231–240 of 408 posts
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It is a lottery? Move where there is a subway stop and property is cheap. Allston, Somerville, Southie, even East Boston is coming around. It isn't fuckin rocket science
Somerville has been expensive for years. Our landlord has raised rent by $175/month over the past two years, so we're having to move to Medford.
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Hood can stay hood a lot longer than your personal life timeline. It's kind of like the assertion 'the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent'. Younger people who want to buy somewhere affordable get long commutes instead in boring bedroom communities.
I'm fine with it being hood, I live here after all. But it is nice when things improve.
So I live in Boston, and bought a condo in the slums as soon as I could. Not the worst slum (Green St., near Hatoff's gas station for those who know JP), but 50 yards from a halfway house, the suboxone at Arbour counseling and the needles near it, Mattapan is pretty close. 5 years later the condo is up 40%, Hatoff's gas is now being destroyed for (I assume?) more condos, a brewpub is opening pretty close, and familie…
For every person like you someone buys in a neighborhood that never gets better. Some get worse. It's not a money train. I think you are bragging and that you don't understand the wider system, nor where your gains come from.
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It is relatively easy to get a software engineer job in Germany and couple of years later get a residency, so no, residencies are not the only reason people moved to Cyprus.
If a person theoretically spoke French and English but had not yet studied German, would that make such a leap more difficult?
I really think the "developers can work anywhere" adage is way overstated. We're still tied to location like anyone else.
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>If you're a fantastic developer in Ukraine, India or China and have very limited needs (compared to a guy with a family and kids), your disposable monthly income net of taxes, rent and commute expenses is still likely to be higher in Silicon Valley than Ukraine, India or China. No it would not. Nothing can beat sub 500 USD apartment, 5% tax rate and 3 cents for subway ticket
5% tax rate? Where?
In my personal experience remote work does not work so well. At least I haven't been able to make it work for me. For the second point, well I think expensive cities are expensive because people want to be there. If you can choose to live anywhere, why not go to the best place, specially when you can afford it?
I've worked remote for almost three years for a profitable startup. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but not having a commute is incredibly liberating. I've also found my careeer options to not be limited by being remote. Also, I live in Florida 20 minutes from one of the best beaches in the country. Not as "culturally fulfilling" as say the Mission or Castro districts (have been to SF more times than I can count,…
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I'm fine with it being hood, I live here after all. But it is nice when things improve.
Dude, there isn't 'hoods' or ghettos in Boston, at least none that I recognize. Plenty of places deep in the south that are much more dangerous.
The cause of the high cost of housing is not that many want to live in these cities, but rather the "rent-seeking", a market failure or market inefficiency which is caused by a politically induced scarcity of housing through the use of zoning density restrictions. The inefficient markets interfere with wealth creation and instead the use of politics transfers wealth to special interest groups, in this case wealthy landlords like President Trump from people who rent and are buying housing.
Economist David Ricardo first developed the concept in the mid-19th century and joined British Parliament just to overturn the rent-seeking which harmed the British economy. In his particular case it was the "Corn Laws" which taxed imported grains of all types with the result that bread and basic food cost more for consumers. Farmers would receive more money for their grain, but ultimately the landlords who leased the farmland to farmers simply charged the farmers more money as a result. Thus, there was a politically induced transfer of wealth (ultimately) from (often lower class) consumers to wealthy landowners.
This is analogous to what is happening in the housing market today.
Japan fixed the problem in 2002 when it passed a federal law taking zoning authority away from local municipalities. The result: in 2014 Tokyo built 140,000 housing units compared with 20,000 for all of NYC and less than 90,000 for the entire state of California.
Interested readers should consult writers of Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser, Economist and Financial Times Columnist Tim Harford (book, "The Undercover Economist"), and articles by Steve Beyer
Edward Glaeser: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/build-big-bill-article-1....
Tokyo's Affordable Housing Strategy: Build, Build, Build https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/08/12/tokyos-af...
What Liberals Don't Get About Affordable Housing: Filtering. https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2016/02/19/what-libe...
See also "Green Belt"