Hacker News Reader

Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

But none of those indicate a lack of affordability, except home ownership rates. In most states (31 of 50), the median household income can more than afford a median mortgage.

http://time.com/money/5355518/home-price-salary-every-state/

So I agree with the OP, the author of this article is unjustifiably projecting the SF housing crisis onto the rest of the country.

View on HN

If you look at the referenced map, the affordable states aren't exactly hotbeds of opportunity. Anecdotally,I had to move from one of those to one of the not affordable ones to have a decent career (by my standards). On a less anecdotal note, they are also less populous states,so they don't represent the condition experienced by most Americans. If trading off "quality of life" for the ability to participate in a high productivity industry like tech is a common experience, what is the aggregate effect on those industries?

Did you get that backwards?

Also, this map looks a lot like a population density map - it’s great housing is cheap in Nebraska. But there’s just not many people there. I would say Pennsylvania and Ohio might be worth looking at though.

> Indeed, only 19 states have an actual median income that tops the amount needed to buy a home: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.

Pennsylvania and Ohio are interesting in that they contain many rust belt towns devastated by de-industrialization. You can buy an affordable house in Erie, PA or Youngstown, OH because the populations of those towns have fallen as the jobs have left.

Doing this type of analysis state-by-state doesn't really tell the story as you can't really live in Youngstown and work in Cleveland or live in Erie and work in Pittsburgh.

FWIW, there are also plenty of affordable options that are in the Cleveland metro area, too.

> Doing this type of analysis state-by-state doesn't really tell the story

Yeah. For example, that map does an average of property taxes, which is not super great. Property taxes in some of the suburbs in Cleveland can be higher than your mortgage.

Yes I did. Oops.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com