Homeowners on the Move Are Choosing More Affordable States | Hacker News Reader

Homeowners on the Move Are Choosing More Affordable States

wsj.com

44 pointsjseliger66 comments

I can't drive for more than a few minutes without seeing at least 3-5 plates from different states. NY, NJ, CA, NM, FL and just this week I saw a car with TX plates and a McGill Uni Sticker on it.

It's out of control in DFW. A testament to how good life is here. We have good people in government that are constantly investing and building infrastructure and attracting a lot of Corporations to the State. The weather is good, cost of living is reasonable, no state income tax, DFW Airport (direct flight anywhere in the world), etc.

I can't drive for more than a few minutes without seeing at least 3-5 plates from different states. NY, NJ, CA, NM, FL and just this week I saw a car with TX plates and a McGill Uni Sticker on it.

In many states and cities—especially California and NYC—it's brutally hard to permit new construction, so supply constraints drive up prices and drive away residents: http://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/supply.... Most Texas cities have relatively liberal zoning regimes, so they gain population, even among people who might prefer to live elsewhere at the margin.

Seattle is doing better at constructing housing than CA or NYC but it is still not doing well enough: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu... and has a profound, virulent NIMBY problem.

Possibly the only emotional appeal that can be made is one that would easily backfire. Think of the children, the children that need an opportunity to become real adults in a healthy city that's part of a healthy society.

My spouse and I lived in DFW, albeit 20 years ago. Granted, it was before we had kids. My impression was that it would have been really great for someone with a high income and/or no kids. The combination of lower salaries and the cost of private school tuition made the economics seem less favorable compared to the upper Midwest where we now live.

We knew a lot of families, and the public schools didn't seem to be an option that people considered, unless they lived in very expensive neighborhoods.

If "2½ home sellers left California for every out-of-state buyer coming into the state", that just means there's a huge pent-up demand of local buyers waiting to buy properties, out-bidding out-of-state buyers hoping to move to the area, right?

I'm not sure how else to interpret that. I feel like it says more about the buyers than the sellers.

You're not accounting for foreign buyers that may never actually come into the state at all.

And for the larger number of immigrants that move into California and buy houses

Yeah, pretty much however you interpret it, it's not a good thing. We live in San Diego, and prices here have been going through the roof...far beyond the intrinsic value of a property. I don't have any data on the topic, but it seems to be "investors"--both foreign and domestic purchasing lots of homes, often in cash. In my opinion they're creating their own little (or big) bubble. After all, the price is only appreciating because you have enormous entities purchasing real estate as fast as they can get their hands on it. Hopefully, once things get too hot prices will implode and normal people will be able to afford to buy a home again.

That would be nice, but I don’t see how it would end well.

Their value is based on the intrinsic scarcity of homes in desirable locations. For existing land owners, either they sell out to developers and allow the land to realize its economic value, or they keep the land the same and eventually the bubble subsides. For various reasons, they tend to fight to keep the existing neighborhood character, which restricts the growth of the economy.

So, when the bubble collapses, the homes will be worth less. This will suck for people who bought a $40,000 home, that went up to $1,000,000 and then back down to something still more than $40,000. It will suck a lot for people who bought it at $1,000,000 and will lose all their home equity.

I think the proper solution would be to evolve the neighborhood over time, as the economy changes. The problem with that is you would have to start 60 years ago. As it is, we have small areas of market activity, and large areas of externally ossified neighborhoods that are internally gentrifying because the stuff on top of the land is not allowed to adapt to the economy.

...where they will likely vote for the same policies that wrecked havoc on the localities they're fleeing.

It's unfortunate that Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina are all so conservative. The cheap property prices are appealing but I can't envision myself actually living in those places.

I know Bernie supporters that live in TX and NC. Don't know anyone from AZ.

Unless you are some odd political bent that is truly rare, I wouldn't worry about it; and after all, there are plenty of nice people in those states that you don't have to talk politics with, at all.

Politics don't exist to be a conversation topic. Local policy has real and massive impact on real people's lives. You can tune out ambient conservatism up until the moment you fall on the wrong side of a majority opinion that has the force of law, and then you can't.

