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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

#641

Post by kamaal »

taway_1212 wrote: post #242
mabbo wrote: post #78

It seems ironic that the land of self-aggrandizing free market disruption (Uber, AirBnb) seems so against the obvious free-market solution to their problems: increase supply. You have too little of something, and it's causing prices to skyrocket because demand is increasing. So make more of it, reducing the price. I just got back from a visit to the Bay Area. Outside of SF itself, not a single building over 4 stories…

> All that air space that could be condos, homes for people, anything at all, wasted so that "people can see the mountains better". Meanwhile, my friend and his girlfriend are paying $4000/month for 1000 sqft. My guess is that, if significant amounts of extra housing were added in the Bay Area, software devs salaries would fall. Right now, software companies need to pay insane money in order to offset the insane cost…

Home prices will fall too.

So all these people who have already paid millions for their homes will suddenly find their homes devalued by a huge margin.

Needless to say that won't go down well.

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

#642

Post by askafriend »

WalterSear wrote: post #349
oaijdsfoaijsf wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a $180k gross income is not particularly unusual in the Bay. I mean, that's still in junior engineer territory at one of the BigCos (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.).

No, that's not junior engineer territory, even at the BigCos.

Yes, it is. $170-200k in comp per year is the baseline at a company like FB or Google. It’s typically broken down into something like 105-115k base, 40-50k liquid stock vesting per year, 10-15% yearly bonus, and some kind of one time signing bonus given as a lump sum on the start date.

That’s for someone fresh out of a top school who hasn’t even negotiated at all. There are many new grads in the bay area that recieve this kind of comp.

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

#643

Post by askafriend »

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.

$2k mortgage per month is nothing. Renting a studio or a decent 1 bedroom alone will cost that much in SF.

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

#644

Post by akhilcacharya »

closeparen wrote: post #630
akhilcacharya wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd consider living with non-family roommates to be in the "relative squalor" bucket if you're making $200k-300k a year.

Amen. After spending all day in an open office, it isn’t home unless I’m in control of the acoustic environment. Roommates ate my sanity very quickly during my internship - they were lovely people, but they had the right to watch TV and talk on the phone and they did. I ended up spending most of my evenings and weekends in random work conference rooms.

I'm so glad that both of my out of state internships gave me a free/small deduction 1BR apartment! Would not be able to deal with a roommate.

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

#645

Post by unintended »

ef4 wrote: post #77
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Six lanes of traffic moving an average speed of 25mph is a hell of a lot more net volume than three lanes at the same speed. Good infrastructure also side steps a lot of the social problems that come with high population density. Cue whining about how pollution and an over-priced mass-transit utopia and high rise apartments will solve all our problems.

> Six lanes of traffic > Cue whining about how pollution and an over-priced mass-transit utopia and high rise apartments will solve all our problems. You do realize that six-lane highways are every bit as expensive as mass transit lines, right? And that a pair of railroad tracks down the median of that six lane highway can move a volume of people about 3x bigger than all the lanes put together? Honestly even if you j…

Obligatory: "Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others"

https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-...

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

#646

Post by userpass »

rdtsc wrote: post #402
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.

The funny thing is these companies talk about digital connectivity moving to the cloud, editing files in the cloud, video conferencing in the cloud, make social networks in the cloud, buy things online without leaving your house, watch movies online etc. Everything is online, pretty, efficient, and convenient. Then they turn right around and tell all their employees to move to the area, then to get in their cars, bus…

Because that's where the money is.

Employees go to SF because that's where the jobs are. Employers go to SF because that's where the investors are.

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

#647

Post by pc86 »

TuringNYC wrote: post #632
pc86 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair whether your house is worth $100k or $10MM doesn't mean much unless you sell it, especially in SF where your taxes don't change with the increased value. Yes, you can spend more of your earned income if you plan on leaving as soon as you retire. But it doesn't mean $60k is easy to live on.

>> But it doesn't mean $60k is easy to live on. It is much easier getting along on 60k when you're on a 1995 mortgage of $700/mo with frozen property taxes. Doesnt matter if you sell -- you are living in a million dollar house without paying for it. You get the space now. You get the easy commute now. You get it all for a tenth of current costs.

Well to be fair the largest expense with a house is without a doubt the mortgage, and that's not going to change even if property taxes are reassessed every year. Their mortgage would be $700/mo no matter what (as it should be). Is anyone here arguing that you should have $2,000/mo in property taxes for a $700/mo mortgage?

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

#648

Post by userpass »

city41 wrote: post #241
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Forced to leave" is a bit strong, evoking images of someone thrust into debtors prison. What would actually happen is they'd sell their house for 5x the price of the same house in a more reasonable housing market, and 10x what they paid for it, and move to a different location with a nicely multiplied bank account. I'll acknowledge that some stability is good. But it has a cost, and that cost is currently much highe…

But what if they don't want to leave? Many of these people have lived here their whole lives. If they must leave due to the market, I'd argue that's being forced out. Even if they do make a tidy profit. Anecdotal, but I've heard this is happening in Hawaii now with vacation home prices skyrocketing, causing natives to get stuck with property taxes they can no longer afford.

The property tax incentivises NIMBYs to stop digging their own grave and instead construct more housing.

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

#649

Post by toasterlovin »

alistairSH wrote: post #576
refurb wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It's a poor person problem, not a minority problem. The effort some people will put into pushing identity politics is astounding.

While you aren’t wrong about it being a poor problem, it would be extremely naive to believe past policies in the US haven’t contributed to some minority groups being more likely to be poor.

Wouldn’t it also follow then that the same policies have contributed to other minority groups being more likely to be rich (thinking mostly of Indians and Asians)? And if that’s the case, then maybe looking at this through a racial lens is largely irrelevant?

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

#650

Post by pjmorris »

nerfhammer wrote: post #578
pjmorris wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's indirect about the link between money supply and prices?

It can't explain shortages. If the price of one thing increases relative to the price of everything else (including the price of labor, i.e., how much you get paid) that cannot directly be explained by a money supply change. A shortage being caused by something else is a much simpler explanation.

True, shortages can be caused by a number of circumstances, including housing supply vs. demand. That said, approximately 2 Trillion of the 3 Trillion increase in the Fed's balance sheet over the last decade went to purchases of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). This had multiple effects, including: 1) boosting real estate prices by putting the Fed's fresh capital in competition with wage earners for real estate, and 2) supplying banks with 2T in capital that they could use for other purposes, for example VC investments in Silicon Valley. It's not just that the money supply increased; it's that the increase was targeted at house prices.
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