$100k/year still might not be enough to buy a home

3158 SW 153rd Path #3158 Miami, FL 33185 $329,900 3 Bed 2.5 Bath Est monthly $2620

[0] https://www.redfin.com/FL/Miami/3158-SW-153rd-Path-33185/uni...

It's not a walk in the park, but it's not "rough" either; 2620 a month after a ~6000/mo post-tax draw leaves you with 3380/mo for food, saving, etc.

These are likely houses marketed towards "investors", aka rich people who don't need a mortgage or have a network of private lenders who specialize in providing credit for the house-flipping industry.

Glass is a pretty good insulator and generally weather-proof, UV-resistant etc, and cheap to produce.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-af...

First, to talk about the place I know best, cities in the UK outside London are pretty expensive too. The UK has a disproportionate share of the world's expensive cities, despite being a relatively middle-income country. Demand isn't rising fast, it is just impossible to build (usually due to "environmental" planning regulations). That is an unforced error.

Second, there are examples of large cities that don't have these issues. Berlin is probably one of the most well-known examples, they had a ton of public housing. They started breaking some of these buildings up, and guess what...rents are going up.

Third, it is worth getting some perspective on this. There are cities that have almost no land that have managed much higher growth. Property in Singapore, for example, is expensive by international standards but, given per capita incomes and given the population density, they have actually not done badly (particularly when you look at access instead of average price). That is equally true of China (some cities in China have gone for 0 to millions of people...this makes the growth in most Western cities look flaccid). You could even say that New York has managed this reasonably well too (there has been investment in transport infrastructure at least, which is another cause of rising prices in some cities).

It is hard to generalise about this because policy is often made locally. But I think it is also clear that part of the problem is local policy causing a problem in aggregate. That is systemic and unrelated to demand.

High living costs are a self imposed problem: housing regulation and zoning.

Had zero problem saving up a down payment in a couple years. Brand new houses were $150k and older, nice home were $90k.

Of course the job prospects aren’t as good as a major city, but housing isn’t a major issue.

Rising housing prices are already dramatically changing SF. If you want to let residents maintain their way of living, I don't see how thats achieved by pricing poorer residents out of the city entirely. I'm sure most residents would prefer to live in apartments in SF than move to another city entirely.

As for transport, cars are already pretty unfeasable in SF with the population as is. Whats so bad about investing more in public transit and biking?

As for crime and traffic, most larger cities in Europe are much cleaner and safer than SF. More residents means city hall has more money to play with, which it can re-invest into schools, parks, the police, public transit and other things. Cheaper accomodation makes it easier to re-house homeless people and it makes homeless shelters more affordable for the city.

Bay area residents, Seattle residents, etc need to get over themselves and accept reality for what it is. They aren't protecting anything but their own sense of self-worth and the "theory" that bad things will happen if a 3 story apartment complex comes into the neighborhood.

The reality is, most of them want their property values insanely high, for when they are ready to sell and move to cheaper cities.

Just increasing housing density without solving transportation problems will result in a seriously changed lifestyle here, and that is what many people fear. Moreover, efforts to build better transportation in the bay area have been very ineffective. The light rail in Santa Clara County is a good example of this - it crawls through downtown San Jose, has very little ridership, and recovers only a small fraction of operating costs from fares. The jobs have almost always showed up in areas where there is an existing shortage of transit and housing - e.g., Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Mountain View, and Palo Alto. At this point the only feasible solution is to turn 101 and 85 into bus-only roads. No more single occupancy vehicles. Then let the market sort out how to provide transit for employers. That would be massively disruptive to existing lifestyles, but probably the only feasible way to increase transportation throughput in the face of increased housing density.

Most of the readership on hacker news is in the tech industry, but I think the biggest problem with housing in the bay area is for non-tech workers.

More apartments, condos, and houses lead to more rental units, which lowers rents, which makes it less attractive to be a landlord.

Plenty of machinists, auto mechanics, health care professionals and welders aren't gonna have much luck working from home.

I'm putting together a list of the best places to live for remote workers with families, hoping to turn it into a little website that you can filter by schools, available internet speeds, median house price, that sort of thing.

Hopefully it will help someone out there when there's more data.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X2JihFpA97EEAMz8kD-j...

But that's really only available for a small subset of the population.

Part of the problem is these jobs don't have the sex appeal of SV tech so they aren't on people's radar or just not considered desirable because of the nature of manufacturing work.

A three hour commute is easier when you only do it twice a week, or a few times a month.

There's a CompTIA "Tech Towns" report[1] from last year that does a good breakdown of salary + job opportunities vs CoL by city.

