Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#161

Post by ForHackernews » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

taftster wrote: post #56

taxicabjesus wrote: post #24

I've been thinking that apartment cooperatives might be a way to break "investors'" stranglehold on housing. The last landlord I had was a decent fellow - the property was well maintained and he fixed problems promptly. But my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property, and I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him. One time he was showing off the little 8-unit complex to someone he wanted…

> "But my rent certainly went to pay his mortgage on the property" Um, yeah. That's the way it works for property investors. Find a property, borrow money to purchase, rent out property to cover mortgage costs. This happens at low scale (individuals) and high scale (property investment companies, REIs, etc.). > "I now have nothing to show for the $thousands I paid him" Presumably, you had a job at the time, for which…

Your comment fails to even consider the people who don't qualify for a mortgage or have the money for a down-payment.

Relatively few people are in the position of being able to choose freely between buying and renting.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#162

Post by Analemma_ » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #115

jostmey wrote: post #26

I've only visited SF. From what I've seen, there are far better cities such as Seattle, San Diego, ect, ect. I live in Dallas and couldn't be happier. I've been able to start a family as a Postdoc! http://dallas.culturemap.com/news/city-life/03-29-17-us-cens...

What makes Seattle better? I've visited friends there a few times and I can't shake the feeling that it's only trailing the Bay by a few years in of affordability and transportation woes.

The housing situation isn't quite as fucked as the Bay, in that Seattle is actually building more units (there are dozens of high-density apartment complexes under construction at the moment). It's not enough to stop rents from going up, but it's something. And hey, we can always hope that Amazon opening a new HQ somewhere else will ease the influx.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#163

Post by CalChris » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #133

xtacy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding on the comment below, it's an unfortunate combination of many prevailing issues. 1. One of the things Prop 13 does is to cap the maximum rate at which a property tax grows per annum to 2%. However, due to housing demand, the property values grow at a much faster rate (7% is not unheard of). The property tax can change when there is a sale. 2. Bay area prices have skyrocketed. 3. The peninsula topography and…

The flip side to that is without prop 13, families like this would quickly find they can no longer afford to pay the taxes on their house and are forced to leave. Which is also not a great situation.

No, this doesn’t happen in other states that don’t have Prop 13. Instead in California the property tax burden is shifted to new home owners, young families just starting out.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#164

Post by jogjayr » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #133

xtacy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding on the comment below, it's an unfortunate combination of many prevailing issues. 1. One of the things Prop 13 does is to cap the maximum rate at which a property tax grows per annum to 2%. However, due to housing demand, the property values grow at a much faster rate (7% is not unheard of). The property tax can change when there is a sale. 2. Bay area prices have skyrocketed. 3. The peninsula topography and…

The flip side to that is without prop 13, families like this would quickly find they can no longer afford to pay the taxes on their house and are forced to leave. Which is also not a great situation.

Or...homeowners might become slightly less NIMBY? They would be less enthusiastic about house price increases outpacing inflation and would be less likely to vote down new development?

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#165

Post by client4 » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #136

client4 wrote: post #14

Montana, a land of National parks, natural beauty, fast internet, and a low cost of living has a number of high tech jobs open. Full disclosure, I own an internet company here and want more tech savvy people in the area ;) Social Finanace (SoFi) | Helena, MT Oracle | Bozeman, MT OnXMaps | Missoula, MT Zaneray Group | Whitefish, MT Submittable | Missoula, MT Applied Materials | Kalispell, MT

In 1999 I bailed out of the valley and moved to Livingston, MT. I had to build my own ISP to get connectivity to my house but otherwise it's been a success. Interesting to watch how the tech "scene" has changed over that time. I used to know all the developers in this half of the state personally!

Still live in Livingston? I'll buy you a beer at Katabatic just to say hello.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#166

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #33

robbrit wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

> It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will struggle to attract more senior folks. They leave for more affordable cities or head back home to be close to family when they decide to have kids. EDIT: May I offer up Tampa as a ye…

Definitely true. Even other nominally 'expensive' cities can attract away Bay Area expats if they're less comprehensively pricy.

