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Comment by nugget | Hacker News Reader

Millennial here. In the last 18 months I've substantially increased the % of net worth I'm comfortable allocating to a home, reflected in both purchase price and remodeling costs:

- it's not clear that pandemic-era is over, whether that be new Covid strains or other mutant viruses (not to mention global thermonuclear war)

- work from home requires much more space to do well + i'm home more often to enjoy the rest of the house

- most of my close friends work from home which means they can come and visit much more often

- due to Covid, parents are afraid of nursing homes + kids taking longer to leave the nest = intergenerational living is back on the radar

- life is short, a little bit of post-Covid YOLO

I'm not sure how widespread the sentiment is but if enough people feel this way it could make an impact.

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> in the last 18 months I've substantially increased the % of net worth I'm comfortable allocating to a home, reflected in both purchase price

And in the past 18 months, the changes to interest rates mean that your budget on a standard 30 year fixed has shrunk by 40%. That is, the same payments will get you 40% less house at 20% down. To make up for that, you would have to increase both your down payment and monthly rates by 66% to afford the same dollar value as a year ago.

And in last (calendar) year, the rocketing stock market makes the audience of this forum able to just buy houses out right with cash

What percentage of the audience do you reckon can outright buy houses with cash in the area where they live?

I'm in the process of buying a place in mostly cash. I had been saving in expensive parts of California for the past four years, so with that as my target I was able to pick up a very nice house in Portland as the price corrected from ~650 to mid-400's. The way I look at it, after seeing tech do so well in remote work, it's here to stay and I plan on dying in that house.

> I plan on dying in that house

Yup I've made this plan a couple times now.

Well, that's fair. Life happens, but I'd like to not leave and I don't often feel that way.

Yeah that's a great feeling and I apologize for my comment sounding negative, because in truth I was lucky to have it more than once. Congrats and enjoy your new home.

Nah, your comment was a good check. I appreciate it. My mind does need to be open to a changing future. In the mean time, enjoy it I will!

Depends, how many rooms are we talking?

Damn, did I miss the memo on this forum to sell all stocks at the beginning of 2022?

Yes, the memo came in November 2021 from the federal reserve and multiple companies.

Does a memo get issued for when to buy stocks?

Just follow what congress members do: https://www.businessinsider.com/congress-stock-act-violation...

Yes, wait for your first S&P 500 bankruptcies and that will be your sign that the Fed pivot is imminent.

In theory you missed that memo in 2019, it's that Corona threw in a curveball that gave us an additional 3 years on the inevitable recession. This is why timing the market is hard.

Alternatively, people I know who got that memo in 2019 sold their stocks, went short and now are in a significantly worse position.

Was there a memo at the end of 2018? If not, why would there have been a memo in 2019 but not 2018?

The market seems to have returned to where it was 18 months ago. So it seems like, absent timing the market well, that's literally not a factor.

You're assuming they sold at the top during the rocketing stock market! The rocket has been pointing down the past few months.

I am assuming they are not being greedy. Around summer last year I'd say a lot have an opportunity to cash out and buy a decent house and be debt free.

But sadly many were thinking "one more year and I can afford a multimillion mansion with an infinity pool"

In the last year stock markets have fallen. Roughly 30% for nasdaq for example over 12 months. This will continue.

this post is the definituon of 'let them eat cake'

Not saying you are right or wrong, but you seem to be over indexing for Covid. Most people seem to have moved on finally, and even the last bastion WFH will come under pressure with the bad economy.

As things stand I'd need a significant pay rise to start working from an office again. Bills and mortgage increases have eaten the benefits I got from not having to travel so if I had to travel into work most days I'd be significantly worse off.

There seems to be an implicit assumption that WFH is somehow less productive. I've not seen much evidence of this personally. It certainly makes management harder but it's a small price to pay when it's saving a bunch of travel costs for the employee and office costs for the employer

> As things stand I'd need a significant pay rise to start working from an office again

If I am understanding the parent, the point being made is this may be less of an option for many if companies revert. If there aren't many opportunities to work remotely, this will become more of a perk, like free lunches, and not something other organizations will compensate you for. Not everyone may have a choice to demand more money if the number of WFH options are very limited.