Anecdotally, I think it was right to rank Charlotte NC at the top. It's easy to find 100k+ salary jobs there if you have experience (avg is a bit lower though) - and median housing prices are like 230k. But the big downside is that you pretty much have to be cool with working for a bank.

[1] https://www.aitp.org/blog/aitp-blog/2018/10/23/tech-town-usa...

[0] Here's one: https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator

I don't find SF to be any more expensive than any other "big" city outside of housing cost, especially when you factor in not needing a car to get around.

Of course, on $40k/year I suppose one would be taking subsidies or medicaid instead of paying full freight. But, then I guess it could be said you can make it in SF on $0/year...

But, if you're living solely off investments you don't pay those. I was surprised to see that capital gains tax is zero below a certain income. It seems rather unfair, since you can choose when to sell.

If you adjust your rates accordingly, it's a wash for everyone involved (this is one of many reasons the 1099 price per hour should be around twice the W2 price per hour).

None of this has anything to do with CA income tax.

http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html suggests that young professionals being paid more was new around this time. I don't know if this is true or not. If it is true, then this would suggest that there was a sudden increase in disposable income among young professionals. Professionals were already a small fraction of workers, and social change is usually uneven, so it seems likely that in addition not all professional jobs experienced this shift at the same time.

If you suddenly give a small fraction of the population more money then they are likely to live it up because there aren't enough of them to drive the costs up in lock-step.

If you read the article, they mention "built to rent" houses. I bought one of these, and although I do not rent it out now, I could quite easily rent it out if a better opportunity comes along that would require me to move.

I think this is a good option for people who have the cash for a down payment, are looking for a place to live, and don't want to deal with rising rents in case they do stay, while still increasing net worth every month with the mortgage payment. You might be tied down for a year or two, but it's not like being stuck somewhere for 30 years if you have the option to rent a place out.

If you aren't in an area with very high housing costs (which, obviously, very many readers of this site are), it's not even that big a deal to sell your house when you need to. If your house constitutes 40% of your net worth, and you take a 5% hit on your sale price, then your net worth has declined... 2%. A good job is worth that.

Admittedly, it's different when your house is 90% of your net worth and you're barely able to afford your mortgage.

It doesn't change the fact that $100k is still a lot of money, but the people for whom that a lot a money aren't on some farm in the middle of the country, they're driving your uber, greeting you at the entrance to your apartment and delivering your instacart.

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

[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/newyorkcitynewy...

This isn't accurate. That's everyone in the household collectively working to bring home 59,039 on average. 27% of "households" are individuals. 34% of households are couples (that is to say, two people with no dependents. If they're mothers or fathers, they're empty nesters.) So only about a third of households have more than two people (presumably parents + children.)

Not sure what the median income for households with two working parents + children is.

Presumably, this is because the risk of losing income is higher (lack of job security) and or not as much opportunity to increase income.

You mean he doesn't live out in the sticks or a run-down city like Detroit (MI), Gary (IN), or Paterson (NJ). You don't need to live in a rich area for $100k to not be that much.

The fantasy of what people who don't earn 100k think 100k buys you is very different from the reality of what lifestyle 100k affords.

Source: have rented solely in buildings requiring renter's insurance, and have never filed a claim for things breaking in the apartment. The landlord always fixes it.

More information here: https://www.ipsagency.com/blog/does-renters-insurance-cover-...

https://sfs.virginia.edu/cost/19-20

Back when I was picking a college for my CS undergrad, the choice boiled down to (numbers are rough estimates, because I don't remember the exact ones, but they are close enough and should relay the point I am trying to make):

* UCLA out of state: some financial aid for the first year, bringing the costs down to around $25k/yr. Around $35k+ each following year.

* Georgia Tech in state: without financial aid, around $9.5k/yr. With Zell Miller/HOPE scholarship (which every in-state student gets, provided they maintain a certain GPA), it brought down the tuition costs to essentially $0/yr. I still took out some loans for rent/basic necessity expenses, but those were miniscule. Like, less than the first year at UCLA kind of miniscule.

Both are well respected colleges, same program, but wildly different loan situations post-graduation. I obviously choice GT, but not everyone is in the same situation as me. The amount of loans doesn't always correlate with the kind of program you are choosing.

Moving in ain't free, either.

Hopefully, you can save at a rate higher than the rate at which the down payment increases due to house prices generally going up.

My family has told me that you should always save up the 20%, but it seems like like the FHA 3.5% is the winners choice. If I wait until I have 20% down it's going to take ages and all that money spent on apartments is going to waste.

I do think that addressing the student loan issue would directly help the housing market.

That's not too far from the truth either. Comparing "comps" is a lazy man's game. They don't look that closely at the houses they are comparing.