Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home in most cities | Hacker News Reader

Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a new home in most cities

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61 pointspaulpauper75 comments

> home shoppers need to earn 50% more than they did prior to the pandemic to afford a typical US home in today’s market

Isn’t this all that matters? That’s a huge problem. How are we supposed to build a middle class like this?

You should be asking if the ruling class wants the middle class to exist. What is in it for them?

If you're in the ruling class and even remotely intelligent, you'd realize a decently sized middle class is absolutely essential to their own prosperity. Throughout history, when too many people get pushed lower in the social/economic strata is a great way to ignite a rebellion. The masses have nothing left to lose at that point.

More to the point, you need folks to be able to buy your products.

The middle class was a historic accident brought about by the lessons learned from ww2 and the fear of socialism by the ruling class. They want another gilded age..

You need people literally going hungry and starving to death for something like that to happen, which is pretty unlikely.

It really isn't.

In the US we have almost no social safety net. We're cutting back on food assistance budgets, cutting back homeless aid, cutting back medical aid. If you become homeless, suddenly you have next to no chance of finding a job again, and no help from the government.

Cost of living is spiraling out of control while wages stagnate. People ate already having trouble affording the basic necessities.

We are precariously close to having a starving peasant class.

>wages stagnate

Median real wages in the United States have gone up over the last year. Same thing over the last five years and the last ten years.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Has it gone up 50% over 3 years?

100% - Without mobility.... desperate choices become the only choices.

It's not a conspiracy of the ruling class that housing has gotten more expensive. It's due to regulatory restrictions on housing and new homeowners being able to afford high prices through locked in low interest mortgages. The regulations are there because NIMBYs are against building, and homeowners want their property value to rise over the course of their lifetimes to fund their retirement.

Regulatory restrictions - who controls those? The ruling class.

Well the "I can't fix systemic issues alone and need housing" solution is buy a not very nice house in a less than ideal area. House prices are definitely out of control in my area but really only in already well established nice neighborhoods. If you're not choosy you can find perfectly good houses for 70-200k but it's on you to make them Pinterest worthy.

All those jobs demanding that we "return to office" certainly don't want people to be able to do that.

owning housing is neither necessary nor sufficient for a middle class. See Germany. it's a stupid political and cultural quirk of the US to think this

If you mean people should live in apartments. Then those apartments should be owned by the government, or by the people, not greedy corporations who want to own you like property and fix prices for their apartments because you can't afford their houses. If I pay the government for housing, I can at least hope they will use the money to improve my life or someone else's. If I pay Micro$oft for my apartment, I know they will push everything to the edge of terrible then beyond so they can make more money while harming my living experience and indoctrinating me into thinking that's normal.

At least partially Glgov owned isn't the worst idea, though a land value tax and breaking up monopolies would address most of your conerns.

We haven’t built new housing in cities in decades, so this isn’t surprising. Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap, but who wants that?

Where I live, even __they__ aren't cheap. It's absurd.

Just curious why aren't groceries near by, are local shops also not available. Is it because of price of real estate for shop Or high labour cost with low margin

Zoning laws do not allow mixed use zoning in suburbia, so it's literally just vast, endless lands of single family homes (not even apartments)

It’s just hyperbole. Suburbs have grocery stores too. I’ve lived in many small towns, cities, and suburbs on several states and was never more than 10 mins from a grocery store. I live on the outskirts of the suburbs in an unincorporated part of the county ( not even in a city) and I have multiple grocery stores within 10 minutes.

10 minutes, by car going 30-50 mph

It really depends on the structure of the suburb. If you are in a large planned suburb in some areas, it’s actually possible that driving out of your suburb takes 5-10m and you may need to get on the highway to get to the nearest supermarket. 40minutes is probably a rare one way scenario even with traffic but 25-30m is not out of the question. Haven’t you been in one of those kinds of suburbs? They were common in the Tier 2-3 city I grew up in in the South although I guess in the Northeast and West I haven’t seen it as often

That comment has so little to do with reality I have to assume their mom still does the grocery shopping.

I don't believe for a bit that in a relatively densely populated suburban area there are no independent shops, it violates the fundamental presumption of capitalism which is that there's always an entrepreneur looking to make money out of dry stone.

My observation is that literally where there's 10 people, the 11'th one will try to sell them something. Hamlets of 100 houses have 2 grocery stores, 3 bars and a slot machine parlor.

I also live in a suburban area in Europe and there's shops everywhere. Noone "planned them", it's just the observation above. And yeah, house prices went through the roof also, probably went up everywhere where there's no war or famine going on regularly.