The sufficiently privileged (pretty much by definition) don't have to worry about this much, but say the bubble pops. Are you sure your savings account will last long enough for it to re-inflate? Because if it doesn't, it suddenly matters a great deal where the people who wrote your state laws stand on the question of personal responsibility.

I think you need to be blunter with what you are trying to say. Are you talking about the differences between recourse and non-recourse mortgages and the state law concerning them?

Agreed. Politics-wise Arizona is roughly in thirds between Republicans, Independents, and Democrats - http://www.azsos.gov/elections/voter-registration-historical... (though I think the general trend away from the major parties is occurring across the US). Arizona isn't homogeneous either: Flagstaff and Tucson tend to be more liberal than the Phoenix area. Judging any state by the politics of a slim voting majority I don't think paints the whole picture.

It's funny, I'm pretty open minded and have spent time pretty much every where, with a base of operations in both the bay area and rural Midwest.

I'll have to be honest with you. The super conservatives in the Midwest and the super liberals in the bay have a lot more in common than you might think. Hell just the other day I was listening to a group of women with their dogs discussing murdering Trump because we don't need any more of that "white man privilege". This isn't that different than some white dudes discussing killing Obama because he's a "black terrorist" or something.

My point is that we all need to live and let live. Anyone who is generalizing whole portions of the population are bound to run into the "long tail" of people out of the probabilistic norm. I actually think as a society people mostly fall out of the norm.

All that being said, I do have to say - the rudest people I've meet are from (1) D.C. (2) S.F. and (3) downtown Chicago. The nicest have actually been in the suburbs of Chicago, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Virginia (outside of D.C.)

There's outward niceness and human decency and then there're things like public policy. Take for example schooling or policing. You can't tell me St. Louis has the same level of dysfunction as SF. Conservative states are more likely to disadvantage the poor, disabled and minorities. There's also more likely to be localized corruption.

And that's not even taking into account culture and diversity which matter if you're a relatively new immigrant.

I would consider gentrification a form of economic segregation; as a consequence, the poor here are also disadvantaged but in very different ways.

I somewhat disagree here. Have you seen the homeless problem in SF, or the massive drug problem?

Look, my point is that just because people have differing views on life doesn't mean that they aren't equally capable of being correct.

> Conservative states are more likely to disadvantage the poor, disabled and minorities.

I would argue that is not necessarily the case. I have seen WAY more homeless, poor, disabled, and generally disadvantaged in California (and heroin users) than any other state. Perhaps they are just more visible, but the breakdown of the stats seem to agree with me[1]. Generally, conservative states just deal with things differently than liberal states, they both end up with their own issues.

Disclosure: Personally I a libertarian at heart. I believe in the whole "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" thing, basically meaning I fall more in line with the "middle" than just about anyone. I find the bay area equally as appalling as most conservative regions, I think the only thing I find more appalling about conservative places are the whole anti-abortion thing. Honestly, racism and sexism is probably worse in the bay area than most places because everyone is trying to be so "equal" they end up being racist and sexist against the other parties. This leads to ridiculous conflicts that make no sense.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/22/america-drug-use-ma...

> I have seen WAY more homeless, poor, disabled, and generally disadvantaged in California (and heroin users) than any other state. Perhaps they are just more visible, but the breakdown of the stats seem to agree with me[1]. Generally, conservative states just deal with things differently than liberal states

For example, if other states' way of dealing with homeless people was "buy them a bus ticket to California", wouldn't that have exactly the outcome you are describing?

http://www.mintpressnews.com/500-homeless-mental-patients-we...

The problem with one state treating the homeless well is that it simply attracts more homeless from other states, overloading the system. Homelessness really needs to be addressed on a federal level.

But if you actually follow the news in the Bay Area, you'd know tech companies growing and raising the cost and demand for housing is a large part of why you can't walk through San Francisco without tripping over a homeless guy. People are being driven from their apartments to make room for higher paying tech employees.

