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Comment by kidneystereotyp | Hacker News Reader

rich people problems

More like I need to be rich to move to where my friends are - I went to college in the Bay Area and I can’t afford to live there. But honestly it’s not hard to keep in touch these days if you want to so I’m not the least bit bothered.

As a renter, I’m constantly on the move because I can’t afford homeownership - the price to rent ratio is firmly between 19 and 20 at the moment, and that’s after moving from the Bay Area. Buying is a minimum of a 48% increase here in Seattle, that absurd.

> More like I need to be rich to move to where my friends are

Like most folks, we live where we can. Being able to pick a spot on a map has never been a possibility.

It's been tighter than that tho. In 2021 we beat loooong odds to find any housing and insane odds to score a decent place that fit all of us. People with money in the bank were going homeless.

why does renting force you to move? how does owning a home allow you to stay if other considerations may force you to sell the house and buy another one?

my mother lives in a rental apartment that my family has been in since 150 years ago.

When I was 12 years old, we had to leave a rental house because the landlord sold it. It was very disruptive for us since my parents were low-income and didn’t have much savings. It also took place at a time when market rents increased quite a bit. My parents struggled to find housing; we moved into an apartment temporarily, and two months later we finally found another house to rent that we could afford, but it was in a more dangerous neighborhood.

I recently moved out of an apartment complex in Santa Cruz County in California that got sold after being owned by a family for about 50 years. Some of the tenants lived there for decades. The new owners submitted plans to the local government to upzone the 1960s-era apartment complex, which will involve residents needing to move during construction. Thankfully for me, the sale coincided with a major career change (WFH researcher to a professor who teaches in person) that required me to move anyway, so I moved. However, I feel for long-time residents of my former apartment complex going through the uncertainty of the future and the difficult housing market in Santa Cruz County should they be forced to move.

Renting, by definition, means you don’t own your place. While there are some people who are able to have stable renting situations, there are others who have the bad luck of receiving an eviction notice due to a sale. Owning a place means not having to worry about a landlord.

that's only true in the US though. most other countries have better renter protection. my point was that it's not just renting that forces you to move. you moved yourself because of a job. if you had owned a house you would have had to sell it at that point.

Well for one, I am in the US. Secondly if you owned a house you can rent it out - you don’t have to sell it. It’s a better deal especially in the Bay Area since property taxes are capped.

Thirdly, I move to find better deals on rent - many places I’ve lived don’t have rent control so moving is really the only option to keep costs as low as possible. I moved states because of a job, but within the Bay Area it’s the only way to keep up a desirable savings rate.

Also, try commuting from SF to SJ every day. It’s an incredible waste of time, particularly if you don’t live near the Caltrain (and now BART) corridor.

> my mother lives in a rental apartment that my family has been in since 150 years ago.

Wouldn’t it have been better to just buy property in that area? 150 years ago was 1874 - that’s many an economic cycle and the homesteading act was still a thing then.

I find it hard to believe that renting was the best play here. Unless (cost of house/cost of annual rent) was always 16+, then maybe.

> the homesteading act

Their mother likely rents in Europe where the US homesteading act didn't apply.

Ah, I didn’t catch that. My apologies for not catching that when reading their comments. EU does have far better consumer protection for renters.

it's close to the center of the city. the only properties were large buildings with multiple apartments. so no. it would not only not have been better, it would simply not have been possible without moving out of the city, if it was possible at all.

which i think it wasn't because in the 19th and early 20th century all property was owned by aristocratic families. and you either had property to begin with or you never could get any unless someone with property gave some of theirs to you for some reason. then came the world wars and by the time buying property became possible it probably wasn't affordable by many.

i also seem to remember that rent was very low for a long time. though it raised quite a bit in recent decades.

Rilly? In my experience, many of the rich people are isolated and paralyzed by concerns about status and wealth and family connections and ....

It's the poor who are often able to put those issues aside because they have so little status and wealth. They have nothing to lose.

A granular housing choice is a privilege not afforded to poor people. They live where they can, typically in places heavy with compromise.

Resources are not always in terms of material terms. Poor people with family, friends, associates, familiarity of a region, etc. stay there. What's a bit unique for American migration patterns in the past 60-ish years people have become less and less mobile for economic opportunities and the cultural shift has sometimes become more resentful toward those that feel betrayed by those leaving regions for better economic opportunities. In a lot of countries people are happy and even envious of those leaving their areas of origin. The underlying reasons for lack of mobility is another heatedly debated topic altogether but there's absolutely plenty of things the poor, particularly rural ones, absolutely have plenty to lose.

you expected many poor people here on HN? :)

not rich enough to drop low interest mortgage rate.

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