Sounds about right.
The benefit is, if you’re ever able to afford property, you can hold it for a few years, sell it, pay off the mortgage, and move almost anywhere else in the world as a millionaire.
Remote work begins to look very attractive.
Bay Area single-family homes’ median price is $2 million. With a 20% down payment, you are looking at a $400k down payment and $10k monthly payments. No single soul can afford it, unless you have rich parents or Airbnb hoarders. Or senior+ positions for FAANG
Yup, those are the people who benefit. Everyone else gets priced out. And good luck if you’re in trades or the service industry.
Trades or service workers live outside the area and commute or cram in 8 to a house. My uncle was driving 3 to 5 hours one way doing heavy equipment at one point before he bailed out of the area. Everyone who works in San Fran/San Jose drives in from Pleasanton, Livermore, shit as far out as Tracy and Stockton, and turn the entire 580 into a 24 hour a day clusterfuck.
How the bay area hasn’t collapsed in on itself is insane to me.
Yeah we visited there 10+ years ago, stayed in a hotel, and ate at a nearby Dennys and I was questioning how those hotel and Dennys employees could afford to work in those places.
yup, its mostly all tech, which is closer to palo alto/sunnyvale. thats also where biotech firms are, besides the ones in between.
The fact that I work in the trades, not an office job, is one of the main reasons I haven’t had to move to the capital for work. All my friends had to relocate because they couldn’t find jobs in our hometown - now they’re renting and living paycheck to paycheck on salaries higher than mine, while I’m the only one who owns a house.
Yep, my wife’s friend bought a house in San Jose, and IMO in a shitty area. Her mortgage is $10k / month. The thought of spending a full Honda Civic every 3 months to put a roof over your head is just asinine.
Seriously who the fuck is able to do this and how is it sustainable as a system?
I don’t mean to be an accelerationist but let’s all get guns and wrap this the fuck up already.
Senior dev positions in the Bay area can fetch like 300k/yr base pay or higher. You can afford monthly down payments with an income this high. If you are married your income can go even higher. US tax code also allows you to average your income if you file together. Eg. If one person is staying at home and the other makes 300k/yr, your income tax is calculated as if two people made 150k/yr each. This can greatly reduce your taxes.
our nearby neighbor in the bay area left a while ago, but the new owners, new parents payed around 1.8mil-2mil for the house. also they were quite delusional of why they even bought it. they thought they had priority because of them being new parents plus i overheard them they wouldve never afforded it if thier parents dint pitch in for the renovations. the wife is not as nice as the husband, since shes so “introverted” she gives off a karen vibe.
2m for a single family home AND needs renovations, And she’s gonna be an asshole?
Godamnit
2 other families moved in the neighborhood over the years, and close to us and they were all "the soccer mom types, they were not nice people. the husband tends to stay out of it,.(one of them has a giant lifted truck, and the soccer mom had a tesla “suv”. gentrification is pretty much a problem, we actually did a presentation while i was in college over other areas.
I’m looking at jobs where they have offices in downtown SF and require full time in office because “culture” (or if they’re generous, 2 days a week at home), but the pay is like $250K/year. Anywhere else that salary would be AMAZING but in SF you’re going paycheck to paycheck and still commuting 2-3 hours a day. Seattle is just as bad.
Those places are beautiful and I’d love to live there, but it’s not realistic for anyone who hasn’t gotten some kind of windfall.
Seattle is definitely not just as bad. Sure it’s reasonably high cost of living, but you can do fine well under 100k. Parts of it are insane, but parts of it are not much worse than urban Midwest.
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I find it really funny that Texas is welcoming the tech bros now, because this is exactly what happens when the tech bros mix with an unregulated housing market.
Unregulated? Clearly you don’t know the Bay Area.
How do you think the housing market is regulated?
It’s basically illegal to build apartments in most of the bay area other than a few tiny downtown areas. It’s changing in the last few years but still very difficult.
NIMBYs?
The problem is actually old “liberal” hippies who refused to allow development of new housing for decades. NIMBYs as they’re called. I’d say the hippies are mostly gone, but the refusal to build housing remains. Go to any other major city in the country and there are usually cranes everywhere. Not in California. Tech bros did bid up the limited housing supply for awhile, but now that prices are easily $3-5 million, they’re even getting priced out unless they were a founder that got an exit or just lucked into joining a company at the right time – NVidia for instance.
Yeah it’s been like that for awhile. Tech bros have been moving in swathes out of California because they only care about paying less taxes and buying cheaper real estate.
If min wage kept up with inflation it would be more than $30/hr now.
Artificially inflated real estate pricing is one of the main contributors to the wealth issues we’re facing. A house near the big water should have no bearing on its value. It’s just further commodifying a basic need for financial gain.
My, how society is collapsing. I live in the Bay Area (Oakland) and accepted that I will never own a home years ago. I live well, but I’ll always be a renter because I don’t want to move some place more affordable. Why? I have tickets for a lot of live shows this year that wouldn’t exist in most other cities.
What? You can just fly into the city?
I wouldn’t go through the hours of airport misery for shows that aren’t huge. I’m seeing shows that I can get to by train, uber, or even a short walk for a couple of venues. Investing thirty minutes of travel is a no-brainer. Multiple hours has to be tremendously special. Plus the time I’d have to take from work each time. You don’t just fly in after working a full day and fly back after the show without a lot of investment. There’s no way flying would be manageable. And then the added cost.
it has been that way for 10+years.also the fact that its re-gentrifying to, the white flight happens generations ago, but are now flooding back into the neighborhoods. the first signs are cafes being established, and then you get a white karen soccer mom complaining about you parking in front of thier house, which is a public street, and then the multitude of white people that also give you nasty stare if your a poc approaching anywhere near thier vehicle or house.
also the zoning laws and nimby(rich white people in wealthy suburbs) prevent new housing too.
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