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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

#441

Post by matt_wulfeck »

swendoog wrote: post #197
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.

It starts with an S and ends with an O, it's likely where tech talent will go! Sacramento!

Fixes problem: sky high housing

Leaves problems: very high housing costs, overly legislated lives, high taxes, traffic, etc.

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

#442

Post by matt_wulfeck »

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.

Remember to include property taxes, roughly $800-month for a 1mil home.

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

#443

Post by FireBeyond »

StreamBright wrote: post #152
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.

You kidding right? 100k down? 2K mortgage? These are insane numbers that very few people can afford even in the tech community.

He's not even talking about a 2K mortgage. He's talking about a 2K/PERSON/mo, and him and his partner paying somewhere north of $4K to 5K a month in payments, PMI etc.

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

#444

Post by lisper »

damnyou wrote: post #432
lisper wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are democratically elected governments and Soviet-style planning mutually exclusive? Democratically elected governments do all sorts of horrible and unjust things. For modern examples see Erdogan and Duterte. The land itself is privately owned, sure, but undeveloped land is not very useful.

> undeveloped land is not very useful

I love hiking in redwood forests. I love peace and quiet. I love not having to deal with traffic. So I think undeveloped land is very useful.

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

#445

Post by pnathan »

lisper wrote: post #388
deepsun wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I like wild grass And that is the problem. You're not the only one. Yes, if we turned the San Francisco Bay area into a clone of Manhattan or Hong Kong or Tokyo we could accommodate a lot more people. But a lot of people would not consider that a good outcome. People who like that kind of lifestyle can have it in any of the dozens of dense cities on the planet. The SFBay area is desirable precisely because it is no…

> People move here because they like yards and redwood trees and vineyards and hiking trail

no, they want jobs. you can get outdoors anywhere in the US, but only a few places in the US actually have a super vibrant economy.

and NOTHING precludes turning SF into a stack of 120-story high-density towers apartments for all family types and leaving the redwoods and grassy fields alone.

nothing but the unwillingness to go density, thus ensuring the grassy fields will slowly be turned into cookie cutter suburbs

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

#446

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal »

The lack of affordable housing is strangling the middle class (typical worker type) in every major city in the UK and Canada too, it’s nothing to do with SV specifically, yes that lead to the higher population but other cities have had their own industries. The real problem is interest rates are low in all these countries and speculation means people will borrow like crazy to keep on increasing the prices. We also allow it to be fine for one person to own 1000 homes while local authorities in some cases limit supply.

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

#447

Post by FireBeyond »

adventured wrote: post #314
anonacct37 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, not so much any more. Most mortgages being underwritten today are with downpayments in the 3% to 5% region, trending down from under 10%.

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

#448

Post by mikeash »

ghaff wrote: post #436
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…

NIMBY is such a tired criticism. I live in an exurban/rural town on the East Coast. My town pretty consistently votes against major developments. We like the apple orchards and forest land like it is. We don’t want suburban style developments that increase traffic and taxes or industrial development outside of the light industry on the north side of town near the highway. If you want to call it NIMBY go ahead. As far…

I feel like if you want to control what gets built on a certain parcel of land, you should own it. If you want to keep those apple orchards around, make a better offer when a developer tries to buy them out.

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

#449

Post by [deleted] »

slezakattack wrote: post #423
cobookman wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ro…

[deleted]

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

#450

Post by omegaworks »

lisper wrote: post #388
deepsun wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I like wild grass And that is the problem. You're not the only one. Yes, if we turned the San Francisco Bay area into a clone of Manhattan or Hong Kong or Tokyo we could accommodate a lot more people. But a lot of people would not consider that a good outcome. People who like that kind of lifestyle can have it in any of the dozens of dense cities on the planet. The SFBay area is desirable precisely because it is no…

>The SFBay area is desirable precisely because it is not (yet) dense.

False. San Francisco has an entire quadrant of non-walkable non-mixed use areas that need to be rezoned and connected to its light rail transit network (Richmond). Density does not preclude green spaces. All residents have a park within a 10 minute walk[0].

http://hoodline.com/2017/05/san-francisco-is-nation-s-first-...

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