The thing I hate most about housing are traffic jams. The more they build and cram more "affordable housing", the worse the nightmare of getting anywhere becomes. Coze at some point you know, you'll need something that's just not within "walking distance" and then you're funked.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not lol, it simply is that way. I can send you a Google maps link to somewhere in the US that is a food desert simply by virtue of being a large suburb with residential zoning.

My guess is your conception of a suburban area (relatively densely populated?) is a bit different from ours in the US. Also for some reason you seem to think that because your area doesn’t have zoning or enforce it, other places don’t.

You really should have visited American suburbia before posting that. American zoning is too strict and, due to a sprawl of single-family homes, population numbers too low to permit shops in many suburbs. Once has to leave the maze of residential roads and get onto a main thoroughfare before one will find a convenience store or, often more likely, a petrol station with a shop. And that is too long a distance to reasonably walk even for avid walkers.

And if you write "independent shops", that is no longer true of even many European countries. While people do have a nearby shop, it might be typically from a chain (R-Kioski in Finland is essentially a monopoly, Żabka in Poland is omnipresent). The situation of, say, Spain, with its Chinese and Pakistani-owned independent shops, or Romania with its local family-owned shops does not extend over the whole EU.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/t5WFFQDKNprGs1NXA

Random suburb in California, USA. Use Google streetview and find a shop within walking distance.

Not the best example IMO. San Jose is quite urban, and that point on your map is just 2.4 km from Pruneyard Plaza shopping center with its Trader Joes. From various European urban contexts I have lived in, I personally would consider that walking distance. Of course I understand that in the US, where any distance over 250 m involves getting in the car, it wouldn’t be. And also, American street grids tend to have more intersections with waits, so it takes longer to walk short distances.

So I clicked your link, clicked "search nearby" and plugged in grocery store. From the pin point at your link, there is a Safeway and a Grocery Outlet both within 1 mile of the pin, and there appear to be sidewalks heading to both. 1 mile is definitely something I'd consider "walking distance" (I used to walk that distance to school every day). If you're willing to walk 2 miles, you can get to both a Target and a Home Depot and again as near as I can see, sidewalks the whole way. There's a post office 3/4 of a mile away, 2 elementary schools within a mile and 2 high schools within a 1.5 miles. 2 parks within about a half a mile and and international food market within 1.5 miles.

If you want a walkable / bikeable neighborhood you could certainly do a lot worse than this random suburb in California.

Because of low density. If a three person family lives on a 1000sqm plot of land rather than say 300 or 3000 in a skyscraper on the same plot, you inevitably have a harder time providing essential services. Hence the need to drive, built large parking lots, etc.

What makes a suburban area a hellscape? Is it unusually hot? Are there a large amount of murders? Just curious what that means since I grew up with the term and years later still bought a house in a city next to a large city which is really an unbroken metropolis without a real green space between. There are a few farms nearby and ranches getting converted to 5 story apartments and 4 lane roads, and that seems less friendly than the small city of homeowners the city has evolved from which is what it was when I bought my house here. Small cities seem nice to me.

Nothing is walkable. It cannot pay for itself in taxes because the income is too spread out. You have to use a car everywhere. The proliferation of car-centricness that it encourages also encourages the increase of stroads which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that forces more car usage, and so on.

It pays for itself with property taxes (Texas) and sales taxes from car dealerships.

The property taxes don't anywhere near cover its costs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

That’s a link to a video. Just summarize in text what you mean

Summary: it cannot pay for itself in taxes because the income is too spread out.

To the downvoter: I don't know what more you want. That's the synopsis. The density is too low, so they don't get enough money to sustain themselves with all the infrastructure that is required to have suburbia

(Not parent poster) Suburbs generally need more money for their sprawling infrastructure than they can supply with tax revenue from the suburbs.

This means that they exist because they're being subsidized by revenue collected from elsewhere, such as from cities.

Whether that is fair or exploitative depends on how you figure the math for "how much of the tax collected in the city is actually because-of or from the suburbanites who commute."

That's not true for Texas. In Texas, the entire costs of suburbs are paid for in property taxes and utility district fees and bonds. Texas is one of the few states where the majority of taxes collected by the state are property taxes. Or so I was told by a coworker living in Texas when I brought this up.

> In Texas, the entire costs of suburbs are paid for in property taxes and utility district fees and bonds.

The question is how long they can keep taking out more and more debt against the promise of never-ending growth and income from one-time development sales. The answer probably isn't "forever".

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/11/21/choose-your-f...

This is a predicament everywhere in the US, the suburbs are not alone in this issue of debt financing for... everything...

When housing is spread out, each house is responsible for so much infrastructure, taxes by the one property can’t hope to cover it.

Thanks. This is why I brought up Texas. Only the schools funding are from a pool of property taxes due to the ‘Robin Hood plan’ from the 90s. Local roads are country or city maintained from taxes. And the state roads are from state taxes. It’s all logically laid out.