And if you actually looked into the issues, you’d know that tech companies don’t like it that costs are so high. Most of them are trying to become profitable before they run out of runway.

Tech companies grow and raise the demand: True.

Tech companies increase the cost: False.

Most of the cost increases have been NIMBYs and misguided community organizers and environmentalists. For example, a major source of funding against homes near the T light rail line has been a retired insurance industry executive and consultant. That’s not tech.

If there are not enough houses near the jobs, then somebody is going to be driven out. If you had to choose for your own property, then it would be irrational not to pick the higher paying tech employee.

Don't blame Tech for what FIRE [1] is mainly responsible for. Ownership^W Rentership society and all that - it's here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_economy

>>I would argue that is not necessarily the case. I have seen WAY more homeless, poor, disabled, and generally disadvantaged in California (and heroin users) than any other state.

That's because California has nice weather year-around, which makes homelessness a lot more tolerable. (Same with Hawaii: lots of homeless people hanging out at beaches and lying on the the grass in parks.)

"There's also more likely to be localized corruption" [Citation required]

If anything I've found corruption is much higher around more liberal states.

>There's outward niceness and human decency and then there're things like public policy.

We need more of the former and less of the latter.

I've never lived in the Bay Area, and having been there a few times, it doesn't seem like the place for me. I think you are making a false equivalence. As someone who is rather liberal, but not "super liberal", maybe San Francisco isn't the best fit, but it's still way better than a super-conservative, super-religious southern city. And I don't value superficial niceness very highly; sure, they may be polite when I interact with them in public, but then they're also super racist, support decades-long prison sentences for drug offenders, and wish terrible things upon LGBT people.

I know someone who lives in suburban Charlotte. She is actively discriminated against at work because she doesn't attend a church. I have no interest in submitting myself to that kind of judgment, and fortunately, because I don't live in the south, I don't have to.

If you're a white male in the Bay Area you're discriminated against as well. I can't tell you how careful you have to be trying to get work done with many of the people there.

I've have/had to sit through at least 20 different talks/seminars a year on how women are discriminated against and it's the white males fault. Last year, I worked with a team of 3 women, and myself (the only male). I was put in charge (by my women director), to help train the team on web development. OH BOY that was a big TODO, regardless of the fact I have years more experience and have managed teams before... Eventually, I just quit the team because one of the women was so insufferable and would basically refuse to do any work until a women was put in charge.

Point is, you're right, there are different flavors to each group. All of them are wrong though. They all discriminate just to different extremes. That's part of the reason I really enjoyed the Chicago Suburbs, they have a decent mix of both so both extreme groups become more moderate.

You can always move to Minnesota. You'll just need a good jacket.

It's unfortunate that liberal people from California are moving to Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina. It may permanently alter the character of previously desirable areas.

... it's all a matter of perspective ...

There are blue enclaves in Texas and Arizona. All of the major metros in Texas are, at their most conservative, still pretty moderate. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso were all won by Obama in the last election, with El Paso and Austin being won by pretty considerable margins (>60% of the vote). In AZ, Tucson and Flagstaff are both pretty liberal. No idea about NC, but judging by the last election, there are at least a few counties that voted for Obama.

Now, granted, outside of the major metro areas, things get more conservative, but if you're comparing it to CA, I'm guessing you haven't spent much time in the central valley.

For my part, I have no desire to live in such an enclave when state-level conservative politics are leaning towards active preemption of local liberal lawmaking.

Good point. There are many examples of this in states like Texas-- open/concealed carry gun laws, rewritten textbooks, etc

That may be the case but people are noticeably more religious. I moved from CA to Austin a couple of years ago. Over 80% of Texan natives I know go to church regularly.

The numbers from recent Gallup poll [1] for attending church at least monthly: Texas 62%, California 47%. I would guess that Austin is considerably below the statewide number (as would be say San Jose or San Fransisco).

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/181601/frequent-church-attendance...

They're cheap for a reason.

Markets reveal preferences.

How is this not being downrated into oblivion? Is this the kind of discussion that HN wants to foster?

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