Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming • Hacker News Board

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#301

Post by api » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

It's not just small cities in the west. My wife and I recently returned to Cincinnati where we grew up, trading a vanilla apartment in Southern California for a very nice and much larger house. Since we came back here toward the end of summer 2020, house prices have increased considerably.

Houses in this neighborhood are now selling within 24 hours at typically 5-15% over asking, which is not typical at all for Cincinnati. This area isn't as depressed as some areas of the so-called "rust belt" but it hasn't been a "hot" real estate market for some time. The demand is being driven largely by people moving here from much higher priced areas of the country.

Lately investors have started entering the market here, plopping down cash for houses sight unseen at 10% over asking in "up and coming" neighborhoods. That's something this city has almost never seen except for maybe around downtown and the university.

It's good for local homeowners to a point, but people are already talking about how this could ruin neighborhoods and drive up rents.

My realtor joked with us that "we don't count" as carpetbaggers because we grew up here.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#302

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

nerdkid93 wrote: post #294

mark_l_watson wrote: post #281

My wife and I traded living near a beach and lagoon in San Diego country for a small but nice house in a mountain tourist town (Sedona Arizona). That was back in 1998. Except for some time working as a contractor at Google in Mountain View and managing a deep learning team for Capital One in Urbana/Champaign IL, we have lived a quiet life in the mountains since 1998. One reason for my success in being happy here is t…

> deep learning team for Capital One What!? Capital One has a deep learning team? As a long-time customer of theirs, I can't even begin to guess what that team might do for their set of products, except maybe to optimize their credit card offerings.

Fraud detection?

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#303

Post by RC_ITR » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

mring33621 wrote: post #272

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing negativity because it's getting harder and harder to deny that this "dream" involves the locals getting screwed when tech monopoly money turns their local economy upside down. Sure the guy who had the foresight to start a brewery wins but everyone else loses. You know what the end game of this looks like? It looks like Vail CO, Cape Cod MA, coastal Long Island and CT, the Hamptons, wealthy retirement ar…

There is no such thing as "locals getting screwed" in this scenario. We live in a free country, where people sometimes choose to move. In fact, when the demand for housing in an area goes up, often locals profit handsomely. Unfortunately, "I was here first" sounds a lot like "fuck you, I got mine". And it's not gonna fly.

Listen, nearly everyone largely agrees that wealth inequality at the current US level is bad.

Wealthy people moving to low-cost areas (and thus raising cost of living) accelerates inequality for a few reasons.

1) Unlike you scenario, many working-class people in places like Sedona can only afford to rent their homes (25% of total, give or take in Sedona). These people incur huge monetary costs in being forced to move / switch jobs / etc.

2) Moving causes people to lose social capital. Laugh all you want, but going from a tight-knit neighborhood of peers to a new town of strangers creates costs, at least in the short term. No one to watch your kids, no one to give you a ride if your car breaks down, etc.

3) Even for those who stay, they lose power, since their new wealthy residents likely have better lobbying sway (e.g., the new bus to the airport causes service to decrease to job centers, etc.)

I don't disagree that certain locals benefit from gentrification (parent comment made the same point), but your capitalism-enabled lack of empathy for those who don't benefit is why people are warming to the ideas of socialism. So if you don't want that, I'd tread carefully & try to be a bit more empathetic.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#304

Post by arminiusreturns » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

pyinstallwoes wrote: post #203

arminiusreturns wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HOA part really is the hard part, and even beyond that, the local zoning regulations can be arbitrarily infuriating, especially in certain states, and the ones with larger swaths without HOA and crazy regs have many negatives making it very hard to find what you speak of. I've been looking for years. I think a good bet is to find an heirloom house and property and bid on it.

What's your top prospects so far if you don't mind sharing since we have similar desires?

