Financial pressure from rent is moving up the income ladder
routefifty.com
routefifty.com
> There are different theories as to why more households like this are choosing to rent rather than buy—for example, maybe it’s a matter of preference, or maybe the costs of buying a home are too high. Homeownership growth since 2010 mostly occurred for households who earn at least $150,000 per year, with much of the growth happening for those earning $200,000 or more.
As someone who would be in the market for a starter home, there are basically two kinds of neighborhoods in our metro region:
(a) Neighborhoods that have decent commutes to some but not all job clusters. These neighborhoods have starter homes, but are risky to buy into for a young married couple who will likely have new jobs in the next 2 years.
(b) Neighborhoods that have decent commutes to ALL job clusters. These neighborhoods exploded in price over the past decade and have no starter homes.
At what point to I just give up and move somewhere else? It's honestly just exhausting.
I feel a lot of the same exhaustion (despite not being in the bay area), but it comes down to what you want in life and what your options are.
If my wife and I both want to continue our careers, there are scant few metros available in her specialized field. We can afford the rent, and we're happy in the Boston area, so we're not planning to move right now.
But I also want to raise kids in a city where they could one day return from college and make a living without being forced into software or investment banking or medicine. This is the biggest thing on my mind personally. The kind of city you get when cost of living is absurdly high, is not the kind of city I want to live in. Right now I've put off that decision, but it's something I plan to revisit within the next 5 years.