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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

#491

Post by analyst74 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #193
refurb wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how visceral the urge is to own a home when in fact, it's not always the best choice financially. People love to say "if I had only owned my home I wouldn't have thrown away so much in rent." This is typical in areas that have seen large increases in home prices. You rarely hear about the opposite which is "I'm $100K underwater on my house" because people don't talk about it when things go south. Ren…

A 30% hit in value only matters if you need to sell it. If it's an investment property, you could probably just hold onto it until the market recovers. As long as the value of rent payments > mortgage payment + maintenance costs, it's no skin off your back if the value drops on paper.

In most cases, rent and the cost of owning is related, meaning that if you're 30% under water, the rent will likely only cover 60~80% of your monthly expenses. On top of that, if you had to move away for another job, there are additional expenses around managing rental property remotely.

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

#493

Post by reducesuffering »

aabajian wrote: post #389

I place blame on the location of the tech hubs in the Bay Area. Not one mega-company, save Tesla, has setup shop in East Bay. There is affordable housing across the water, and new construction as well. Facebook has mitigated this somewhat buy purchasing Sun Microsystem's campus right next to the bridge. Also, note that SF isn't the fastest growing housing market anymore, it's Seattle ( https://www.seattletimes.com/bu…

Teslas development still happens in Palo Alto or San Mateo. They only setup the factory in Fremont because the building had already been built 30 years ago.

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

#494

Post by swendoog »

cobookman wrote: post #396
swendoog wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really, really curious how you got your numbers. I just 'did the math' in Redfin's mortgage calculator on a $990,000 home. The total monthly cost came out to $6,495 or $3,247 per person (in a couple). That's almost exactly 1/2 of the take-home (after tax) pay of someone making $120,000 a year in California. -- Monthly expenses on a $990k house in SF -- Principal and Interest: $4,185 Property Taxes: $1,015 HOA Due…

You are forgetting interest deduction & property tax deduction. so 900k mortgage at 4.1% interest is ~3k of interest and 1.2k of principal for first month. Now you have 1k/month of property tax, 0 HOA (i was not talking about a condo), and 180$/month of insurance. I've been quoted 80-10-10 which have 0 PMI fees. Let's be safe and assume that you're taxed at 30% at your highest level. Its likely you're being taxed at…

Ah, fair enough. I appreciate the breakdown.

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

#495

Post by primeblue »

projectramo wrote: post #294
latencyloser wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is actually hopeful since there are so many secondary and tertiary tech cities. This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.

Don't ruin your child's life with a short career in technology

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

#496

Post by icebraining »

ubernostrum wrote: post #392
nerfhammer wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need this indirect theory when much simpler numbers like the disparity between increase of population and lack of increase in housing units are available?

Because that theory allows the person promoting it to cling to an assertion that markets are perfect and never produce a bad result, and anything bad that does happen must be the fault of a government which got in the way of the perfection of the market.

This is a lazy response. One can criticize a specific governmental policy without being an anarcho-capitalist.

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

#497

Post by ghaff »

maxxxxx wrote: post #484
nightski wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it very localized?

Based on this it's nationwide: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

That says it’s about back to where it was 10 years ago. Mind you there was a fairly big run up to the peak of the bubble but most people here aren’t complaining about prices having risen again to 2007 levels.

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

#498

Post by dbcurtis »

zcdziura wrote: post #179
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.

How much land and house does that $1M buy you? In New Hampshire where I live, $1M buys you quite a bit: several thousand square feet of house, several acres of land, an excellent local public school system, great views... Heck, I even imagine that in the greater Boston metro area you'll get a similar bang for your buck. Your normal family property (approx 1500 - 2000 ft/sq, ~1 acre land) goes for $200k - $250k. Still…

In Sunnyvale, a two bedroom townhouse with two car garage, and a 30 foot by 12 foot back patio, in a complex that I was very, very happy to get out of (for various reasons) 16 years ago, is listed for $1.1M, but I would expect it to go over by $100-200K because supply is so tight right now.

Yeah, I'm catagory #4. Been here long enough to get on the escalator when it was possible, living in a modest house in a neighborhood I could never buy back into. And I understand what the money would do elsewhere, I moved here from Minneapolis/St. Paul area, and would be shopping for lakeshore if I moved back there.

Housing is broken. Sunnyvale is at least building new high-density housing, but not at a fast enough rate. Units are sold before the dirt has been scraped clean to start construction.

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

#499

Post by ghaff »

WalterSear wrote: post #478
wavefunction wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@Walter Sounds like a terribly inefficient and unsustainable lifestyle. Commuting just for stand up?

Commuting to collaborate with other people face-to-face for half the day. How is this inefficient, unsustainable? It provides the combination of private work and group interactions that are parcel of most white collar jobs. The vehicles will be electric, and many will probably spending any idle time at solar farms, to save on energy distribution costs, if they aren't being used as private offices. It is going to allo…

It sounds as if it would make a lot more sense for people to agree on 2 days per week to be in the office and work remotely the other three or something along those lines.

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

#500

Post by cefthurston »

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…

> where will they go?

I'd change that to where _do_ they go. This trend is becoming more pronounced but has been around a while.

As other posters note, they leave for other tech hubs, or other industries. Even if they could earn even more in the Bay Area they recognize that it's a long path to a quality of life that would be more accessible somewhere else.

There's also a weariness folks in the industry get after a while. On the one hand, it's an amazing place to get 20 years of experience in 5. Put at some point the bubble grates on you.

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