Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjav | Hacker News Reader

> If it doesn't collapse, then society may collapse?

But there are plenty very cheap areas to buy houses or rent. Sure, many people don't want to live there, that's why it's cheap today. But it is a possibility nonetheless, one that is better than collapsing society.

I'm always honestly confused why today it is seen as impossible to move to a cheap area? People have been doing this for generations (centuries?). It's never the most fun solution, but it is a solution.

When I was in my 20s I wanted to live in Manhattan more than anything in the world. But I was never able to make it happen, it was too crazy expensive even back then. Eventually I gave up on that dream and moved to a place that was cheap and was able to buy a house no problem. It's no Manhattan, but it is home and has been a good place to live for decades now. In hindsight it was a great decision to move away and buy a home in a cheap area instead of banging my head against the impossible real estate market of NYC.

It's always an option to move to a cheaper location!

View on HN

Jobs. Most people don't have the luxury of working fully remotely. Areas with cheap housing are overwhelmingly geographically isolated and economically depressed, which is why the housing is cheap - local residents simply can't afford to bid up the price of housing.

A lot of people would rather struggle to make rent than raise their kids in a community with high crime, bad schools, poor healthcare, limited prospects and a general atmosphere of despair.

I don't know the US situation, but in my city in Europe, there is a factor 2 to 3 for flats in fashionable location compared to my location. I have the same traveling distance to the city center, but my location has less public transport options. Schools are ok, it's even better than in the fashionable district, and I have less criminality.

I've spoken to a few colleagues who just arrived in the city from another region, and they all went into the fashionable district without considering any other locations, because someone from that district told them any other district is bad. The fact is that if you bought your flat in this fashionable district, it doubled in value over 7 years, whereas in my district, prices went up 50% at most.

For me it is the same as the stock market, people follow the trend and smart folk get out before it goes downhill.

> Jobs. Most people don't have the luxury of working fully remotely.

Then you commute. Yes, sacrifices are required but it's not the end of the world (or collapse of society, as GP put it). When I moved to a cheaper place over 20 years ago working remotely wasn't much of a thing so I had to drive 60-90 minutes (occasionally 2 hours). It wasn't great but it was a pragmatic solution that allowed me to have a nice place to live and leftover money to save.

> A lot of people would rather struggle to make rent than raise their kids in a community with high crime, bad schools, poor healthcare, limited prospects and a general atmosphere of despair.

There is a very wide gray area of reasonable places with reasonable prices between the extremes of San Franciso/Manhattan vs. economically depressed areas with "a general atmosphere of despair".

What good is a job, if it doesn’t cover your expenses, doesn’t allow you to save any money, is located in an area where there is no affordable housing, and restricts you from doing normal, societal things like having children.

> It's always an option to move to a cheaper location!

If you’ve got no savings and are trapped in debt, how do you suggest people do this? How are these people managed to scrape together the deposit and moving costs? The people who would need to do this the most are locked out of it. If you don’t have family members to stay with, what you end up with is skyrocketing homeless numbers which seems to be what is happening in California.

Sell all your furniture and all but irreplaceable and critical belongings, possibly including selling any cars you may have. Use a few thousand dollars of that money for airfare or gas money and move yourself and minimal belongings to a new location. Stay in a long-term-stay hotel (<$100/day) for a week or two until you can get the cheapest apartment you can find. Slowly repurchase essentials as needed. Done.

> Sell all your furniture and all but irreplaceable and critical belongings, possibly including selling any cars you may have. Use a few thousand dollars of that money for airfare or gas money and move yourself and minimal belongings to a new location.

We’re talking about the poorest people in society here so let’s assume they don’t have a car. And they’re probably not taking a flight anywhere, they’re most likely taking a greyhound bus if we’re running this thought experiment in America. How many thousands of dollars do you think they have in furniture? Do you really think it is going to get that person out of any existing debts they have, and then leave them with multiple thousands of dollars to spare? Because if you’ve got $1500 dollars and the hotel room costs $75 a night, you’ve got 20 days to find this cheap apartment and find a job in this city where you know no one before you’re homeless. In reality, you have less time because you’ve got food and transport costs on top of that. Oh and now you’re probably not getting any benefits because you’re in a different town and probably have to go through the system again.

