. All three appeared to be surrounded by well-kept yards and houses, cars in decent condition, etc, which is a very good barometer for safety and basic neighborhood quality. These are nice suburban houses.

I don't understand what this means. As in white people aren't allowed to live there? What's the problem with buying these houses?

Just for clarification, I haven't marked off houses because I'm worried about "the ghetto". The third choice has come up in my searches a lot, it just requires quite a lot of work. West View is quite nice nowadays and plenty of areas in Pittsburgh are lively and safe, I'd say there's only a few exceptions.

None of those are in Pittsburgh proper. Sure their addresses say Pittsburgh, but they’re all outside of the city. As someone who’s also in tahn and has been watching the market, if you want off-street parking and more than one bathroom in a decent neighborhood in the city proper, you better have $450k all-cash within hours.

edit - okay I admit I got Greenfield and Green Tree mixed up, but my point stands for the other two. :)

That’s about the price range I’ve been looking but it’s been in the north hills - The third house you have listed there has come up many times.

It’s not so much being affordable (I’ve gotten approved for just under $300k on paper, but prefer to limit it to below $230k) it’s just the housing supply is bought up extremely quickly. Anything still on the market for a couple weeks is going to have a bad roof, water damage, no central air, etc.

Sounds like you're pretty close to getting to where you need to be then. Buy something with minor (not foundation issues or something) work needed then do it. Even better if none of the work is urgent, so you can spread it out.

For example, central air is obviously a luxury. I don't even have it, so it's hard to take that as a serious issue. You can get around to installing it some day.

And you probably already know to make sure to search first for houses posted today, to try to do that every day, to immediately call for an appointment the same day, and work with an agent who understands the need for urgency, and to put in an offer same day if you like it.

If you take it as seriously as a job hunt, in such a gentle market as Pittsburgh, you're bound to be happy as a clam pretty soon. I envy your position.

I'm scheduled to look at three tomorrow actually :)

I'm working with a realtor and the realtor's platform sends me emails immediately anything is posted within my search criteria and she is very very responsive.

Just to reiterate, it's not so much I don't find houses it's just they go so fast and seemingly quite a bit above asking. To that point the house I submitted an offer on in 24hr and was sold had 10 offers in that time. There's a lot of competition for the low supply.

Houses I'm looking at tomorrow: 1075 Warrendale Bayne, Wexford; 205 E Railroad St Mars; 221 Bernice St., Pittsburgh

Best of luck!

My offer was accepted on one :)

I mean, if I’m going to buy a house, I’d want to buy it in my hometown, but that’s very nearly impossible even at software developer salaries.

I’m now living overseas, where housing is also expensive, but at least within reach due to low interest rates and just plain building more smaller houses.

Low interest rates increase house prices.

To some extend, but not as much as much as high interest rates increase the amount I actually pay. I guess high interest rates are cool if you have the money lying around to buy a house outright?

I'm mid-20s and while it's not all shiny I'd hesitate to call it grim. Maybe it's naivety but my current lodging isn't at risk of being bombed.

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