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San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

tomdale.net

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Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#291

Post by VLM »

enraged_camel wrote: post #164
api wrote: post #30

I've got a possibly great job offer on the table from SF/SV, but may turn it down. I'd love the city I'm sure, but after glancing around I've come to the conclusion that home ownership is unthinkable to anyone who hasn't had a cash-out event. The real estate market is certifiably, utterly bat-dookie insane. NYC is often considered more expensive, and Manhattan is certainly... well... Manhattan. But taken collectively…

>>I'd love the city I'm sure, but after glancing around I've come to the conclusion that home ownership is unthinkable to anyone who hasn't had a cash-out event. I've never understood this crazy, if not outright insane obsession with home ownership. Why does everyone want to tie significant amounts of their lifetime earnings into physical property that historically has had very low appreciation in value? It's like pe…

"physical property that historically has had very low appreciation in value?"

Only over a longer scale. Over a short scale, say 1980-2010, interest rates have gone from 20% to practically zero. So Joe 6 Pack who is going to pay $1500 no matter what interest rate exists, has caused the previous owners selling price to explode. And once prices start exploding, the bubbly pile on begins.

Its also a fad. Post 1950 no $ should be spared on education. Post 1990-ish no $ should be spared on real estate. When the fickle public changes their mind, look out below!

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#292

Post by tptacek »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #214
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NYC is often considered more expensive, and Manhattan is certainly... well... Manhattan. But taken collectively the NYC metro area is actually much more affordable. You can find places to live that are nice, friendly to someone older than 25-30, and at least sanely priced. It's crazy, isn't it? I was looking at housing prices recently, for places within a 30-35 minute train commute of work (I refuse to make a car p…

What nice Palo Alto restaurants are in strip malls? Most stuff is near University or California Ave. The only thing in Palo Alto I really think of as anything _like_ a strip mall is the Stanford shopping center, but that's more of a mall-mall, and the "nice" restaurants there are the big chain restaurants. Maybe the Fry's too, I guess, but there are no restaurants in that one.

His wording was hyperbolic but his point wasn't far off the mark if you compare the restaurant scene in SF (or NYC or Chicago) to that of South Bay.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#294

Post by enraged_camel »

Loughla wrote: post #244
enraged_camel wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What, exactly, is "crazy" about it? As a renter, you don't control your own destiny. You're at the whim of your landlord. As a home-owner, or better yet, a property-owner, you have much more control over your living situation. Don't like the paint color? Change it. Don't like your stove? Get a new one. Want to plant some new flowers? Go for it. This is hilarious. As a home-owner, you have control over your own home…

That is an asinine argument. You're more likely to run into terrible neighbors in an apartment setting, with the higher turnover in living spaces. Your argument is done in by basic research into the neighborhood. That's like saying that you shouldn't buy a home simply because it might burn down one day, whereas living in an apartment is fine, because if it does burn down, it's not your building.

>>That is an asinine argument. You're more likely to run into terrible neighbors in an apartment setting, with the higher turnover in living spaces.

Except in a rental setting you can complain to the landlord if your neighbors are noisy, or simply pack up your shit and move if things don't change.

With a house, you're literally rooted in that space for 5-10 years. If you get bad neighbors after making the purchase, you get screwed. If someone decides to build a factory half a mile away, you get screwed. If the nearby school that you purchased the house for degrades in quality, you get screwed. If the HoA decides for some reason (that they don't even need to justify) that they don't like your front yard, guess what: you get screwed. These things cannot be insured against or researched in advance. You simply have to live with them.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#295

Post by rwmj »

comrade_ogilvy wrote: post #272
bennyg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The heyday of SV (think microprocessor and early PC heyday) had insanely low real estate prices. A guy could get buy doing manual labor and tinker on computers as a side project in the garage back then. Today that's unthinkable. It sucks that tech companies willingly WANT to be in SF/SV, as if it's some magical technological cloud city where the rest of the world can't compare.