Do you really think this is a good way for someone to turn their life around or do you think that the desperation of their situation means it is far more likely they are going to get exploited by both landlords, employers and possibly criminals in this new town, made all the worse by the fact that they don’t have any contacts and zero support network?

I will point you to a book called “Nickled and Dimed”

I started looking for houses in 2005-2006. The outlook sounded similar, constant prices going up and missing out. House flipping was booming and I was priced out of all the desirable areas. What I did was start near where I work and move down the line farther out getting to less desirable towns. 2008 hit and at that point mortgages dried up. I finally got a house in 2009, in an area where schools were not as good and was not as desirable and prices fell for the next few years where I felt like I over paid. With all the money I put in , being a fixer upper too, I just assumed if I sold I’d simple take a loss and move on with my life. Now, a decade plus later the area has moved from less desirable to decent. In the end it worked out. Once again today though the same areas I couldn’t afford are still the desirable area. People want the cute down time I was priced out of 15 years ago. There are still towns that are more affordable.

And you stroll into whatever town/city/village with your income that barely meets the cost of living in NYC/SF/LA and destroy that housing market.

Your solution is someone else's nightmare.

> And you stroll into whatever town/city/village with your income that barely meets the cost of living in NYC/SF/LA and destroy that housing market.

There's a lot of truth in that.

The ubiquity of remote work has made this much worse. It used to be that one could move to a cheaper area (as I did) but it still had to be within orbiting distance of a source of income.

Remote work broke that constraint which is causing a lot of disruption in very remote areas.

Also the other obvious answer that people have been doing for centuries is multi-generational households.

It's not the end of the world to live with your parents (or your partner's).

I think we could see a lot of pressure towards that as Western total fertility rate continues to decrease and larger population groups (Millennials) age with fewer or no children to help out.

Even a shift towards non-relatives households wouldn't be the end of society, it would just be change (and require some zoning/code changes).

The main reason I got my first hob was to be able to move out. My parents drove me nuts. I've been independent ever since.

I'd rather live in a tiny studio with just a mattress than live with them. Also nothing signals undateable more than "I love with my parents".

> Also nothing signals undateable more than "I love with my parents".

That’s is true, but I suspect it’s also a typo!

Haha. The joys of autocorrect :)

> Also nothing signals undateable more than "I l[i]ve with my parents".

This is cultural though. In the US that certainly seems very true. In other places (such as where I'm from), living at home with parents until marriage is the normal default.

Cultural...and economic. I guess in places where there are arranged marriages, or living together is shunned upon, this is true. However as far as I can tell generation z is complaining about the economic situation that disables them from moving out. So it's definitely not cultural there.

Manhattan is one of the most expensive places in the world. I would guess most ppl are not really aspiring for that. I would guess that the problem for a lot of people is to continue being able to live in their medium sized city where they have all their friends, family and life.

Could you point me to these plenty cheap areas? I work remotely and may consider moving there.

If you're in the USA, the Rio Grande Valley is pretty cheap. Because it's next to Mexico, there's huge amounts of Latino culture & influence.

If you want to be somewhere that feels on the up & up and has cool stuff, Brownsville has a decent amount of engineers for SpaceX and you can go watch launches from a public beach if you get there early enough.

In Sweden if you move from Stockholm to Eskilstuna (1h30m drive away) you can find a 5 room 100 sqm apartment in the dead center of the town for the price of a 2 room 45-50 sqm apartment in any of the immediate suburbs of Stockholm.

Or, to put it simply, move out of the big city, and the prices drop by a factor of two or more.

That's true in Germany as well, but to get cheap property, you have to go very far from the city, and Germany not being that huge, you'll be close to the next metro area by then.

Like, sure, a 120sqm house might be 400k in Hamburg and only 230k 60 minutes out to the north west (both needing an additional 25-50% of price in renovation costs), but the average net income is 30k/year and you're expected to have at least 20% in cash.

You can get very cheap houses in Saxony or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but there will be little to no infrastructure (like, the next gynaecologist might be a 60 minute car trip away), your neighbors will be down on their luck, unemployed and voting far right, and you'll essentially need to rebuild the house - and you'll need to do much of it yourself because the tradesmen work on construction sites in the big cities and rarely take local jobs.

