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Comment by saiya-jin | Hacker News Reader

Practically every single capital is like that these days. People of all nations can copy paste same rant and it would be 100% valid. This is how it is, too much buying power with new generation of higher level office workers compared to blue collar ones, on top of financial speculation with either prices skyrocketing, or airbnbs. Let's not forget there is more and more of people in general, and more and more coming for work, education etc. to bigger places and rarely going back.

Or to put it in reverse - I am not aware of any metropolis/capital where this isn't true, regardless of regime.

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> I am not aware of any metropolis/capital where this isn't true, regardless of regime.

Tokyo. It is hoovering up all the Japanese youth, but manages to stay affordable for other factors.

- Permissive zoning - Immigration restrictions - Closed culture - Declining population

Came to say the exact same thing. Most in the English-speaking world have no idea cities like Tokyo exist. It’s still a global capital, still growing (for now), but it’s still very affordable for people of all economic classes. And it’s not for lack of foreign speculation; locals mostly aren’t buying up the $10M+ flats in the new Mori building, but there’s plenty of development to meet demand across the spectrum.

Also Bangkok, total renters market. New buildings going up every day. Lots of rents are lower than before covid.

Indeed, as far as I can tell (I’m in Bangkok but I’m not a local) there is a lot of choice and a super wide range of prices.

Public transit is constantly being expanded and there is so much stock of modern buildings, I can’t see it changing any time soon.

Last week I went to the fish market by Sky Train, first time I’d been out that way, and I was surprised to see a ton of modern condo towers clustered around Erawan. And why not? It’s 30-45 minutes on the train to the center of town.

It's been a few years but when I have been in Bangkok for a few months I just took my scooter around an area I liked and walked into good looking buildings asking for an apartment and had a monthly contract the same day.

Compared to months of planning and looking if you plan to move in an European city.

I don't think I've ever heard the absurd levels of this blog post and I've lived in few expensive cities from italy, poland and switzerland, where it is impossible for middle class locals to live there.

Compared with the 2, how is Poland expensive?

Locals have a much lower income than Italy or Switzerland. Thus they are still getting priced out of cities where they have lived a long time. In Warsaw the locals are often priced out by the returning diaspora. See Lebanon, parts of Italy, Ireland in the past, etc.

Currently I think it's quite expensive (for locals). E.g. bedroom + living room costs > 3k PLN in Cracow, and probably more in Warsaw. At the same time junior dev can earn about 5-9k PLN net. My non-dev friends often are not even able to live in Cracow.

I would argue the Canadian one of Ottawa. Ottawa isn't cheap, but it is not anywhere near Toronto or Vancouver.

Right, it really should say anchor cities and not capital IMO. Those may coincide sometimes, but not always.

More than just anchor cities. I live in a town of 60k. Cheapest homes less than fifty years old are all C$600K and sharply upward. There are many multi-million dollar properties. It is insanity.

Reason how this happens worldwide may be that 70% of world population is projected to be living in big cities by next decades.

I mean, tendency is that most people want to live in the big city, sometimes as necessity (can only find a job there) sometimes as a preference (better services, etc.) the result is traffic jams and expensive real state.

I'd argue that trend is reversing, just like it did in the 1960's.

Quality of life issues eventually drive people to live in the outer suburbs, further exacerbating issues within city cores (e.g. San Francisco right now).

You can argue it all you want but the numbers don’t support it. If the demand is going down then why is it becoming more expensive?

Also, white flight in the 60s was a move to the suburbs- many would consider that given the density of 2020, the suburbs are feeling the same crunch. Bellevue and other suburbs are more expensive than Seattle. I’m guessing there are suburbs of SF that are more expensive than SF.

Prices are dropping in San Francisco, especially condos which are below pre-Covid prices now.

And you yourself said "Bellevue and other suburbs are more expensive than Seattle." Which would infer that yes, people are leaving the city and moving to suburbs.

Of course they are as interest rates are rising quickly. Nobody is talking about it, but free (or almost) money was also a good reason why prices increased that much.

Prices were dropping before interest rates went up.

It is still one of the most expensive and sought after places to live in the country, and maybe even the world. You can’t just remove all context from reality to try to make your points. You know this. Be a big boy.

Now you’re just desperately pulling things out of the air.

My statement the cycle of movement to urban centers might be reversing, and I used condo prices in SF since pre-Covid as a data point.

You come back with “its still one of the most expensive places in the world”. Then you said “Be a big boy”.

You’ve failed to make your case and resorted to condescending remarks.

Let’s just chalk this up to you failed to disprove my argument and leave it at that? Unless you had more condescending statements to make?

Bellevue is 5 miles away from Seattle. It is the same thing as Seattle.

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