It is a magical technological cloud city. For certain business models. If the company in question is betting on very strong growth, then it needs a large pool of experienced talent to draw upon. Paying 3X or 5X as much to get top talent can easily save money in the long run. If you want to be taken seriously by big fish VCs, you have to be able to speak intelligently about how to spend more for a disproportionately p…

If only there was something that let you videoconference all day with your colleagues at virtually not cost.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#296

Post by ahh »

patio11 wrote: post #96

At the risk of unsolicited dating advice: is the reason one is embarassed to mention one's occupation to a woman at the bar caused by tech salaries being too high, or by years of social conditioning telling you that geeks are low status? (Or by learning that the way one signals high status is by constructing a low status outgroup and then explaining how you're unlike them?) An alternative: just pretend society really…

The second, and there's basically no solution for it. Other than lie about your job, I guess. I tend to tell girls I'm a "mathematician", which is sort of true, is about equally nerdy but doesn't instantly cue low-status associations, and doesn't lead to further questions. It works about as well as anything I could say would, but I'm still clearly low-status and it sucks.

What's your proposed solution to dating as a low-status male? If it's the above "pretend society likes makers", well, uh, nice plan if you can convince everyone else to pretend it too, but until then, women will still want to know and shun you once you tell them.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#297

Post by matwood »

mncolinlee wrote: post #284
enraged_camel wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If I plan to own the house for multiple years, a large chunk of my money goes to equity: I'm banking away value for later that you will get back when you sell the house. (Assuming the market doesn't go pear-shape: a big assumption.) In contrast, money you spend on rent is a pure cost, and irrevocably lost. This logic is fundamentally flawed. Contrary to the popular conventional wisdom (repeated by our Baby Boomer p…

Conventional wisdom is just that... a convention. Each region of the country has different real estate markets with different cost dynamics. This buy-rent article merely proves that you have to do the math yourself. I currently live near the Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St. Paul, which has one of the costlier rental markets for low end apartments. The cheapest apartments you can rent cost more per month than my mortgage.…

Each region of the country has different real estate markets with different cost dynamics.

RE is once again all about location. In my area taxes are very low for owner occupied housing (they give a discount to owner occupied and gouge 4-5x the second home/rental properties to make up the difference). Rents in similar areas are very expensive comparatively. Buying makes sense if you plan to stay in the area for more than a few years.

I also fully appreciate that this situation isn't true everywhere.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#298

Post by heyheyhey »

gregd wrote: post #168
jaggederest wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty bourgeois and it's entirely affordable to me. Rent is 50% less. My total monthly bills for utilities are $245 for a house, with AC. Electricity is half the price it is in the bay area. Parking is a quarter of the price.

Do you have children? The problems OP complains about with San Fran, won't be made any better if he brings his SF salary here. That's the problem. It's pricing locals out of affordable housing. Rentals here in Sellwood/Westmoreland start at $2000/mo. When we got to Portland two years ago, rentals here started at $1100/mo. Portland is THE most expensive place we've lived in in Oregon. A family of four pays between 150…

Portland being the most expensive city in Oregon is expected... It's like comparing Seattle to Tacoma/Pullman in Washington.

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#299

Post by sshconnection »

patio11 wrote: post #96

At the risk of unsolicited dating advice: is the reason one is embarassed to mention one's occupation to a woman at the bar caused by tech salaries being too high, or by years of social conditioning telling you that geeks are low status? (Or by learning that the way one signals high status is by constructing a low status outgroup and then explaining how you're unlike them?) An alternative: just pretend society really…

There's been a lot of tech worker backlash in SF lately. Not to speak for Tom, but I've certainly been made uncomfortable after mentioning it to someone who then proceeded to bash "all these Google types" who are forcing out the "true San Franciscans" and "ruining the culture of the city".

Re: San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down

#300

Post by woah »

RickHull wrote: post #279
woah wrote: post #24

The really interesting thing about SF is that it's not 7x7 as people claim- it's actually more like 3x3. The "City" is confined to a tiny area downtown and in the Mission and SOMA. The entire southern and western parts of SF are low-density suburban sprawl. This is a result of terrible planning in the 50's and shortsighted opposition to new housing and transit ever since.

> it's actually more like 3x3. The "City" is confined to a tiny area downtown and in the Mission and SOMA. What about Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and North Beach? Pacific Heights, Marina, Haight? These aren't examples low-density suburban sprawl.

Good point, I guess I was lumping them in with downtown. But still, it's basically just the northeast.
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