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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn't you be able to buy a house alone? And shouldn't you be able to work part-time and pay for college? What you're missing is that you used to be able to do these things but inflation has far outpaced income in certain areas of the economy, and now it's much harder.

The water is getting hot slowly and the frogs can't tell that the water is starting to boil.

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> Shouldn't you be able to buy a house alone?

> The water is getting hot slowly and the frogs can't tell that the water is starting to boil.

In one of the most expensive cities in the world? Hyperbole, apart, irrespective of how amazing the economy does, there will be places which will be expensive as shit.

It's not the expensive as shit part, as much as it is the lack of variation. Once you get realy expensive, the place gets lame. It already happened to (much if not all of) downtown NYC and central london.

You still can buy a house alone, just not in San Francisco.

Florida, for instance, is very cheap. There are plenty of places in California that are still quite cheap - they're just less desirable.

A lot of San Franciscans are just unwilling to extend to others the opportunities they had themselves. Expensive houses are terrible for young people and immigrants, but great for homeowners.

The problem is that in the game of home ownership the situation where every couple buys a home that they can afford on the lower of their two incomes is not a Nash equilibrium. If everybody else is doing that, then you and your spouse can be the exception and use both your incomes to get a mansion. Now everybody else sees how well you're living and they mimic your approach. It doesn't take long until it is no longer possible for families to buy a house on the lesser of their incomes.

> Shouldn't you be able to buy a house alone?

Where? Rural Nebraska? Chicago? NYC? Manhattan Island? Malibu?

All of the above?

It does not seem unreasonable to me that some more desirable locations are out of reach for some people.

Given that something like 60% of US households have two incomes, you'd have to expect that home pricing is at least somewhat tied to what you make on two incomes, not one. (And that's why you usually see these ratios in terms of median home price vs. median household income, but everyone immediately thinks of it in terms of per-capita income, which inflates it.)

>> Shouldn't you be able to buy a house alone?

No matter where you live, it will be more difficult to buy a home with a single income than a dual income.

I would say no. People should not buy houses alone (or arguably at all) in major metropolitan areas.

edit: I agree with your point about college however.

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