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

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

#311

Post by deepsun »

lisper wrote: post #143
davidw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast. You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that the situation in California has wider repercussions, it's that there is a wider problem whose symptoms happen to manifest themselves earliest in California because it's one of the nicer places to live: there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice p…

If you drive 30 minutes any direction from San Francisco, you will see plenty of vast empty fields covered with wild grasses.

I don't argue that we should cover all the land available with houses, I like wild grass, but I just point out that if we really hadn't enough space -- we would have settled it already.

I've never heard the now popular "Earth is overpopulated" rant from anyone who lives outside major metro. Going by train in Russia or Japan (yes, Japan) and watching empty fertile lands for hours is a really useful educational experience.

Also, 1. Americans love to live in private houses. And that takes up way more space, and energy to maintain than condos/flats. Yes, some people in other countries just cannot afford private house, but I've noticed often they just feel anything bad about living in a condo.

2. Americans like their cars. And parking/highways take a lot of space, obviously.

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

#312

Post by drharby »

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…

So an llc ...

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

#313

Post by beatpanda »

marcell wrote: post #293

Whenever these threads come up, the NIMBY pitch forks come out. I 100% agree that we should build more housing in the Bay Area, but some perspective is helpful. The Bay Area is already one of the most densely populated regions in America: http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/maps/... And San Francisco is the 3rd most densely populated city in America, if you look at cities with over 100k people: htt…

NIMBYs in San Francisco scream bloody murder and call it "violence" when developers want to build on empty parking lots. I am not exaggerating. The idea that "geography" is the limiting factor here is willful ignorance.

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

#314

Post by adventured »

anonacct37 wrote: post #153
cobookman wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> only 100k down I'm going to need a minute to let that sink in.

The median new home sale in the US is around $310,000 for 2017 so far (the average is closer to $360,000).

20% * $310,000 = $62,000

Emphasis that that's just the median down payment for a new home in the US today.

The median existing home sale is closer to $250,000 for 2017. So you're looking at a $50,000 down payment just at the median.

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

#315

Post by shmerl »

robbrit wrote: post #31
nimbius wrote: post #16

Most of the bay area employees are divided into 3 categories from anecdotal experience: young rockstars that are willing to live in relative squalor for a chance to prove themselves, vested and moneyed elites (CEO's, presidents, VC funded overlords) who are so out of touch with the average employee its best they not show up to the office that frequently, and H1B visa recipients that endure the soul-crushing San Jose…

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…

> They certainly can't afford to buy a house.

It's not uncommon for people to rent. Buying just isn't affordable, if for example you prefer good public transportation. Forget about buying houses though - even rents are becoming crazy.

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

#316

Post by 0x445442 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #188
0x445442 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as long as the after tax take home pay of the 2 people is no less than 16K/month and it's a 15-20 year fixed rate mortgage then things should be fine. The back of the napkin numbers on those parameters; each of those people need to have a salary of 130-150K/year. Certainly not crazy for the well placed Apple, Google and Facebook employees but pretty much a pipe dream for the unwashed masses.

>> 15-20 year fixed rate mortgage forgetting property taxes?

The historical rule of thumb is mortage + taxes <= %25 of take home pay.

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

#317

Post by drharby »

ForHackernews wrote: post #161
taftster wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

The barriars to financing does not discount the accuracy of his/her/its comments

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

#318

Post by baus »

lisper wrote: post #143
davidw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> California's housing crisis has repercussions all up and down the west coast. You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not that the situation in California has wider repercussions, it's that there is a wider problem whose symptoms happen to manifest themselves earliest in California because it's one of the nicer places to live: there are simply too many people and not enough space for them all to live in the nice p…

We've created our own problems with low density zoning which makes it difficult to scale out housing in geographically constrained areas with strong economic growth like the Bay Area and Seattle.

There have been many threads recently which blame Amazon and other tech companies for creating Seattle's problems, yet other communities all over the US and beyond are clamoring for the exact same problem.

Seattle has gone a long way to accommodate the growth, but it still isn't enough. Too much of the city is zoned for single family residences. And the Bay Area suffers from the same issues.

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

#319

Post by 5706906c06c »

groupthink-- wrote: post #261
jerf wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The sad part, as a ethnic-minority, I have just found our community for my kids, etc. It would be really tragic if I have to tear my kids away from that." Contrary to apparently-popular belief (based on some other comments in this thread), the Bay Area is not the only place in the United States with ethnic-minority communities/enclaves, or the only region in the entire United States where "brown people" are not, app…

if by "brown people" you mean hispanic, that doesn't do much good for OP, who is most likely asian or indian. hispanic kids are even worse than white kids when it comes to making life hell for asian kids.

Armenian, actually, and that reduces the numbers to a very small population here, Fresno and L.A.

Edit: there are other communities on the East Coast AFAIK, but I would be trading this for that.

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

#320

Post by jorblumesea »

s0rce wrote: post #292
jorblumesea wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about regular people? Is everyone expected to be some high paid unicorn/big 4 engineer? Society is more than just rich techies.

"Regular people" in big populated urban areas can't expect to own a detached home, they can live in condos/apartments like they do in Asian cities, NYC and other densely populated cities.

None of that exists in the bay. There's nothing in terms of affordable housing. That's the entire point of the article. No one can afford to live there except for highly paid engineers. A condo will run you 700k easily in any decent place.
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