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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

#421

Post by waynecochran »

deepsun wrote: post #311
lisper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Go…

Yes, I fly into Santa Clara every week and live in the Portland, OR area (actually across the river in Vancouver). When I fly in it seems far from dense ... there is room for a lot more housing w/o becoming super dense.

I think people in the Bay Area got their's and don't want others moving in... they love the high prices... it suits them just fine.

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

#422

Post by nerfhammer »

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.

In such a situation they would have to favor housing policies that lead to a sanely priced market for other people to acquire homes, no?

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

#423

Post by slezakattack »

cobookman wrote: post #382
slezakattack wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get 3k a month for housing?? Remember, this is an 80-10-10 loan which means you have two loans. I have a 80-10-10 loan for a roughly $900k house and the first mortgage is $3400/mth (30 year fixed at 4.15%) and the second loan is $600/mth (same but around 6% interest). $4000/mth just for the mortgages, property tax is about 12k for the year, which means you pay $5000/mth on housing. For reference, this i…

After interest deductions on mortgage & property taxes a 1 mil home is ~4000$/month in `rent`. Yes you'd be paying more than 4k but you'd also be taking home more money as well.

I just described a home that is $100k less than the $1MM example. The property tax rate in San Jose is roughly 1.3% of the price of the home you bought it at. So for $1MM, you're looking at $13k in property taxes, not to mention a higher mortgage overall from my example. A quick mortgage calculator tells me that we're adding another $400/mth for the $1MM example. This doesn't include the second mortgage which will roughly be $100,000 loan at about 6.5% interest.

So, you're telling me that the $1MM home (which will be roughly $5600/mth) will give you nearly $20k in tax deductions (in order to meet your ~$4000/mth)?? Effectively making your property taxes free for you? You're either delusional or I am going to have a very exciting tax season come next April...

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

#424

Post by floydman »

This isn't really a bay area specific issue but rather a problem with any area that is desirable to live in with jobs. I live in Honolulu and we see the same issues here. Home prices are even more out of sync with salaries here as there are no where near as many high paying jobs as in the bay area. We also have a large homeless problem like SF

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

#425

Post by s0rce »

bduerst wrote: post #307
s0rce wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The bay area isn't urban - we're talking about large stretches of suburbia. The area also isn't converting to urban despite the demand, which is part of what the article is talking about.

That's a good point. It is a bit unique situation where there are small suburban homes for $2M+.

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

#426

Post by deadmetheny »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #202
lisper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That could not be further from the truth. There are lots of cheap places to live in the US that are still very nice, you just don't want to live there.

Those places have trade-offs, just like anywhere else. For example, the Midwest is a very nice place to live, but the winters here are absolutely awful and we also tend to have at least a month in the summer where it's also extremely hot. The job market for tech is decent, but it's not nearly as lucrative as the coastal markets, although the low cost of living does make up for that to a degree. These things matter a lot for some people, even if not so much for you.

As much as a lot of non-SV folks, myself included, enjoy ragging on California, the nice weather and good job prospects make it a very desirable place to live, and as such makes people far more tolerant of the hilariously awful housing situation and political climate.

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

#427

Post by conanbatt »

aantix wrote: post #168
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.

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.

Its not quite 40%, and 3k buys you ample space. I had a studio for 1800 in hayes valley ,which is one of the nice areas of SF.

And even in your calculation, means that after 4 years you can do the downpayment. Its not unreasonable for house prices to be where they are in that calculation.

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

#428

Post by taftster »

drharby wrote: post #317
ForHackernews wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

His comments. :) But "its" would have been interesting.

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

#429

Post by lisper »

damnyou wrote: post #418
lisper wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what exactly is wrong with NIMBY-ism? Not everyone likes living in dense cities. I don't see anything wrong with groups of people who prefer to live in less dense development working together to create less dense places to live. The problem is that there are (as I said) more people who prefer to live in less dense development than there is space to accommodate them all. At that point, the market takes over and de…

Soviet-style central planning is not "the market." Euclidean zoning is Soviet-style central planning.

That's ridiculous. Soviet-style central planning is not what is happening in the Bay area. The zoning there is being done by democratically elected governments and the land being developed is privately owned and can be freely bought and sold. The resulting high prices are absolutely the result of market forces.

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

#430

Post by alphonsegaston »

5706906c06c wrote: post #49

38, two kids and a wife. Have been living in a 900SQ/FT apt, I don't know how much longer I can take this before rage quitting and relocating somewhere else (don't know where). 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. Don't get me wrong, my daily 30 minute commute on BART isn't the worst. The worst part is…

Maybe think about LA? You can make that salary and own a home easily. And the Armenian community there is great!
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