I mean with a six-figure income instead of 41k like the video has it becomes pretty sustainable to pay $9200/yr in property taxes.

I also bet a lot of people in suburbs of Bay Area / NYC wish they only payed $9200/yr.

Less friendly how? I think you are confusing size with development pattern. A smaller community will always be more friendly than a larger one. The problem with suburbs is when they are forced on a community that has outgrown them.

>Suburban hellscapes where you have to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries are cheap

These so called "hellscapes" are no longer cheap. Waves of people are fleeing the cities to these "hellscapes."

Cheap per square foot. Here's a random pin drop I did outside Houston:

http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150246.png

and here's central Portland:

http://public.kulak.us/screenshots/2023-11-14-150343.png

Those may be expensive houses in the first image, but I guarantee cost per square foot is an order of magnitude cheaper. If waves of folks want the first image, more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it.

>Those may be expensive houses in the first image, but I guarantee cost per square foot is an order of magnitude cheaper.

I guarantee they're not. Portland average house price is $500k [0]. Your example of Katy, TX is $365k [1]. Not even close to an order of magnitude.

>If waves of folks want the first image, more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it.

If waves of folks want this image [2], more power to them. I'm not gonna stop them. But I also don't want to pay for it.

[0] https://www.redfin.com/city/30772/OR/Portland/housing-market

[1] https://www.redfin.com/city/9764/TX/Katy/housing-market

[2] https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/10/portla... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

I can walk to 3 grocery stores (and these are on shopping centers with a few dozen restaurants and other stores, Target, Walmart, etc... theoretically everything I need) in under 15 minutes from my front door in Orange county, California, next door to Irvine, the birth place of modern suburbia. You have a point but you need to get rid of the hyperbole.

Okay but to many people Irvine is a sterile wasteland. And that’s one of the mode suburbs?!

It feels like living in a corporate office park. And no, it’s predominantly not walking friendly. Not only is is massively spread out, the roads one has to walk next to are all 4-6 lanes wide and have freeway like speed limits. It’s unpleasant to walk a mile with that traffic noise and bland invariant office park landscaping.

Some people are okay with that setting, other do find it a soul sucking sterile place. I live there a number of years for a job, was ecstatic to move away. Should have done it sooner.

And that place is a super nice upscale suburb, like the one all suburbs aspire to be. and yet this paragon of suburbs is awful.

I didn’t even get into how bad ecologically the office park landscaping is. I haven’t scratched the surface of the many ways suburbs like Irvine are intrinsically bad. I do find most people who enjoy the place are tend not question the why of things or ask questions about their defaults.

Simple. Divert some of that money that goes into the military complex to help people out. I understand that’s quite a bit of money. Same applies to Europe.

How do you avoid robbing Peter to pay Paul? The majority of military spending is already going to people's salaries and healthcare.

Doesn't Congress frequently give the military more than the Pentagon even asks for?

Reduce the scope of new expensive projects?

"Same applies to Europe"

Austria's entire GDP is 20% just (semi-corrupt) government contracts, we pay 20% VAT on almost everything we buy and more(!) than half of what my company pays for me goes to the government if you take into account employer-side and employee-side federal income tax. Despite these sums, our military is shockingly underfunded.

On the other hand, our school system is very good even if you don't pay, crime is incredibly low and at least in Vienna subsidized housing is great and you'd have to try incredibly hard to become homeless. Government will also pay you a wage to go to university for a year (Educational Leave) and 98% of all employees in this country are unionized.

I don't think the US and my slice of Europe could be further apart in their taxation, spending and freedoms bestowed if they tried.

Yeah, same for Germany. We actually got a bonk on the head from NATO that we're not hitting the 2% spending goal like at all.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-must-meet-natos...

Most Americans want what other Americans have: SFH that appreciate rapidly in value. Unfortunately if the last gen got that, you can't.

No kidding. When a new condo in our neighborhood went on the market at $2.5 million… realized I’m done. I make what was good money, but not a chance. Moving to Mexico?

A LOT of Americans have been moving to Mexico lately.

I like how the article blames interest rates and not the fact that housing prices have skyrocketed 300% since 2012, which is the year redfins data starts. Ironic. Redfin WANTS to keep housing prices high because it makes more money. Of course it doesn’t blame greedy house flippers for jacking up prices with Redfins urging.

Add a bit more for health insurance: https://www.foxbusiness.com/healthcare/family-health-insuran...

Businesses should embrace remote work so:

1) they don't have to pay a six-figure salary

2) employees don't need a six-figure salary as they're living 100 miles away from "most cities"

More discussion a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37949144

Reply on news.ycombinator.com