731–740 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Federalized zoning rules. Congress has the authority. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUAINMEI
One size fits all zoning regulations for rural Montana, Manhattan and the suburbs of Los Angeles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to be blunt, but if modest homes in your area are $1m, then you are in a VERY high-cost-of-living area and what you see here is not at all typical of the rest of the country. Where I live, a charming 1200sqft starter home in a blue collar neighborhood goes for $150-$200k.
Well, the jobs that pay the high incomes are in the very high-cost-of-living areas. This is a huge problem for economic growth. If housing costs in the Bay Area were at US average, easily 10M more people could live here and get high paying jobs. But that path to a better life is very constrained.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that you will always require housing, so you can never truly liquidate your primary residence. At best, you can borrow against it. At worst, you sell it once and rejoin the rental market.
This is actually why as a homeowner, I'm not particularly bothered by the value of my house dropping. Don't get me wrong, it's not exactly fun to watch its price tag drop, but the supposed dollar value of the house isn't "real" unless I'm looking to sell, which I'm not going to be doing unless I'm changing living arrangements, whether that be buying a different house or renting. Its value to me is that it's 1) a home…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to be blunt, but if modest homes in your area are $1m, then you are in a VERY high-cost-of-living area and what you see here is not at all typical of the rest of the country. Where I live, a charming 1200sqft starter home in a blue collar neighborhood goes for $150-$200k.
Indeed. If your complaint is that you need to be a millionaire to get basic housing, it's because you live with other rich people. Since the overwhelming majority of humanity lives in houses with value far below 1M$, we can conclude that no-one really has to live in a place with only 1M$ houses, but you, for some reason, want to do so. Living in a posh neighbourhood is a luxury, like Ferrari (which, by the way, costs…
> Meanwhile, renters are desperate. They’re begging for housing prices not just to slow, but to fall. I have a friend who is a head chef at a decently popular bar and restaurant on Broadway in Capitol Hill, Seattle (very trendy part of town if you aren't familiar, steep commercial rent). He lives in a 400 sq ft studio and is barely, barely making it from one paycheck to the next. I am sitting on a 2.6% interest rate…
I know this is anecdotal, but whenever I hear these stories, I'm curious about the details. A quick search leads me to believe that head chef pay in Seattle typically ranges from about 90k-110k per year. Finding apartments off Broadway in Cap Hill, I can see that studios, though relatively expensive, range around $1.5-2k a month. An income tax calculator estimates about a 22% total tax bracket and a monthly adjusted…
Capitol Hill (no one calls it Cap Hill.) is pricy, though $2,000 should find a studio easily, and no car is needed, it's a close knit enough neighborhood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. If your complaint is that you need to be a millionaire to get basic housing, it's because you live with other rich people. Since the overwhelming majority of humanity lives in houses with value far below 1M$, we can conclude that no-one really has to live in a place with only 1M$ houses, but you, for some reason, want to do so. Living in a posh neighbourhood is a luxury, like Ferrari (which, by the way, costs…
“Rich” is highly relative. If someone lives in an area where everything costs on average twice as much as somewhere else, their money is effectively equivalent to half of what it would be somewhere else. The reality is they’re probably looking to afford a upper middle class lifestyle and make an upper middle class household income. They don’t sound “rich”.
A person having a jet that costs $100 can do about as much with it as a person with one costing $100 billion.
Same goes with housing, mostly, with some obvious wealth breakpoints. The confounder is location, as defined by time to travel and job availability.
Quantization artifacts dominate. Having access to basics vs not has a much bigger effect than either quality or quantity.
This is why having just one house is not an investment - you cannot afford to not have one unless you're so rich you could outright get multiples of them in some places, get there and live comfortably.
> Meanwhile, renters are desperate. They’re begging for housing prices not just to slow, but to fall. I have a friend who is a head chef at a decently popular bar and restaurant on Broadway in Capitol Hill, Seattle (very trendy part of town if you aren't familiar, steep commercial rent). He lives in a 400 sq ft studio and is barely, barely making it from one paycheck to the next. I am sitting on a 2.6% interest rate…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to be blunt, but if modest homes in your area are $1m, then you are in a VERY high-cost-of-living area and what you see here is not at all typical of the rest of the country. Where I live, a charming 1200sqft starter home in a blue collar neighborhood goes for $150-$200k.
Great, if only there were adequate jobs in those places, so we could all own homes without needing $300K annual family income. The dissonance comes from the fact that a lot of hackernews readers make apparently high incomes, but the cost of living in their areas keeps them squarely working class. The best example I can give is in the Bay Area. I lucked out with $2850/month to rent a 1400 square foot house in San Lean…
You don't need to be on the West Coast to have a tech job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is completely ignoring the increase in house prices Guess what, the small and lower cost place you bought 10 years ago went up in price too. So you have equity and you've been in the rising market. > The fact is, in many areas, buying any house at all is not feasible for the vast majority of young adults. 100% untrue. Buying a house in the place they feel they deserve to live is. You can buy a home that is a 3…
> the small and lower cost place you bought 10 years ago went up in price too. Exactly, that's the problem. There exist people who did not buy houses 10 years ago, due to personal failings such as being teenagers at the time. Yet the houses continued to appreciate much faster than inflation and are now out of reach. > Buying a house in the place they feel they deserve to live is. You can buy a home that is a 30m comm…
It's not about deserving it... it's basic supply and demand. If the house is desirable, people will bid up the price. People with more money than young adults (older adults with more career experience) can afford to pay more and so will bid up the price on the most attractive housing until they get it.
I gave up air conditioning (among other things) for a few years to help save money for a down payment on my first house. What makes a person who didn't sacrifice/safe more deserving of the house than I (who can afford to pay more)?
A famous person once said "there are a million things in this universe you can have and there are a million things you can't have".
We all can't live in high rise penthouses and lakefront mansions. The whole point of markets and pricing/discovery is to decide who gets what. There's not enough for everyone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's more usual than ever, but living at home or with roommates still makes it very difficult to ever afford a home. Let's take a look: 1999 median home cost: $165,000; 1999 median household annual income: $42,000; 1999 home cost / annual income: 3.9 2022 median home cost: $468,000; 2022 median household annual income: $71,000; 2022 home cost / annual income: 6.6
You can't mention home prices without the interest rate as well. 1999 interest rate: 4.74% 2022 interest rate: 0.08% Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187616/effective-rate-of...