Show HN: Find a home close to work

Will fix.

Any plans to expand to other states?

It should be closer to 2h per day off the cuff, I'm sure you can find better sources than my memory.

At that rate, though, you save something closer to a hundred hours a year, or more than two work weeks.

$190k, I assume.

Salaries are higher here for one. Say $190k vs 4x as much, $760k. Assuming magic 10% down appears in your pocket, 0% property tax, ignore the differences in state/local taxes, and assume a spherical chicken in a vacuum.... $3200/mo vs $800/mo.

4 times as much! Wow! That's a lot of money. Right? Except.. it's "only" $29k/yr. Most cost-of-living expenses don't scale with income. Now, of course, your salary has to be more than that to cover taxes, but say 20% overall tax rate, you really only need $36k more per year, which you might see straight up on a single salary, based on cost-of-living pay adjustment alone. If you're married, suddenly you only have to make $18k per person per year more.

If you follow the "1/3 of your salary" rule, it would suggest that you need to make $86,400 per year more, which is why expensive housing sounds so expensive. One would hope that in a low cost-of-housing market, you're not spending 1/3 of your income on your housing, because then you really don't have a lot of money left over for retirement or food or entertainment. Similarly, in a higher cost-of-living market, you might fudge that a bit and pay more than 1/3 of your salary, which still leaves you more money for your 401k and transportation and entertainment, and all those things that really don't scale with cost of living much at all.

You could also look at the high cost of living as a savings plan. As long as you retire before whatever particular housing cycle bubble bursts, you can still retire to Texas (or wherever) -- you can just do so with more money (equity, savings, retirement plan, etc).

Also, some tax and expense treatment of housing is pretty regressive. You're probably not getting a mortgage interest/property tax income tax deduction on a cheap mortgage; on a more expensive one you are, so you're immediately paying a lower effective interest rate and property tax rate (if you want to look at it that way). You're not paying PMI for that sub-20% down payment because it's not federally backed. etc.

This is not to say it's cheap, or easy, or affordable for everyone, or even smart. It's just saying how it's possible, and how it's probably not as bad as it sounds.

You rent for a few years longer. I live in Southern California, and rented a 1BR apartment 2 blocks from work for $1000/mo (increased to $1150 by the time I moved out 5 years later). I started at high five-figures salary and was a bachelor, so I had way more than a 20% down-payment by the time I started looking at buying.

One of my coworkers who started at the same time as me lived in a 3BR with two roommates for the same period of time, so he was paying half what I was in rent. He still lives modestly (2BR, working wife, no kids) and probably could retire anytime he wants now.