And 50% of people living in SF want to leave https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/20/18233498/poll-2019-leaving-s...
Median price doesn't matter as much as the point-in-time price for what the homebuyer is looking for. A 3 bedroom house in Palo Alto can distort the price curve when all you want is a small condo in Burlingame.
Don’t know how to fact check that but it would be fascinating if true.
I've strongly considered it myself.
If you are used to a city like SF and enjoy the level of things in there, in the world and US there only few cities similar. Like nyc, la, London, Tokyo etc. Portland, Seattle, Austin, Berlin are all good but not the same.
Most of these places are almost as expensive or in similar category as SF but all of them have lower tech salaries than SF, by little or by a lot.
In addition, if you live decently and your salary doesn’t only go to rent, then any decrease in rent is always less than decrease in your salary. Say your rent is $3000 in sf and you make $300k+ per year in total comp. Say moving to Austin your rent would be $1500 but your salary would be $200k. You are only saving $18k year in rent but your salary dropped $100k. Go to Berlin and you maybe pay $1000 for apartment but your salary is $60k.
Lastly, as messed up lot of startups and companies are in Bay Area, there is still a lot of experience and drive to build succesful companies. Go anywhere else in the world and you will encounter more clueless people with absolutely no networks, who have no ambition, and are just trying to do some local play of a global company. I know it sounds harsh but I think for many people thinking about moving to London and working in some consultancy or bank doesn’t sound very exciting or a growth opportunity.
So I think lot of people want to move, but cannot find good or exciting reasons to do that financially, growth or general job happiness. Quality of living and housing yes for sure.
I think options are: 1) start your company and build the culture and company you want whenever or in a distributed way
2) Decide to retire to the countryside and work on your own projects
3) Find a fulfilling, not exactly high tech job or position, but more like a foundation / helping governments with socially responsible software etc. Essentially financially retire, but work on meaningful things
I think Bay Area is still great for singles or couples without kids, that you can get dual high income and share housing costs. Also the career and company options in tech are unparaller.
Starting companies needing massive engineering force, less so.
Agree though if you’re single your living situation is more flexible and you can find a place for less than market rate here pretty easily. It’s once you get married and want kids that SF makes no sense for most people.
Someone making 200k in Austin has a much much better quality of life than someone making 300k in SF. No question.
For me though the walkability is the biggest thing. There’s not a single neighborhood in Austin that can compare to the quality of life in my “middle of the road” SF neighborhood. Miles of beautiful archictecture all around. My kids can and do walk everywhere.
It’s just a completely different experience, being in an actual pre-car city, and unfortunately there’s nothing like it in Texas.
This is why I left for Minneapolis, I actually bought a condo in central downtown. I can walk and bike everywhere. I can take a train or bus at any given moment to everything I would ever need and there is something to be said when you are easily and casually attend any of the major 6 sporting leagues at a drop.
As for the tech and pay. I find it pays the same or actually more in my experience. Finding a job is easy. Most companies don't play that Leetcode game, some do, but most don't it seems. Tons of huge fortune companies that use modern tech and have interesting problems, including places like Target, big banks and tons of healthcare. There are hidden startups, if you look, hard, but many haven't even take VC are only 2-5 people right now and are bootstrapped and highly profitable.
If I ever decide to take that job at a big tech in SF I'll rent out my condo in central downtown, pack up my backup and take the light rail to the airport with my one way ticket.
The benefit becomes compounded in the Bay Area if you have a spouse also working, and timelines accelerated.
300k is living with a roommate level IMO unless you’re just looking to buy a 1 bedroom and not have kids.
This is extraordinary hyperbole that pretty much ignores what it’s really like in the Bay Area - many people making $100k or even less don’t even live with roommates here if they don’t want to. I make over $300k myself and the only reason I have a roommate is because she’s one of my best friends and I am helping her out while she’s early in her career.
There’s no need to put down another place just due to whatever biases, especially if there are few facts behind it. It’s ok to like where you’re at without going to extraordinary lengths to stretch it to everyone.
Absolutely agree that you can afford to live alone if you do not particularly care about buying.
yes austin is cheaper but not because of taxes
And because TX does not have income tax it also means for a 300k place your state and local taxes won’t hit the $10k limit for fed deductions which you will easily hit if you earn and have property in CA.
the 10k limit is irrelevant because most people will be in the 200k-500k AMT range where prop tax is not deductible anyway.
please compare apples to apples.
why picking on austin? it was just an example. wyoming has no income tax. you think living in jackson, WY is cheaper than cupertino? and that the reason is taxes???
Also, there is huge cultural aspect that is much harder to articulate. If you are young, you can find lots of peers arriving in office on roller blades or playing video games on Friday or going for long drives in weekend. You might not find this in NYC or Seattle mature companies. People often change employers like cloths and that’s perhaps good for cultural because you continuesly encounter new ideas, opportunities and people. There is much less fear about not able to find job and that allows to take risk in working at startups at peanuts salaries. In most other places it would be hard to find folks who had more than 2-3 employers in 30 years and even more harder to find people taking pay cuts to get job at risky companies.
Yet another aspect is that either people don’t have kids or married couples both work in tech. Because of tremendous numbers of tech companies it’s easy to find tech jobs for spouses. Once you have double income in tech, housing cost is not huge deal.
I think lot of people in sf feel the pressures of housing and homelessness, that potentially makes them want to leave, but they cannot find enough ways to justify why move to place x.