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The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

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111–120 of 154 posts

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many, probably most, companies a CTO is not necessarily someone coming from a software developer background but instead essentially an IT manager. And most companies are not headquartered in SF/Seattle/NYC, so $140k/year goes a lot farther there. That $140k figure also does not account for equity/bonuses

Maybe, but that's avg. So, some CTO's make 350-1M+ a year and so I'm supposed to believe many CTO's make less than 140k, maybe a lot less? Maybe indeed should slice the data in ways that make sense, but company size, or area only. As someone that manages 120+ people...I know a lot about what engineers and other tech workers make. These numbers are straight silliness.

Well there are biases also, first and foremost that this data is from Indeed.com and I doubt most high quality CTO positions are posted there. It would definitely make sense to separate based on company size for executive positions.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech salaries in Minneapolis and the surrounding area aren't terrible if you're reasonably qualified and do some digging- think low $100k and up. The rents seem absurd to me- $1300 for a one bedroom apartment? - but that's because I grew up in a town where a two bedroom apartment above a quiet store would cost $450 a month, tops.

$1300 for a one bedroom apartment? I'm paying $1360 for a two bedroom and I'm in the heart of Uptown in a nice apartment.

Yeah, I think it was near the twins stadium, and was brand new, so it was probably inflated a bit compared to what you would get if you looked around.

Regardless, I now have a 2k mortgage for multiple acres, waterfront, and no congestion, city noise, smells or lights. It's bliss if you don't mind the occasional snake or bear.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#113
post #78
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also weirdly assume you have a 2BR on a single income, which is not the norm.

Is it not the norm? It certainly was until quite recently. A young family with one breadwinner and a couple of small kids might reasonably want to live in a 2BR, in many countries not just USA.

I just want to add that the rent doesn't scale proportionately to number of bedrooms.

E.g. a 1BR in San Jose where I live goes for $2100/mo, a 2BR goes for $2400 (obviously, it's different everywhere - a friend of mine is renting a room in SF for $2K+).

It makes sense for a couple to get a 2BR even on a single income if it's good enough (and usually, once you can afford spending $2100/mo on rent, you can afford $2400 too). For 15% increase in rent, one gets the ability to e.g. comfortably invite friends/parents from out of state for a couple of days.

Of course, single-income no-kids couple does not look immediately look like the norm these days; but once you think of it, there are plenty of situations other than children that make sense for such a scenario: one of the partners might be in school / looking for a job / changing fields / being involved in something that doesn't provide a stable salary (arts, entrepreneurship) / did I mention start-ups? / etc

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#114
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech salaries in Minneapolis and the surrounding area aren't terrible if you're reasonably qualified and do some digging- think low $100k and up. The rents seem absurd to me- $1300 for a one bedroom apartment? - but that's because I grew up in a town where a two bedroom apartment above a quiet store would cost $450 a month, tops.

"The rents seem absurd to me- $1300 for a one bedroom apartment?" I think these numbers are unduly skewed by the relatively very large build-out of condo buildings that has occurred in Minneapolis in the past 4-5 years. Prior to 2005 (or so) Minneapolis was a very, very white-flighted downtown area with only a very few condo buildings extant. The notion of living in downtown minneapolis, to most metro area residents,…

I think that build out has been going on since at least 2004, at least around the University. Plenty of luxury student apartments around there with even more inflated prices for the value.

Even in the suburbs, sketchy one bedrooms were 900-1000 last I had looked, though I was limited in options because I had a small dog. I ended up going way out to savage to get one for 700 / month back in 2010

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#115
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not the norm? It certainly was until quite recently. A young family with one breadwinner and a couple of small kids might reasonably want to live in a 2BR, in many countries not just USA.

> A young family with one breadwinner That norm is quickly going out of style at least

How much of that is influenced by economic necessity?

My wife would love nothing more than to raise the kids but making ends meet is proving a tough tradeoff

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even factoring in an approximation of federal tax would have made the comparison much better. Adding in an approximation of state tax would give a pretty decent boost to cities in states with no income tax (although you have to watch out for sales taxes in that case).

What would also be nice is a comparison of rentals vs. purchasing a home including property tax considerations with our new deduction limits.

True. That would probably knock all of the Bay Area cities down quite a bit.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#117
The rents look a bit off, $3,700 is not the average 2BR apartment in NYC. Same for Miami, $2,400 is way too low. Maybe they're including too many apartments in the outer areas of these cities, but if you want to keep your commute <30 minutes in the cities, NYC would be closer to 4.5k and Miami would be hitting 3k.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#118
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A young family with one breadwinner That norm is quickly going out of style at least

How much of that is influenced by economic necessity? My wife would love nothing more than to raise the kids but making ends meet is proving a tough tradeoff

Unsure. But equality is one factor. At least where I live women outnumber men at universities - meaning that if one partner in the relation has an "important career", it's very soon going to be more often the mother.

Another factor is rents and house prices. If everyone you are competing with for that house can pay the mortgage on two incomes, you aren't going to afford it on one. So that's economic necessity I guess.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#119
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a better way to rend in places where that's affordable ;)

Not on a single income, though.

I'm from Indiana. The price difference between a 1br and 2br is sometimes small. Sometimes you can get a 2br cheaper than a 1br, and sometimes both of these options run the same as a small studio in an apartment complex.

There are slightly fewer 3br apartments there, so sometimes those prices are higher. Of course, in many small-to-midsize towns there was the options of renting a trailer for the same price as the 1-2 bedroom apartments.

One city was an exception: A college town I lived in. It was fairly common for rent to go up with each inhabitant because they were accustomed to making separate leases for each student. Mighty expensive when renting to a family, but made sense for their normal renters.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#120
post #28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything always seems behind. When I lived in mountain view, local papers were full of old school residents complaining about nearly finished new housing on Castro that a bunch of googlers would move into. Like... The time to preserve your small town setting passed about 20 years ago lol. It's no longer apricot field town, it's silicon valley, it's staying silicon valley. Why not profit off the rising land values?

But Silicon Valley was already dead 25 years ago! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.folklore.comp... Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!nntp.Stanford.EDU!abercrombie.Stanford.EDU!paulf From: pa...@abercrombie.Stanford.EDU (Paul Flaherty) Subject: Re: Sillycon Valley history Message-ID: Sender: ne...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News) Organization: DSO, Stanford University Refer…

And then that guy invented AltaVista, in Silicon Valley: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Flaherty
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