WFH being very limited doesn't reflect the situation I'm seeing at the moment. Over half my team have been hired since WFH was introduced, almost all of them live too far away for commuting more than occasionally to be an option. One of them even got it written into his job offer that he has to do at most 1 day a month in office and he gets paid travel expenses.

Apple and Google might be able to pull it off but run of the mill non-unicorn companies? Not convinced.

Another thing to consider for the non-unicorn companies. If the big players axe WFH, the smaller companies and "non-unicorn" could be in a good position to use WFH has a hedge to attract talent. People who would apply and get hired at MANGA, but they will pass it up for the ability to live and work anywhere. My guess, there are a lot of talented engineers who would take that.

Why did we switch F to M when Facebook became Meta, but not G to A when Google became Alphabet?

Because Google didn't rename to Alphabet. They created a parent company called Alphabet which owns Google and a bunch of other subsidiary companies, but Google is still itself and still wants to be called Google.

Whereas Facebook made a big announcement that they were renaming the company Meta. They asked to be called Meta.

Are there payrates at Alphabet lower than at Google? Typically, I have always read the acronym in relation to high paying jobs or high performing stocks.

I don't think they're lower, but they're different. Notably, Alphabet employees of the other Bets (Waymo, Loon, Verily, etc.) get stock in the bet rather than GOOG stock. This is privately held and so a lot less liquid than GOOG, and you lose your unvested shares if you transfer to the mothership. It has a lot of the same risk/reward tradeoffs as working for a startup.

I worked for what was technically an Alphabet company, and it was no different from working at Google. I was told, but never confirmed myself, that I worked for Google and Google contracted me out to the subsidiary. Maybe things have changed in the intervening 5 years since I was there, but this was something for the accountants and not something that affected everyday life.

Hiring a CFO from the banking industry did make it more difficult to get the free food, though. The cause and effect there was immediately noticeable.

Because MANGA is a better acronym than FAAAN

Definitely a way better acronym.

A bad economy is also bad for companies, which should be glad that they have something to offer as an alternative to pay.

And can cut spend on office space.

I don't know if there's an implicit assumption that WFH is less productive, quite possibly. But if we look at the power dynamics of the question, it's about (tech in this case) labor being able to demand what it wants when it's in demand. I think the point above is that this dynamic will change with the economy going south.

With labor having less power, it's likely that the members of senior management who don't like WFH (for a multitude of reasons right and wrong) will have more sway in the conversation.

I'm not sure about this read either though. We've been powerfully signaled to stop considering it, but it is still out there and still spinning off new variants, some of which are worse than their precursors. It's still killing a lot of people, plus disabling who even knows how many.

It's entirely possible that on the scale of like 30-40 years, this period will be considered a "slump" in how bad covid is, or a time when we were just not considering its effects enough. I don't think this scenario is extremely likely, but I do think our collective uncertainty about long term covid effects on society is still very very high and we should be factoring that into long-term decisions like where to live, housing ownership, etc.

The high confidence people are comfortable displaying about where we are with it is not warranted, imo. It may not be a critical day-to-day concern for most people anymore. But there's no guarantee it can't go back to that state, or with the hindsight view of covid disabilities we'll have wished we kept it as a daily concern during this time.

Plus nursing homes are probably going to remain more lethal than they have been during most of our lives. I think expecting a social change around elderly care based partially on that is astute.

Just saying I share your viewpoint. I continue to wear my mask and get vaccines. We really have very little idea how continued exposure, despite vaccines, will go.

> due to Covid, parents are afraid of nursing homes

All good apart from this, its clear you don't actually have kids - interest in kindergartens didn't drop a zilch (given, where I live - Geneva, Switzerland and around, plus at home country in EU). We properly don't care about covid anymore, had it at least 4 times, last 3 times even mild flu would be much worse experience.

Sure if you are a proper germ freak or some qanon-like paranoid nut you would base your decisions on this... but if you are just another sane parent, you just drop your kids there and hope for the best. Same as with any other sickness that kids do catch often that's looming out there.

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