Most and Least Affordable Cities To Live In | Hacker News Reader

Most and Least Affordable Cities To Live In

money.cnn.com

11 pointsnathanwdavis21 comments

Headline should probably be corrected to "Most and Least Affordable Cities to Own a Home".

That's notably different than overall cost and quality of living.

Given the aim of this 'study', it's hardly surprising the rust belt owns the top spots.

And at some point it would probably be useful if we drew a line between -cities- and uncomfortably populated suburbs. Because a -city- of a couple hundred thousand and a -suburb- of a couple hundred thousand are very different beasts.

Yes, owning a home is different from renting, but really cost of home ownership is a pretty good measure of overall cost of living. In almost any city, rent prices will sit just a tad bit lower than a mortgage on an equally comfortable home - the two markets are in competition because they essentially meet the same need (a place to live).

Secondly, most other costs of living (transportation, food, utilities) don't have the huge variance that the cost of a place to live does, so it becomes the most statistically meaningful measure.

really cost of home ownership is a pretty good measure of overall cost of living

Not true. In some places there's a big gap between the cost of owning and the cost of renting. In Silicon Valley, renting is much cheaper than buying, because there is still so much expectation of future growth built into house prices. So you can't use house prices as an index of how affordable the Bay Area is for e.g. someone who's 25, because they probably don't want to buy a house yet anyway.

You may be referring to the average rent compared to the average mortgage on a home. But they are not equal. The average rented place in the valley does not have the amenities and comforts of the average owned home. If location, comforts, size and all other factors are equal, you will probably find that the cost to rent is almost equal to the cost to own.

If you buy a house in SV and rent it out, you get about half the after-tax return that you'd get in the rest of the US.

I realize they have a metric that takes into account multiple factors, but I don't think "median home price" is the best thing to think about here.

For instance, you can live in the San Francisco area and have access to things there without buying an entire property in the city proper. An apartment in Oakland, etc.

Also, I think you can find affordable housing in just about any city, depending on what you're willing to put up with.

which is why a standard of living metric that takes housing into consideration (among other things) gives you a better picture of the living situation in various places.

Does cost of living translate into cost of startup? Does it matter much?

I think if you can pay yourself (startup owner) less but still maintain the same standard of living, that's a great advantage.

Well, it's one more thing to worry about. Consider someone dropping their day job to work full time on their newly created startup. Every bit helps to save costs, which means less stress and a more enjoyable adventure.

However, are these affordable cities "at the end of the world"? I mean, incomunicated and such. I'm not American, so I can't really tell from checking the list. In that case it might end up being a burden if you don't like travelling.

But looking positively again, it could be a good opportunity to start small groups of hackers in places where there aren't any and help each other out :)

Cost of living affects startups in a number of ways, including the price of office space (or home rental, in the "working in the basement" stage) and the minimum salary expected by your staff (once you start hiring).

However, the areas with higher cost of living also tend to be desirable places to live, with an existing concentration of business and tech-savvy people.

Expensive cities encourage less skilled people to leave. You can get by in Ohio if you're unable to make more than $20K a year; it's much harder to survive on that in New York, so the low earners leave. So the people you spend time around are all there because they have a good reason to be there. SF and New York are Meatspace Metafilters.

You have a point, but you're dangerously close to an argument that people who live in more expensive areas are intrinsically "better" than those who don't, whatever the reason.

Some of us may choose to live in more affordable cities because the quality of living is higher, or because we value being able to safely and comfortably walk or bike between home, office, and other destinations.

I personally make enough to live reasonably well in most any city in the US, and after a couple of years in the Bay Area, moved back to my native Portland because the quality of life was simply better, at least on the axes I care about.

You have a point, but you're dangerously close to an argument that people who live in more expensive areas are intrinsically "better" than those who don't, whatever the reason.

Well, no. I am totally fine with making that argument, in a statistical sense. There are plenty of exceptions, but there's a kind of critical mass effect. New York is expensive, so you probably can't live here comfortably unless you're in the top n%, so members of the top n% move here, pushing up prices (and also hanging out with other top n%ers, and coming up with new ways to make money). Some n%ers leave, of course, but the general trend is still there.

Perhaps, but with Skype, twitter, budget airlines, etc. it is becoming more of a possibility to run an service-type business away from big startup hubs. I agree that this is not optimal, but if it saves a huge amount in startup cost, then perhaps it is worth it.

There are tons of people in NYC that are "low earners". Do you think everyone walking around in that city makes 6 figures?

There is some truth to what you're saying but your argument doesn't hold up to defend it at all.

You can live almost anywhere in the States on a poverty income level. But the quality of life is dramatically different in New Paltz than it is in New York City, even in the South Bronx.

It's a statistical argument. On average -- this is hard to deny -- New Yorkers are wealthier than non New Yorkers. Someone deciding where to live has to ask whether they'd be happy there, and whether they could afford their lifestyle. Someone who says "I could only be happy in New York earning $200K. Fortunately, in New York I can earn $300K" will be happy; someone who decides they can't earn that much will go somewhere else, even if that place doesn't have the wage and skill levels of NYC.

This is also why people here walk and talk fast. With the rent so high, you can't spend time drawling or shuffling around. You have to get to the point or destination fast.

You haven't considered income inequality. London has become ever more expensive and the result is that the middle class has been pushed out, but not the wealthy nor the poor. I think this happens because housing costs don't really go up in rougher parts even if they skyrocket in nicer areas.

I used to live in El Paso; it's the cheapest part of the US I've ever been to. Perhaps the problem is that it's non-comparable cheapness; you eat for less, because so many hole-in-the-wall diners serve awesome food, for example. The chains are still there, and still expensive.

I'm kind of surprised Boston isn't on this list. I've always felt like it is a fairly expensive city for what it is, especially with regards to real estate.

Yeah let me know when they get a global perspective. Downvote if you will, but if I'm going to be continually subjected to this same article every 3 months, I'm going to make the same comment until they start to broaden their perspective a little.

There is a whole world out there people, start thinking that way, because your customers already are.

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