We've been living in Berlin for the last 10 year and the prices are making me consider looking outside the city (no other big cities that near Berlin, so there isn't that challenge you speak of).

My main issue would be being more socially isolated as all of our local friends are in Berlin, kids having to adapt to new school/kindergarten (& find new friends), new work for my wife who doesn't work remote (but can find work relatively easily)...It's not impossible but it really sucks that we'd have to leave the city if we want a slightly bigger home (we've 2 kids who share a room & our apartment is in general feeling a bit small for a family of 4).

Without a large windfall I don't think we'll ever be able to afford buying a 3+ bedroom (4+ rooms as Germans count it) home in Berlin & rent would be high enough that no landlord will want us with our current income.

Yeah, doing it with kids is extra hard. I have friends in Berlin who moved to Prenzlauer Berg in like 2005 and got a great deal. At some point, with kids that apartment just didn't cut it any more, but they can't move too far for the reasons you mention, so they looked long and hard and accepted paying quite a bit more and moving to the other side of the Ring in Pankow. Not as nice, but close enough to keep the kids in the same schools.

I had hoped that remote work would relieve some of that pressure, but maybe it'll take a generation because many couples can't move anywhere because only one of them can work remotely, or because they don't want to uproot their kids. Not to mention that you'll still need a solid internet connection to work remotely, and that's still hit and miss if you go more rural. And if nobody wants to move to Saxony, the empty villages there don't really do anything on the supply side.

I have many friends in Brandenburg (the state, not the city) and internet speeds tend to actually be great out there from what Ive heard (still in the towns/cities not literally in the middle of nowhere, but there are loads of small to mid sized towns). In fact I believe it may be better than in Berlin!

I wonder if it was because it was easier to upgrade/replace the East German infrastructure & as such it's relatively new/good? Sorta like how nice a lot of the highway network in Poland is, because it was mostly only built in the last couple decades.

BTW Pankow is considered a very nice and desirable (and expensive) part of Berlin to raise a family in :)

I guess Pankow is also pretty large. The parts I stayed at had mostly wide streets with lots of traffic, but it includes Prenzlauer Berg and goes all the way to the north, so it'll have plenty of different places. And gentrification likely changes it as well.

You're right about small towns, they're probably a good compromise before looking at villages, but it is a very different life style, so probably not for everyone that currently lives in Berlin or Hamburg by choice. I'm curious how it will develop, and I feel fortunate that my personal preferences align with what's cheaper. I feel for those who desire the hustle and bustle of the inner city.

This is all well and good but are there jobs there that match the persons skillset or would they have to spend most likely 3-6 years retraining?

The question above was "I work remotely and may consider moving there."

When you work remotely you may want to move anywhere you want. However, there are other things to consider: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35408256 :)

I missed that, sometimes the threads get long on here!

Plenty of cheap areas, in many countries. Just have to give up things like jobs and services(both public and private). But they do exist. And aren't desirable for exactly those reasons.

I like to browse the real estate market just for fun sometimes and actually yes there are cheap areas in every country. Some are cheap due to remoteness, due to inventory or mismanagement/decline. Like in mentioned in another comment, (south) Spain has incredibly cheap properties because there are many available and mortgages are available to even non-residents (not necessarily _in_ cities, but within a 30 min radius from population centers). Generally speaking 15 minutes inland from the sea is cheap everywhere (apart from luxury pockets like Marbella), you can easily buy a nice mediterranean villa for less than 200k. If you want views that's around 250-300k.

Something I learned too late is that sometimes a place is cheap because of horrible neighbours.

That's not really a factor here as most of the housing stock is made up of holiday homes so you only have neighbors for like 2 weeks in a year. But with remote work many more are making it their homes so it might be a problem in the future.

More generally, cheap areas often means economic underdevelopment or decline, which leads to social problems and annoying neighbors (on account of drinking, unemployment and other issues). On the plus side, there's less traffic, because people aren't as busy going to places to make and spend money as they are in economically vibrant areas.

