Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tomdale.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 458 posts

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

#361

Post by aet »

x0x0 wrote: post #312
enraged_camel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

I think there are many reasons, some more rational than others. 1 - everyone is long housing, and sfbay has had major price swings. Buying a house caps what you'll pay. I lived in a neighborhood in sf where market rents for my apartment went from $2200 to at least $2700/mo in a little over a year and a half. 2 - the US, via mortgage interest deduction, privileges home ownership 3 - california in particular privileges…

My friend rents and has 2 pit bulls. His rent is actually quite reasonable. Even has some outdoor space...

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

#362

Post by aet »

cm2012 wrote: post #261
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…

By the way, you can also get a spacious 2 bedroom co-op with a large outdoor courtyard in NYC with 1 hour mass transit (express bus from door to midtown/downtown)for $300,000, in a fantastic neighborhood.

That sounds nice, but 1 hour is a major commute in my book.

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

#363

Post by pchristensen »

michaelochurch wrote: post #101
DanBlake wrote: post #8

The reason for San Francisco's high rent/home price is very simple, despite how others like to complicate it more: 1: Its desirable for most people to live here. Possibly the most desirable place in the USA, depending on your tastes. As a result, people are willing to pay more to live here. There are jobs, culture, food, art and much more all in this great city. 2: Rent Control. I wont get too much into it, but my ta…

This is a decent explanation but it's actually simpler than that. People who are upwardly mobile follow the jobs. In general, they choose jobs, then cities. Except for the very rich who don't have to work, desirability ( excluding commute) is a minor factor in prices. I can back that up, but I think most people buy this already. However, real estate demand is extremely inelastic. If 5 percent of the houses in Manhatt…

New development is usually more expensive because: a) supply is legally mandated to be low, so only the most profitable per-unit housing is built, and b) what new units are permitted to built are required to be large because housing (especially in CA but pretty much everywhere) pays less in taxes than it consumes in municipal services, especially public schools.

As a consequence of b), the types of housing that are widely allowable are small (0-2BR apts/condos) that families with > 1 child won't live in and large houses. If prices are high enough, sometimes townhouses are allowed. One interesting observation is that the only high density housing being built in most suburbs are senior housing, which are aimed at people ages 55+ and have covenants in place preventing anyone under 18 from living there. Ergo, guaranteed no school children and therefore the cost to serve is more inline with taxes paid.

I would love to buy a 4 or even 5 BR condo because I want to live somewhere dense and I don't care about a yard, but in order to do that I'd have to buy 2+ condos and combine them. Yikes.

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

#364

Post by ahh »

patio11 wrote: post #316
ahh wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The last time a young lady asked me what I did for a living I did the Old Spice guy impersonation and mentioned I was getting flown abroad to do it for an audience. She married me, so I now have the luxury of not caring anymore what people think of my answers, but they're generally some flavor of "I run a company which does X", where X is one thing I think they'll find interesting. Possible Xes include "helped teach…

Sadly, I don't run a company, and I'm not in charge of anything high status or visible. I do performance optimization and design threading infrastructure to dramatically improve the experience of writing high performance system software. I think this is pretty valuable, but there's no way to put it that seems high status to non-computer people.

Should I just quit and start a company selling shit because that'll look better to everyone else?

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

#365

Post by enraged_camel »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #348
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…

> This logic is fundamentally flawed. In my experience it's rarely worth appealing to logic when discussing home ownership. It's just such an emotional subject that rational debate is often hard to come by. 1. Many home buyers make purchases with relatively little knowledge of their local real estate markets. For instance, in some areas heavily hit by the crash, you can find buyers who don't know that a considerable…

>>In my experience it's rarely worth appealing to logic when discussing home ownership. It's just such an emotional subject that rational debate is often hard to come by.

This is probably the most intelligent thing I have read in this thread so far. You are absolutely right. Sometimes I forget that purchases - especially big purchases - are emotional decisions, and people jump through all sorts of crazy mental loops to justify them. I think this "bug" in the human brain is one of the most powerful drivers of the housing market.

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

#366

Post by mawk »

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…

Very douchy place. Probably less douchy than Ohio though.

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

#367

Post by mpyne »

aet wrote: post #362
cm2012 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, you can also get a spacious 2 bedroom co-op with a large outdoor courtyard in NYC with 1 hour mass transit (express bus from door to midtown/downtown)for $300,000, in a fantastic neighborhood.

That sounds nice, but 1 hour is a major commute in my book.

It is, but my commute in DC is at least 45 minutes and normally 55 (by Metrorail), and many have far longer, so it's really not that bad in the context of living in a major metropolitan area.

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

#368

Post by noamsml »

prostoalex wrote: post #330
gkop wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically on the subject of transportation, many wealthy tech companies have deployed private buses that benefit only their employees and not the community. I don't think it's evil by any means, merely rational (at least in the short-term), but also still a missed opportunity to strengthen the community by covering employees' public transit passes, encouraging employees to live closer to work, or moving work close…

This is on top of them covering passes and encouraging employees to live closer to work, and just reflects on low quality of Bay Area's of transportation grid. If Muni, or SAM or VTA ran buses from SOMA/Mission to corporate campuses, those would definitely be used. But after a three-hour one-way commute that involves Muni+BART+Caltrain+city bus (an example would be a Google employee in Mountain View who lives in the…

Compare with Seattle, by the way, which just has a Sound Transit stop right on the Microsoft campus, easily accessible from Belltown and Cap Hill. If there's one thing that frustrated me moving from Microsoft to Google, it's the sudden decrease in the quality of inter-city public transit.

Moreover, if public transit to/from SF weren't such a fucking joke, more young techies would choose to live outside the city, knowing they could go in whenever they wanted to.

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

#369

Post by malandrew »

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…

What I want to know is what I, an SF renter, can do to fight the NIMBYism and get more housing units added to the city each year.

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

#370

Post by mawk »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #20

Cry me a river. San Francisco is expensive. It's not the tech workers fault. Nobody owes you a home in San Francisco. The American dream is not home ownership. Where'd you hear that? A countrywide home loan commercial?

It's expensive to experience the douchery that is San Francisco.

I agree, there should be a Massengil tax.

Post reply on HN