31–40 of 75 posts
This is an interesting article that describes building a $2-6 million dollar house in a matter-of-fact manner. I wonder what the prospective audience size for this article is in the Bay Area –maybe less than 5000 local people are capable of affording these properties.
I've always wondered what software developers make in the heart of silicon valley. I see some things that basically say 'more than Portland but only by maybe 50% or so', which means perhaps $180K or so? Nobody is buying a million dollar house on that kind of income, but in Portland (where I think houses are pretty expensive) someone making $120K wouldn't have any problem buying a perfectly fine place, even pretty clo…
Salary varies with experience and size of company quite a lot, but $180,000 is certainly not outside the norm. I think it's possible to buy a $1M house on that income if you save for 4-5 years.
I've always wondered what software developers make in the heart of silicon valley. I see some things that basically say 'more than Portland but only by maybe 50% or so', which means perhaps $180K or so? Nobody is buying a million dollar house on that kind of income, but in Portland (where I think houses are pretty expensive) someone making $120K wouldn't have any problem buying a perfectly fine place, even pretty clo…
Really senior engineers can certainly make more; 500k for a top 10% performer.
For reference I just got my tax statement for last year and I’m over 300k.
Had a chat with our insurance agent recently; she wants us to increase our insurance coverage on our home in old palo alto, which is currently calculated based on $350/sq.ft. rebuild cost. She said that clients in the burned-out areas in Santa Rosa were being quoted much higher rates, and although she admitted that was partly due to a large number of people competing for contractors all at once, she believes $450 is…
So based on that rate I should be able to easily purchase my ~550 sq. ft. apartment. In fact the payments on a 30 year mortgage would be about $1300/month. Clearly the problem is the price of land, made even less affordable because of density maximums. If the price of a lot could be split over 6 people, a lot more people could afford to purchase a house.
This is an interesting article that describes building a $2-6 million dollar house in a matter-of-fact manner. I wonder what the prospective audience size for this article is in the Bay Area –maybe less than 5000 local people are capable of affording these properties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention living with all of your extended family under one roof, starting a church or homeless shelter or disco club, stockpiling enough food to outlast a zombie uprising, or displaying your collection of luxury cars you never drive.... More seriously, in general single-family houses should be on the order of 1000–2000 square feet. The rest is typically a complete waste (nobody I know who has a 4000+ square foo…
I don’t know about you, but 1000-2000 sqft for a single family home with an actual family in it is downright cramped. You could turn a garage into a wood shop though if you don’t have a particular need to store your car in a garage. The point of a large home is to turn it into your own personal oasis where you can spend days at a time without ever really needing to leave, and without feeling bored. The thing is, many…
This is an interesting article that describes building a $2-6 million dollar house in a matter-of-fact manner. I wonder what the prospective audience size for this article is in the Bay Area –maybe less than 5000 local people are capable of affording these properties.
That's a wild underestimate. I'd guess at least 100k people can afford properties like that, unless you mean something like afford it in cash. Even then, it's still an underestimate.
How many households are pulling this kind of cash down? Is that a common salary at a big tech company? Maybe for CxOs but not for run of the mill Director-level middle management.
I've always wondered what software developers make in the heart of silicon valley. I see some things that basically say 'more than Portland but only by maybe 50% or so', which means perhaps $180K or so? Nobody is buying a million dollar house on that kind of income, but in Portland (where I think houses are pretty expensive) someone making $120K wouldn't have any problem buying a perfectly fine place, even pretty clo…
There are also some other factors which tend to push up Bay Area home prices. Due to building restrictions, the market for homes is undersupplied. Due to prop 13 and the nice weather, people are less likely to leave even if they don’t need to be here for work anymore. So the market for homes is not very liquid and prices are sort of a one-way ratchet (barring economic meltdown). Really, only the top 10-20% or so of earners are in competition to buy a single family home at all in the area, and that number is shrinking.
Consider a random engineer at Google who bought their home seven years ago for $1M and it’s now worth $2M, while they paid off the mortgage with their RSUs. This person is no bigwig, but they might get approved for a mortgage on a $5M house and afford the down payment no problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a wild underestimate. I'd guess at least 100k people can afford properties like that, unless you mean something like afford it in cash. Even then, it's still an underestimate.
So, a $3MM home costs approximately $30K a month after interest, depreciation, taxes, and insurance, right? That's around $360,000 a year. Assuming you're going way overboard and spending half of your income on housing, that's $720K/yr of salary required to support that--or more, if you want to save a little money and have a life outside of work and writing mortgage checks. How many households are pulling this kind o…
This is an interesting article that describes building a $2-6 million dollar house in a matter-of-fact manner. I wonder what the prospective audience size for this article is in the Bay Area –maybe less than 5000 local people are capable of affording these properties.
Don't underestimate the number of people out there who are far wealthier than us 9-5 coders—people come from all over the world to buy property on the west coast.