Help me understand. An average mortgage is 200k, at the average household income of 63k and a 30 year at 4.1%, thats 18.5% of your pretax income going into a mortgage. The same numbers for a 300k income and a 700k house works out to 13.5%. Seems like you are doing significant better than most? Happy to be corrected.
Yeah I'm not sure what he's talking about either. $900k home on $300k income is entirely reasonable and a better ratio than what the average person does
I’m not sure what part about a a 900k house inflated due to NIMBYism and stupid policy choices is reasonable.
If OP feels the main entering the bottom of the market with their exorbitant salary, imagine how the the average person feels.
The bullshit and nimbyism in California is truly breathtaking. That happened in the wealthy San Diego County enclave of Solana Beach, where the Pearl was cut from 18 apartments to 10 and its approval required an underground garage with 53 parking spots.
The houses he mentions are likely 4-6x his take-home. Coming from the south-east, he may well be used to a market where good houses are 2x your take-home. Some parts of the country do have similar price-to-income ratios for property as California, but in general I think you're getting a much newer & better condition house at that ratio compared to California real estate. For example much of the Bay Area was built in…
>you're getting a much newer & better condition house at that ratio compared to California real estate You can renovate and get a newer and better condition house. You can't get SoCal weather and natural features at any price. Hence the high prices.
The sad part is because it's so competitive it seems like no one has any money left over to renovate, which has the rather perverse outcome of the nicest locations in the world to live, having the worst houses to live in.
The houses he mentions are likely 4-6x his take-home. Coming from the south-east, he may well be used to a market where good houses are 2x your take-home. Some parts of the country do have similar price-to-income ratios for property as California, but in general I think you're getting a much newer & better condition house at that ratio compared to California real estate. For example much of the Bay Area was built in…
That's not the point of the comment above. The point is that he absolutely CAN afford it.
By SF criteria yes. But by the criteria he's used to maybe not. An adjustment period may be required.
Once upon a time three times your annual gross was considered an expensive house. And a little more than ten years ago, six to eight times your gross was considered prudence.
After moving to America a while ago, one thing that struck me is how a lot of things are designed as effectively regressive taxes: the poor pay more than the rich. I opened a basic bank account with a giant American bank. The account has an exorbitant monthly fee, something like $15, but it’s waived if you keep a sufficient balance or have a steady salary. So the only people who pay the crazy fee are the broke people…
I have no idea why someone would use a bank instead of a credit union.
> Housing seems to me to be one of the most government-planned markets due to the strict zoning laws, but I've only seen fairly lefty orgs advocating for relaxed regulation. I'm surprised there isn't more movement from libertarians along the lines that property owners should have more rights for what they can build on their land. Not sure about what anyone here considers as libertarian, but if you were to ask a liber…
> Not sure about what anyone here considers as libertarian, but if you were to ask a libertarian what they would tell you is that if you own property you are free to do as you please so long as you do not harm someone else. I think that's why I'm surprised I don't hear that more. The size of someone's back yard or height of their fence (to a reasonable extent) seems like it wouldn't harm someone else, but they're str…
> I think that's why I'm surprised I don't hear that more. The size of someone's back yard or height of their fence (to a reasonable extent) seems like it wouldn't harm someone else, but they're strongly regulated in much of CA's single-family zoning.
I'm not sure what you mean, but to clarify: the libertarian position is that if the fence harms no one, then there is no one, not even governments, to have anything to do with said fence besides the fence's owner, as that is the owner's right.
$15/mo is far too high at current interest rates so your point stands, but, rich people with steady balances are also paying the bank a fee in the form of an interest-free loan that the bank re-invests. $15/mo is equivalent to ~$14,400 balance at 1.25% APR [0] so anyone with a higher balance than that across their big bank low-interest/no-interest accounts is paying more than $15/mo. [0] I chose this number as someth…
From a business perspective, the $15 a month makes sense. However, I'd consider banking an essential need to modern day life. Thus I think it is worth looking at through a humanities perspective. Unfortunately in our current situation, it's very expensive to be poor.
This is a popular progressive opinion in the United States, currently pushing for "Postal Banking," AKA simple banking and check cashing at post offices for no cost. The conservative position currently being pushed is privatizing or shutting down the USPS.
How is this a ghetto? This is housing that is more spacious than my dorm room. The current situation is accepting a ghetto to exist on the sidewalks where there is no plumbing or services or shelter or a lock or any semblance of safety.
If you put 10k impoverished persons in a small area then that meets the definition of a ghetto, which is a minority group living in one part of a city. It will gain a stigma, it will become under served by the commercial sector, and those with an address in that area will be treated differently. It would be better if we could have decentralized housing for the homeless such that they are welcomed into more affluent c…
You already have these areas, in fact the opposite happens. Skid row in LA has been a rough part of town for probably a century. As a result, that's where the vast majority of services are located. On top of that, impovershed people live all over town in CA. Across any arbitrary 500 feet in a CA city you might see one family living in a million dollar+ home, a single family crammed in a tiny apartment, and encampments and RVs spanning the in between. Rich and poor already live on top of each other, this would at least mean the impoverished who are already living in a given neighborhood are housed instead of the status quo which is living in the same neighborhood but in a tarp with no plumbing.
A friend of mine lived in the bay area for a bit and ended up leaving because he couldn't handle the virtue signaling. From his experience a significant amount of people would talk about helping low socioeconomic folk, oppression, or any other in vogue topic but never actually do anything. These would then be the loudest voices lobbying against having a methadone clinic in their neighborhood. He's living in Denver no…
Very true, just go on Nextdoor in the Bay area. The same person who "fights" for social justice for the oppressed is the person who posts "How do I get rid of the homeless tents in front of my house?".
How would you know this?
I'm genuinely curious how you are seeing Nextdoor activity outside of your own Nextdoor neighborhood, given that How Nextdoor limits participants by neighborhood and verifies addresses before you can even read postings. I can't even find an option to see other neighborhoods. As my mom was dying and I was helping to find resources and later sell her stuff, the only way I could get access was to register with her address and then wait for the coded postcard.