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The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

priceonomics.com

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Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#141

Post by loeg »

pmiller2 wrote: post #56
occamrazor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest way is taking the median instead of the mean. For more info and other methods, search for “robust estimators”.

I guess I wasn't clear enough. Using the median certainly works better if you're looking at the population of "all 2BR apartments." But, I would contend that's a mistake, as luxury apartments are really fundamentally different from non-luxury apartments. And, among luxury apartments, individual amenities matter. A pool is likely to be less relevant than a doorman, for instance. Statistically, I don't see any good way…

2BR just happens to be the category the article chose. It's a reasonable assumption that e.g. families with a kid are going to rent at least a 2BR — of any age and luxury — if they can afford to.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#142

Post by rhapsodic »

alkonaut wrote: post #133
rhapsodic wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Jokes aside, it was a data point to illustrate a change that I know takes place also in other countries; that women account for an ever larger fraction of people with higher education. The number of families where the mother makes more money than the man is slowly increasing. I think if you dig into the data for US universities, you'll find that women are underrepresented in high-paying STEM majors and over-represen…

Oh I have no hopes for the US

> Oh I have no hopes for the US

That sounds like a value judgement. What difference does it make?

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#143

Post by panda888888 »

rhapsodic wrote: post #125
alkonaut wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsure. But equality is one factor. At least where I live women outnumber men at universities - meaning that if one partner in the relation has an "important career", it's very soon going to be more often the mother. Another factor is rents and house prices. If everyone you are competing with for that house can pay the mortgage on two incomes, you aren't going to afford it on one. So that's economic necessity I guess…

> At least where I live women outnumber men at universities - meaning that if one partner in the relation has an "important career", it's very soon going to be more often the mother. You can't logically conclude that based on that one data point.

College enrollment at all schools across the US (both 2 year and 4 year) is ~56% women, if I did the math right. Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_303.70.a...

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#144

Post by erik_landerholm »

opportune wrote: post #111
erik_landerholm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that's avg. So, some CTO's make 350-1M+ a year and so I'm supposed to believe many CTO's make less than 140k, maybe a lot less? Maybe indeed should slice the data in ways that make sense, but company size, or area only. As someone that manages 120+ people...I know a lot about what engineers and other tech workers make. These numbers are straight silliness.

Well there are biases also, first and foremost that this data is from Indeed.com and I doubt most high quality CTO positions are posted there. It would definitely make sense to separate based on company size for executive positions.

For sure. It's possible I'm just too sensitive to this stuff, but if you work at company of any size..say over 100, and you manage a lot of people...having your HR dept not understand how region, market, company size, etc effect how you should pay, is a huge pain point. These kind of "studies" just make that a lot harder.

Even the custom reports we get are "wrong" if you don't slice the statistics correctly. And a lot of people have no idea what's going on with compensation (salary, bonus and equity) right now, in competitive markets and competitive fields.

Our company is only 700 people and it's been a huge challenge.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#145

Post by joshka »

loeg wrote: post #27

Where the heck do they get $2800 for a 2BR in Seattle from? That seems high to me. A year ago I was renting a 3BR for $2100. Well, ok, "average" across all 2BR in the city. That doesn't really tell the full story and will be drawn up by high outliers. There are a lot of methodology problems here.

I had a similar though but thought it was too low (funny how that is). Take a look at apartments $2830 (365 apartments) [2] using craigslist counts data (which should optimally contain more duplicates for higher priced apartments). Assuming not too janky data, this tells us that it's a skewed distribution (removing the distance filter changes the skew direction as well).

[1]: https://seattle.craigslist.org/search/apa?search_distance=1&... [2]: https://seattle.craigslist.org/search/apa?search_distance=1&...

Edit: $2499 seems to be about the (craigslist data) median within 10 miles of 98101 [3]

[3]: https://seattle.craigslist.org/search/apa?search_distance=10...

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#146

Post by user5994461 »

panda888888 wrote: post #143
rhapsodic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least where I live women outnumber men at universities - meaning that if one partner in the relation has an "important career", it's very soon going to be more often the mother. You can't logically conclude that based on that one data point.

College enrollment at all schools across the US (both 2 year and 4 year) is ~56% women, if I did the math right. Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_303.70.a...

Women go less into STEM and higher income domains, compared to men. They have more degrees in aggregate but it's a higher proportion of "worthless" degrees. It is not meaningful to predict income.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#147

Post by gumby »

alkonaut wrote: post #110
gumby wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not the norm? It certainly was until quite recently. A young family with one breadwinner and a couple of small kids might reasonably want to live in a 2BR, in many countries not just USA.

> A young family with one breadwinner That norm is quickly going out of style at least

>That norm [young family with one breadwinner] is quickly going out of style at least

Not convinced: "Among married-couple families with children, 96.8 percent had at least one employed parent, and 61.1 percent had both parents employed" -- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/employment-in-families-wit...

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#148

Post by loeg »

joshka wrote: post #145
loeg wrote: post #27

Where the heck do they get $2800 for a 2BR in Seattle from? That seems high to me. A year ago I was renting a 3BR for $2100. Well, ok, "average" across all 2BR in the city. That doesn't really tell the full story and will be drawn up by high outliers. There are a lot of methodology problems here.

I had a similar though but thought it was too low (funny how that is). Take a look at apartments $2830 (365 apartments) [2] using craigslist counts data (which should optimally contain more duplicates for higher priced apartments). Assuming not too janky data, this tells us that it's a skewed distribution (removing the distance filter changes the skew direction as well). [1]: https://seattle.craigslist.org/search/apa…

Another way to think about Craigslist listings is that those are the prices that buyers haven't paid. (The inexpensive apartments fill quickly while the overpriced ones can stay on the market forever.) So listings will skew higher than actual purchase prices.

(And as your edit suggests, Seattle is much larger than a 1 mile radius from the center of 98101.)

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#149

Post by closeparen »

Bahamut wrote: post #77
pascalxus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. It's completely worthless in it's current state. Also, the rent jungle numbers look a bit conservative for palo alto. In PA a 220 sq ft loft costs nearly 2000$/mo to rent. I think the 3900$/mo figure they have is a bit conservative for PA. Furthermore, they compared 2BD as their normalization factor, rather than $/sq foot. I would imagine the more expensive areas get less Square footage for a given 2BD ap…

The housing numbers look poorly researched in general. Sunnyvale for example is not that hard to find a 2 bedroom apartment for under $3k - I'm paying $2700 a month myself for one with over 1k sqft and modern appliances.

“You can find one for less” isn’t a counterargument when shown an aggregate.

Re: The Places in America Where Most Income Goes to Rent

#150

Post by Balero »

gumby wrote: post #147
alkonaut wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A young family with one breadwinner That norm is quickly going out of style at least

>That norm [young family with one breadwinner] is quickly going out of style at least Not convinced: "Among married-couple families with children, 96.8 percent had at least one employed parent, and 61.1 percent had both parents employed" -- https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/employment-in-families-wit...

So the norm for a young family is to have two breadwinners by your stated data.
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