Hacker News Reader

Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

They’re talking about buying a house like it’s some kind of baseline.

The baseline six-figure software engineer lifestyle is a room in a shared apartment in Oakland or the deep East Bay. Living in San Francisco, having your own place, and (gasp) buying a tiny condo are the various degrees of living an exorbitant lifestyle. Buying any sort of freestanding structure is approaching a pinnacle of decadence that’s an extreme stretch to even the most elite tech employees. But oh, they’re “lying low” because they’re buying houses where the qualifying income is $300k instead of $500k. Give me a break.

View on HN

Sorry but this is just wrong. I rent in Lake Merritt just off the 17th St BART stop for 2200/month. I split it with my wife. If you can't make a 2k/month rent payment on 100k/year of income, you're not managing your money well.

Ya I have a two bedroom townhome in the east bay, have kids and my wife doesn’t work. When I made $120k I saved over $2,000/month.

It’s expensive, but it’s not that bad.

When did you buy? Ownership was much more attainable even 5 years ago.

Which is the exact thing they were saying 5 years ago..

Five years ago, a simple San Francisco house cost what a luxurious Midwestern second-tier city house cost. This was sort of reasonable; you're buying premium housing, but the premium part is the location rather than the house itself.

Growing up, I went to a handful of parties in rich friends' stunning lakefront mansions that cost barely $1.2m. The nicest houses my parents and I could even conceive of are worth less than a median San Francisco house now. So I dunno. Feels like something has really changed.

I rent. Could buy now, but everything seems inflated.

It's called saving money, you might try it sometime.

Seriously though, people need to see the big picture. There are many, many households in the SFBA with incomes in the 200-300k range. Buying a 600-900k house on that just isn't that hard. You put away 50k-60k/year for a few years and there's your down payment.

I'm not saying everyone falls into this bucket. But when I hear well-paid software devs whining, and let's be serious, that's what you're doing here, about how expensive it is, it makes me wonder what kind of personal choices people are making that they "can't afford their lifestyle". Too much eating out, not enough packing lunch.

>There are many, many households in the SFBA with incomes in the 200-300k range. Buying a 600-900k house on that just isn't that hard

Thanks for sending me on an interesting stats search. Looks 19% of Bay Area households do indeed have household income over $200k [0]. However, this is not typical of tech salaries (and two-earner tech couples are certainly not 20% of the Bay Area population, given the gender ratios).

Glassdoor has the median software engineer at $129k, or $150k with 15+ years experience [1]. I'll go with the whole population. With a $100k down payment, 1.18% property tax rate (San Francisco), and no other debts, Trulia says that that median software engineer can afford a $720k house [2]. Per ADP, with a maxed 401k (as everyone should have), this person takes home about $6000/mo [3].

If we actually look at some inventory in this price range [4], we're talking housing expenses right around $4000/mo, or 2/3rds of take-home pay.

Assume we're targeting a 6-month emergency fund (as everyone should, if not more) and a 20% down payment. You'll need $145,000 for the down payment + $24,000 to be able to service the mortgage in case of unemployment. So, how fast can you save an after-tax $169,000?

Personally, in a good year I can save about $2000/mo in addition to the 401k. So we're talking about 7 ideal years after establishing an emergency fund (0.5-2 years after college, no moves, no significant copays, no rent increases above salary increases). In order to commit 2/3rds of your take-home to housing, for a starter condo or faraway house in a mediocre school district, as a ~32 year old).

What happens to Bay Area house prices in 7 years? Over the last 30 years, somewhere between 50% and 100% appreciation, depending on your choice of interval [5]. How fast can the median engineer save $338k?

>Too much eating out, not enough packing lunch.

Let me check YNAB for the last year... yep, it would take 26 years for the last 12 months of my (admittedly pretty lavish) entertainment spending to fund today's down payment. 75 years for the dining out portion. Also, what the hell kind of tech job doesn't provide lunch? Try again.

[0] https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US41860-san-francis...

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...

[2] https://www.trulia.com/house-affordability-calculator/

[4] https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/451-Kansas-St-94107/...

[5] https://www.paragon-re.com/trend/3-recessions-2-bubbles-and-...

Ok dude. I see you've put a lot of time into this.

If you want to continue this conversation my email is in my sig. I am your living counter-example. I've worked middling tech jobs for the past few years making roughly what we're talking about here, and I'm buying a house...right now. No huge earn-outs, no big equity payout, no AmaGooFaceSoftPle job.

I think it just takes a bit of saving and willingness to say no to things once in a while. Also, a lot of people don't put 20% down in the SFBA.

My arguments about the big picture still stand, though. Your cash comp numbers grossly understate dev income here because most of them don't include RSUs, options, or other non-cash (and sometimes even non-bonus) comp.

I'm not saying it's sane or rational. But I just don't see a case where there's going to be a dramatic crash. As long as people are using Google for search, as long as iPhones, and Teslas are selling, and people are wasting time on Netflix and facebook, there's just going to be a lot of money around here and prices will reflect that. We're inventing the future and just take a look at stock prices of these companies if you need proof. It's all happening right here so of course, things are going to be a bit expensive.

It's just not that complicated, really.

An apartment shared with another person in Oakland is exactly what I identified as baseline.

Depends, if you go out once or twice a weekend, and travel a few times a year, with that 2200$ rent, only a 100k income will get eaten pretty fast.

If you're a homebody type, that's different.

Or you just ended up with a lot of student loan debt...

Where is this 17th st BART you speak of? :)

you can easily live on the peninsula with 6-figures (in a shared apartment). No need to go deep-east bay.

For a downtown SF office, anything on BART is probably going to be a faster commute than anything on the Peninsula.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com