So many people are leaving the Bay Area, a U-Haul shortage is jacking up prices | Hacker News Reader

So many people are leaving the Bay Area, a U-Haul shortage is jacking up prices

sfgate.com

35 pointsarikr11 comments

I moved out there for two years - lived in Alameda (highly recommend), left 8 months ago. I loved some of the aspects of the bay area. The weather was awesome, there was always lots of technical events, career wise there was nothing better (for a new software engineer).

Now with a couple years under my belt, I was offered the opprotunity to help start an office in middle-of-nowhere Illinois. I took it, helped setup a team, have tons of connections in the company, and am more capable because of it. I have a nice house, two cars, etc. And eggs are $0.50 a dozen (I hate the cost of the Bay Area).

Would I go back? Perhaps, I would. I want my company to be successful (https://projectpiglet.com/) and to do that I'll likely need investment or I'll need to tap connections. My wife is getting her PhD in Neuroscience and there are a ton of tech / biomedical companies out there and it's a great fit.

Honestly, there probably isn't a better place for us on Earth (from a work opprotunity standpoint).

And that's the rub, there is no way anyone can get away from the Bay Area. Even if you have people leaving (like myself), there's always more to replace them. Every single person I know from CS wanted to go to the Bay Area (or LA), Seattle or New York. With a heavy lean towards the Bay (>50%). I can't see that changing unless the entire industry shifts.

> I can't see that changing unless the entire industry shifts.

As someone who lived in the Bay during the dotcom-bust, it's not that hard to see the cost of living thing adjust. It will never be as cheap as exurbs in Illinois, but a few turns of the immigration regulation knobs by a white house administration and the housing market will correct pretty quick.

> As someone who lived in the Bay during the dotcom-bust, it's not that hard to see the cost of living thing adjust.

IIRC, prices in SF and other Bay Area core communities in the bust and subsequent recession briefly levelled off in national inflation-adjusted terms, then quickly returned to escalation; I remember it being specifically noted that SF prices did not drop, despite incomes dropping.

I remember that as well. The Bay Area housing market (rentals included) seemed to do just fine, and I quickly found myself being priced out of the area in a fairly short amount of time.

Are eggs really literally $0.50 a dozen? And perhaps a bit alarmist but if it is, is it really a good thing for you/your family/the chicken/the environment/the employees in the factory/the transportation system/etc?

Not that that I'm saying paying higher prices in the Bay Area is automatically a solution to anything (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/business/direct-action-ev...).

99 cent here in South Georgia. The alligator tail is still ten dollars a pound, but we are getting that as close to zero as possible. When you do not have much to spend, you are thankful for cheap food.

I feel like you hear the "The Bay is over, the bubble popped, the culture became oppressive" story every year and every year it doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Now, I would never take a job there, but so many of my cohort have and continue to that I don't think the end really is nigh.

The people moving in are getting their moves handled by their employer. The people moving out need to move themselves.

My wife has noticed several Amazon delivery drivers using U-Haul trucks; so high demand may have other factors than just people leaving.

This just means that the net UHaul inflows have been negative for a while. Once they turn negative, the local UHaul outgoing price doesn't drop until the next positive inflow begins.

edit removing double-negative.

Maybe I should stop looking at jobs in the Bay Area as an almost NCG?

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