You can email me at the email in my profile. The thing I didnt say is I grew up in a mountain village, and Ive seen and been impacted firsthand by the influx of rich people from big cities. These communities are tight knit (even in the boonies, you usually have your general store town, while a real store may be an hour away.) and posting the good prospects online is sort of antithetical to the whole idea.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#305

Post by farnsworth » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #215

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #79

Are we still ignoring the ecological collapse that is caused by urban sprawl? We *must* increase the density of our cities. If you believe that the climate crisis is a problem and a big one, then you could be for a rude awakening as most experts now consider the collapse in biodiversity to have far bigger impacts on human lives and living conditions than climate change[0]. The only reason why there are fewer headline…

> We must increase the density of our cities. We could also try to make a few new cities, instead of ten thousand new suburbs

We already have cities, we are just refusing to build new housing in them.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#306

Post by lizknope » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

client4 wrote: post #16

I can't wait until people are required to move back to cities for in office work. Small towns are becoming faceless neighborhoods of urban areas with a SouthWest or JetBlue commute. New residents want to ignore their neighbors and put up gates to their home. Small towns have heart because people interact with each other and work to make the community better.

I grew up in a small town in the south. We were the first Asian family in the town and dealt with a lot of racism in the 1980's. When I went to college in a big city the weekly racist comments were basically gone. I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist in larger cities but it is far better than small towns.

We had two KKK rallies through the town square in my town in the 80's. We have so many right wing racists in positions of power now that I have no interest in living in a small town again.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#307

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

solipsism wrote: post #74

ejfkcisodk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to ask you to reveal your hometown to a stranger but am curious to learn more, especially after spending a year living in the French alps (Isère). Is there a list of quiet mountain towns in Oregon/CA/etc that would include yours?

Gonna guess... Bend, OR?

Bend has 100k people, and the Bend metro area has 200k people. If it used to be considered quiet, it most certainly isn’t now.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#308

Post by CuriouslyC » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #261

CuriouslyC wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, we know anecdotally that certain places produce far more than their share of "talented" people, so I don't think those twin studies are complete or conclusive.

That's just the genetic heritability of intelligence and other personality factors. High IQ, high achieving people are disproportionately attracted to certain job markets. Those people tend to have high IQ kids. Those high IQ kids tend to grow up and become high achieving adults. The outcomes would largely be the same whether those same kids grew up in Palo Alto or Peoria. Don't confuse correlation for causation. Sim…

You're not addressing the thing I was talking about.

Take for instance the bevy of amazing mathematicians produced by early 20th century Budapest. That wasn't just genetics, it was the culture of the city and the teachers those people had. Likewise you could look at the rise of soccer greatness in Rio; that wasn't genetic, it was due to features of life in Rio and a culture of passion for soccer.

IQ is less important and more malleable than you think. It should be called nutrition and nurturing quotient instead.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#309

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #295

giantg2 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people who had to move away from rural areas to get tech jobs. I would guess that it wouldn't be so bad if it were those people moving back. Or just people who had a genuine interest in living there. Instead it sounds like it's mostly people who have always lived in the cities that have some idealized view of the country that doesn't actually match the local customs/culture, sort of like gentrificatio…

There is a huge push for school vouchers, with about half of our local school board being occupied by folks who have kids who attend the private schools in the closest urban area. These individuals want their property taxes to be given to them as a voucher to use where they please instead of straight to the schools from the state. There are others who have taken a more direct approach and sue the local districts for…

Oh, vouchers in your area. We didnt have that. I guess that was before they were really a thing too.

"They claim they should be able to benefit from extracurricular activities in their district (sports, test preparation, science clubs, that sort of thing), like home-school kids can; even though their kids go to private schools."

If they are paying the money (no vouchers), then I don't see why that's a problem.

Our private school partnered with local public schools on some sports. One local school would send us their soccer players, we would send them our shooters. Another one would send us golf students and our tech students would go to their vo-tech program. You would take drivers ed in whatever district you lived in over the summer. It worked pretty well.

Re: Small cities in America’s Mountain West are booming

#310

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #302

nerdkid93 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deep learning team for Capital One What!? Capital One has a deep learning team? As a long-time customer of theirs, I can't even begin to guess what that team might do for their set of products, except maybe to optimize their credit card offerings.

Fraud detection?

[deleted]