How can houses cost $50,000 in those two Texas counties? Don't builders cost far more than that? If the cost of rebuilding is far more than the purchase price, then insurance and maintenance will be expensive - how will you afford a $10,000 new roof if you could only just afford the $50,000 house? Maybe America really has wide salary gaps for the same jobs in different places?
How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
191–200 of 350 posts
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#192High-cost cities get their high property values via network effects -- it's the proximity of other people that makes the land valuable. I wonder if a good way to circumvent high home prices is to create new cities deliberately in rural land. For instance, get a few thousand people to agree to buy a large plot of land in a sparsely populated area. All the early-adopters get a cheap plot of land to build a house on, wi…
This has been tried. Check out California's 3rd largest city (by area): http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/california-city-unbuilt-s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California Turns out it's pretty hard to create a critical mass of population.
I would expect most attempts to do this as a get-rich scheme would either fail outright or not become the kind of place people would want to live. If done as more of a crowd-sourced community-driven non-profit project, at least you have everyone's interests more-or-less aligned and some basis of trust.
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citations for that number? Why don’t they save for retirement? Can someone on minimum wage with a family save for retirement? Does someone who makes bad choices deserve to be homeless and destitute later in life?
>Does someone who makes bad choices deserve to be homeless and destitute later in life? The rest of us don't deserve to pay for their bad choices.
Bad choices don't happen in a vacuum any more than good choices do.
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people I know that don't have white collar jobs don't have any expectation they will ever be able to retire. I'd be very surprised if the majority of americans were in a position to be able to retire.
I'm in my thirties and work for a government funded research organisation doing work on a particle accelerator. I don't expect or want to retire, but then 'retirement' means different things. I would definitely want to retire if I worked as a brick layer. Pensions are a Ponzi scheme, don't fall for it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41204209
Just curious - how many software developers would have retired by now? And at what age?
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#195How can houses cost $50,000 in those two Texas counties? Don't builders cost far more than that? If the cost of rebuilding is far more than the purchase price, then insurance and maintenance will be expensive - how will you afford a $10,000 new roof if you could only just afford the $50,000 house? Maybe America really has wide salary gaps for the same jobs in different places?
It's entirely possible that no new housing has been built in those areas for decades... and yeah, labor's cheap, but if there's no work in the area, that $10,000 roof is going to cost a lot less.
Possibly relevant experience: my daughter attended college in a very small town in rural Tennessee. We were there to drop her off, and overheard a painter talking to the owner of the hotel about doing painting some of the hotel.
The painter told the owner the price, and then offered a discount before the owner could reply.
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends of course. Despite the high cost, many live here because their salary is multiple times higher than they could get elsewhere.
It's not just the salary. It's also the opportunities to do things as in for the SF Bay Area we can go to wine country one weekend, go snow boarding another, sail, surf, hike; there's a lot of stuff to do here. I'm sure people can say the same for the NY metro and other similar places. I've lived in cheaper but boring places. The financial tradeoff is fair.
Vs NYC there's also Tahoe, the ocean is surfable, there are beaches, it doesn't smell like trash everywhere, the climate is less extreme (less hot humid in the summer no snow), more access to fresh local produce more of the year, etc etc. It's not like rent in Manhattan is cheap, and you'd likely make less in NYC vs SF unless you work in finance.
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
And of course the NYTimes calculator also factors in home prices appreciation. This is not really academic; it's fairly important. In cheaper housing markets with limited growth, it might be cheaper to rent because the expected cost of a major repair (and return on that investment) are both so low. Of course, you can't ever recognize the value of your house unless you sell it and move somewhere cheaper (or buy a 2nd…
I think this highlights how expensive living is and how little income is. If we're going to have a "free economy" without an end of life safety net (i.e. Social security) then it has to be possible to work a lifetime and retire on savings made. But most indicators show little to no saving for most people. It sure seems something is deeply wrong.
Good thing that so many smart people are working so hard on this! /s
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#198I liked the visualization and data, but I don't think it makes sense to compare home prices to wages w/o considering alternatives to home ownership. Home prices don't exit in a vacuum. That is, if a home is 10x the median salary, you can't really say "well, if I didn't buy a home I could work 10 years less." That's because the alternative to buying is renting, which is also expensive. So sure, a mortgage in SF is $6k…
You also have to factor in the opportunity cost of what you could've done with that down payment (e.g. What would a $100k downpayment invested for 30 years in the stock market be worth vs how much is that worth in your home in 30 years?) The NYT has a buy vs rent calculator that helps make some of these decisions: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
Everyone I know in my age group with a house got help with their down payment from parents. Either in the form of low/no interest casual loans or just substantial gifts. It's possible this money wouldn't have been available to them for speculation in the stock market.
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#199I liked the visualization and data, but I don't think it makes sense to compare home prices to wages w/o considering alternatives to home ownership. Home prices don't exit in a vacuum. That is, if a home is 10x the median salary, you can't really say "well, if I didn't buy a home I could work 10 years less." That's because the alternative to buying is renting, which is also expensive. So sure, a mortgage in SF is $6k…
There are more alternatives: work remotely, live in cubicle under table, live in a car...
I mean also roommates, the classic way to cut costs. I think it's interesting because most New Yorkers I know have roommates into their 30s, 90% all of my SF friends don't.
Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also have to factor in the opportunity cost of what you could've done with that down payment (e.g. What would a $100k downpayment invested for 30 years in the stock market be worth vs how much is that worth in your home in 30 years?) The NYT has a buy vs rent calculator that helps make some of these decisions: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
Everyone I know in my age group with a house got help with their down payment from parents. Either in the form of low/no interest casual loans or just substantial gifts. It's possible this money wouldn't have been available to them for speculation in the stock market.
Some of us don't have parents who have more money than we do.