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Comment by astrognomy | Hacker News Reader

Your right to be skeptical as it's not the case. It's being driven by individuals within Idaho moving to more urban parts of Idaho.

Locals say it's all "Californians," but that is just short hand for folks out of state but surveys and data from ITD (Idaho Transportation Department, i.e. DMV) show it's urbanization at work.

Granted there are folks moving to Idaho from outside of the state but they are the minority causing the influx to CDA and Boise.

Source: Local news, resident of Boise, and someone who is dismayed at the lack of housing in the area.

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In our case (Cd'A) the majority coming in are not from Idaho moving to more urban areas...they are from out of state.

Not sure I would trust the DMV stats during the covid times too since I see a lot of unregistered/expired tags right now.

Most people from the rural areas here cannot afford a house in Coeur d'Alene...it is primarily people coming from other markets where a $600k house is considered a steal.

edit: I have lived in Cd'A for over 40 years...and this year is a very new thing.

For the record, there are now huge sections of Boise now where 600k is considered a steal. Boiseans are among those other markets and they moving to other parts of the state as part of this housing shortage.

Anecdotally, just as you've seen unregistered/expired tags, I've had two coworkers use the new remote work freedom to move to CdA/Sandpoint area.

Which leads to another issue which isn't brought up enough.

What is going to happen to all the remote high paid workers when it becomes the common trend to scale pay to the area?

Currently...you need to make 3x the average pay to be eligible for a house. Anyone who loses their job that has moved to the area is going to find that there is little to no high paying jobs for quite some distance.

It has already happened to more than one person I know locally. Not saying they will have any issue selling their house.

Totally legit question. I know for Boise "scale pay for the area" already has a wildly different meaning depending on the employer.

I've had employers who hired in Boise for cheaper talent than in SoCal (50-80% the pay,) I've had others who pay the same as Salt Lake City -- closest metro area with data, and another who took the Seattle office averages -40-75k and called it fair. Tech wages here are extremely variable and have little to do with local cost of living.

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