NYC has the same problem as SF: it's hell to get in and out, and no one is building new units with easy access to the city center. (LA likewise.) But Boston, DC, Houston, and other very big cities are way more forgiving to people willing to commute 20-50 minutes in return for some decently-priced housing.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#167

Post by hpcjoe » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

cobookman wrote: post #109

robbrit wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

I'm fairly early in my career at a company ( 80-10-10 mortgage on a 1mil home is only 100k down. And the monthly payments split by 2 people (aka a couple) is ~2k / person / month. That's 4k/month all in once you include the tax rebates.

What are the parameters of that $1M home?

For example, I looked at comparables for my current home in a recent job hunt. My reasonable sized (1700 sq ft) house in a good area of Michigan (western Wayne county, bordering Washtenaw and Ann Arbor) is about $250k if we sold today. As far as I could tell, this would not be the down payment on a roughly similar house in comparable neighborhoods in the Bay Area.

[added]

When I was looking up the mortgage costs to help in my negotiations, it was looking close to $100k/year in payments (6500-8500/month). Which meant, when I looked at that in terms of after tax income, we didn't have much money for things like food, sending kid to college, cheap clothing .... stuff we might like to do like going to movies ...

So, yeah ... there's that ...

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#168

Post by aantix » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

cobookman wrote: post #109

robbrit wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

I'm fairly early in my career at a company ( 80-10-10 mortgage on a 1mil home is only 100k down. And the monthly payments split by 2 people (aka a couple) is ~2k / person / month. That's 4k/month all in once you include the tax rebates.

100K down but the average salaried offer appears to be 140K?

140K, 40% for taxes, leaves with 84K, 3K a month for housing (assuming you don't want to shack up with some rando Craigslist'er), leaves 48K.

Another 20K for food and booze, and you're left with 28K.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#169

Post by latencyloser » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #59

robbrit wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fourth category: people who have lived here for a long time, and were able to buy property back before it became unaffordable. These are typically the managers or senior employees. It makes me wonder that as the young rockstars and H1B recipients age, where will they go? They certainly can't afford to buy a house. I imagine as time goes on, companies in the Bay Area will be awash with young junior talent but will s…

> where will they go Other tech hubs. Portland, Seattle - even little Bend has plenty of people from California who are attracted by the (for them) low housing prices. They, in turn, put pressure on housing prices for 'ordinary' people here. California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast.

Seattle is quickly becoming 'bay area'-ish from what I can tell. Housing is certainly becoming difficult at incredible rates. Here in Bellevue, a colleague of mine bought a house for ~400k, it's now worth well over ~500k only a year later. Many houses in that area also sell for at least 700k+ assuming you can even get an offer in before a cash buyer grabs it. Don't even get me started on the traffic. I run as many of my errands before 8am as possible.

I personally know I will never be able to afford housing close to work based on how things are now. Currently I'm just saving my pennies and hoping I can move to another job with a lower cost of living somewhere else in a few years.

Edit: For reference, I am just a just above 'entry level' engineer at Microsoft. I'm paid well, but not well enough for the housing around here.

Re: Bay Area hammered by loss of jobs: Lack of affordable housing strangles hiring

#170

Post by riazrizvi » Mon, Oct 23, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

msluyter wrote: post #9

Austin resident here. My wife and I have been talking to renovators and have heard several times that projects simply take longer these days because many workers now must live farther out from the city core than they used to. I wouldn't be surprised the same thing happens here -- to a lesser degree perhaps, as we have more geographical space to expand into -- with avg commute time being the primary constraint on grow…

If you look at an historical chart of GDP growth by city you'll find others[1], since I believe the issue of increasingly coveted zones that push out lower income inhabitants has been a problem in rapidly growing large urban centers since before history. I read how it was a common complaint in ancient Rome. I experienced it myself working in London during the 90's, and now too in the Bay Area.

I wonder how self-driving cars will impact conurbation size when compared to other advancements like boats, horses, carts, roads, canals, trams, steam-engines, trains, tarmac, subways, combustion-engines, bikes, cars, steel bridges, and mechanized roadway construction?

[1] http://www.best-cities.org/2014/best-performing-cities-repor...