It also means that there’s less money available for infrastructure maintenance. While a city is expanding, the majority of the housing is occupied, and the infrastructure to support new housing doesn’t yet require replacement. As a city contracts, there are more unoccupied houses and vacant lots. There’s still the same length of water, sewage, and power lines along the length of a street, but fewer residents to pay for it as it becomes old enough to need repairs/replacement.

Are these properties 'cheap' because of they can be stolen easily by okupas?

Around here in the North East of UK you can easily buy a house for around £100k. It won't be amazing or anything, but with banks offering 5% deposit mortgages pretty much anyone can save up for it and get on the property ladder. Of course the situation down south is completely different and the closer you get to London the more impossible it gets to ever buy your house.

The trouble is even that is a challenge outside of the London job market

For comparison that’s about 5 times minimum wage at 35 hours a week. You’d struggle to get a mortgage on your own without a £20k deposit but as a couple certainly no problem, and many entry jobs in supermarkets etc pay more than minimum wage.

You can get a house on a few acres (does need a little work but nothing crazy) in Tipperary for ~200k.

200k is not cheap.

You can buy flats in beautiful, historic city centre in Bytom, Poland for $500 per square meter. There are even well-paying coding jobs in the area (within 30 minutes by car or public transport).

> Could you point me to these plenty cheap areas? I work remotely and may consider moving there.

They are all over. Head over to zillow/redfin (or the corresponding real estate site for your region) to see them. They won't be in the hip city center everyone wants, but choices are plentiful if one is willing to sacrifice a few wishlist items.

"Cheap" is of course relative the the region/country so actual numbers will vary. I'm in California so I can give a California-centric answer.

Browsing zillow I see over 30 condo (and a few house) units for less than 200K in the Sacramento areas (not exactly the boonies, it's the state capital).

In the Fresno area I see around 60 units (many houses) under 200K. Some friends moved to Fresno and they have a very nice place, for pennies on the dollar compared to San Francisco.

For those who don't want a big city, head north of Sacramento towards Oregon and tons of choices to work remote and buy a place cheap.

Mind you, I set the search limit to <200K, but that's extremely cheap by California standards. Even 25 years ago 200K was a cheap house in California. If you increase the search criteria to a more reasonable 300-400K there are way more choices and areas.

200k is not cheap.

$200k is about $1200/month for the mortgage, taxes, and insurance.

What really attracts people to those places? Cuisine? Night life? Tinder opportunities?

That you have more shops than one. More restaurants than one. Theaters. Clubs. Sports. Connectivity. Places and activities for kids. Places for hobbies. Concerts. Other various activities and events.

There are significantly more of each in a big citu.

> That you have more shops than one. More restaurants than one. Theaters. Clubs. Sports. Connectivity. Places and activities for kids. Places for hobbies. Concerts. Other various activities and events.

Then open a shop, start a restaurant, start a theatre group, gather some kids for sports, organize some concerts, and become an active member of your community, instead of expecting it to be handed to you on a platter.

So I've opened a shop. Now waht? Are you in all seriousness telling me that a small town can provide the same amount of things as a big city?

You'll run out of people long before you get on par with what a big city offers.

Maybe you missed the whole discussion which was stemmed from complaints about big cities and the frustration many people are finding with being able to save any money, purchase or rent a suitable home, live in a safe neighborhood, avoid long commutes, or raise a family.

Life is more than just buying lots of stuff and experiences from other people in big cities. Giving back to your community and allowing them to enjoy your talents should enter the equation too. Don’t always be a taker.

I want my kids to be around a variety of perspectives. The groupthink and pressure to conform in rural areas and small towns can be extreme.

Bigger cities are the same. Politically they are very homogeneous. If you want want you kids to be near variety of perspectives, you should move to a smaller city or near one.

That hasn't been my experience. Maybe I'm just tired of being around people who feel the existence of cities is a personal affront.

My conclusion comes from statistics and logic. In smaller cities the population is a mix a between daily rural migrants, factory workers and office/service workers. In big cities the population is mostly office/service workers.

>>Maybe I'm just tired of being around people who feel the existence of cities is a personal affront.

It's a bit ironic mentioning that here, because there is a pro urbanization (anti rural, anti suburbs) article on the front page of HN almost every week. And every dominant media in the country promotes the same narrative.

Funnily enough the most narrow minded self-centered provincial people I know are in big cities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com