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Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

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Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#211

Post by somethoughts »

thebradbain wrote: post #179
asdff wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are higher than California, right? I can't find the source handy at the moment, but I've heard that a house in Austin that looks like a couple hundred grand cheaper than an equivalent house in California for the listing isn't actually any cheaper when you factor in the increased taxes and potentially other costs I'm not aware of.

Property taxes are _much_ higher in Texas than California, in fact Texas has one of the highest property taxes in the nation (because there's no income tax, and TX still needs to fund itself somehow; TX also has one of the highest sales taxes for this reason, too). You pay the same on property taxes for a $400k house in Texas as a $1M house in California. Not only that, CA has Prop 13: for better or worse, your prope…

Additionally as someone who did some casual redfinning around Austin at the start of the pandemic, I'd say my own natural inclination was to shop pretty close to the price of the California single family home (i.e. $1M) and envision what it'd be like to live in/grow into the Texas mansion (i.e. $1M) at the equivalent price range. I probably wouldn't have downsized to a $400K home and I probably would have been sticker shocked by the property tax bills.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#212

Post by belltaco »

chroem- wrote: post #58
ericmay wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On abortion or taxes? I think it’s an important distinction that we need to address - social conservatism, what that means, fiscal conservatism, or outright low taxes, etc.

Elon has been a fairly outspoken critic of California's covid measures, as well as the state's cultural stance on free speech issues. He had previously threatened to move all of his business operations out of California because of covid restrictions, and now it looks like he is making good on those earlier comments.

He said today that the California facilities will be expanded, not moved out.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#213

Post by paxys »

pvarangot wrote: post #158
etchalon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

I talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".

That is a massive assumption. Plus with continuous growth in home value their tax bill will also keep ballooning, unlike in California where prop 13 shields homeowners from this.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#214

Post by unwiredben »

pvarangot wrote: post #158
etchalon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

I talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".

The east part of Austin where Tesla is located is still underpopulated compared to most of Travis county, so there's room for a lot of housing to be built out that way. Connectivity from there to central Austin isn't too bad, since that's the direction of the airport and Houston.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#215

Post by cletus »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #46
cletus wrote: post #27

Good. This will both alleviate pressure on the Bay Area as well as accelerating the political shift to the left in Texas. It's a win all around. I actually think that living in the Bay Area as a tech employee is increasingly unjustifiable from an ethical point-of-view. It was once the case where that was necessary for many career paths but that's increasingly not the case and the pandemic has hastened that shift. Why…

> Why unethical? Because tech workers are contributing to the displacement of the people those places need to survive. Bay native here working in tech, and I'd argue that most SFBAY constituents are contributing to the NIMBY problem, not just tech workers. The vast majority of the workforce in the Bay doesn't work in tech, and they oppose new housing just the same. The incentives just don't align for there to be a lo…

So, it's obviously hard to define what the Bay Area actually is. The SF to SJ corridor is one definition but that excludes East Bay, which is significant. Probably the best proxy is the SF-SJ-Oakland metro area, which seems to have a population of ~10 million people.

How many of those are tech workers? It's hard to say. Here's one estimate that suggests there were ~400k in each of SF and SJ a few years ago [1].

Some of those will be single or married to other tech workers. Others will have partners outside of tech. Some will have children. I'd say for every person in tech there's probably 1-1.5 other people as a back-of-the-envelope type calculation.

That puts the tech population at around 15-20%, which passes the sniff test (at least for me) and is significant. Obviously not all of those can vote (eg immigrants are represented highly in tech) but many can. So we're talking about a group that could wield a lot of political power.

But they just don't it seems. My personal view is that Norcal tech workers as a whole are just as self-serving as the NIMBYists they like to point the finger at. I suspect that a large number of them are the NIMBYists at this point.

[1]: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/09/16/san-jose...

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#216

Post by ma2rten »

etchalon wrote: post #141
Apocryphon wrote: post #56

The official reason is because of housing: "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California," Musk said. "Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed." But, he added, "It's tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away....There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area." https://ww…

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

According to Zillow the median house price in Austin is $596k. In Fremont, CA it's $1,4m.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#217

Post by asdff »

kadoban wrote: post #204
asdff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem for musk in this case being his tax burden, since he is otherwise entirely insulated from every other issue affecting most californians.

He's a billionare, he's insulated from tax burdens as well.

Doesn't mean he wants to pay them. Look at Joe Rogan doing just this to avoid heavy taxes on the spotify deal.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#218

Post by danhak »

xvector wrote: post #195
SavantIdiot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exodus has been soundly proven to be a myth. [1] But assuming it isn't, there aren't many better places to go. Texas is a joke. Traffic is worse than LA in the major cities and it is run by Christian zealots. Yeah maybe you pay fewer taxes but the other quality-of-life tradeoffs aren't worth it. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/California-exodus-is-ju...

It's such a terrible state. Infested with ultrawide roads and zero walkability. Women don't have bodily autonomy - imagine trying to raise a daughter in such an environment. I'd hope that alone would deter engineers with families from the state. Not to mention the a worthless human being of a governor. Backwards politics and ideals. It's a joke of a state, everything wrong with America hyper-concentrated on steroids.…

There are many millions of people in the country that don't share your politics. Some of them are even engineers with families.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#219

Post by pvarangot »

Apocryphon wrote: post #197
pvarangot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to several Tesla and former Tesla folks that will probably relocate because of this, and the say is that since Austin in less NIMBY than the Bay Area new housing will get built and prices will go down. It's a more complex bet than just "we move there because houses are affordable now".

Beyond housing, isn't traffic a problem? Lots of people will be commuting from Round Rock.

According to a friend that moved to Austin last year, yeah traffic is a problem but in downtown Austin in new buildings it's even worse. Sewage is a problem.

Re: Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

#220

Post by boringg »

etchalon wrote: post #141
Apocryphon wrote: post #56

The official reason is because of housing: "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California," Musk said. "Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed." But, he added, "It's tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away....There's a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area." https://ww…

As someone who just bought a house in Austin this year, if the reason is "affordable housing", they're in for a world of hurt.

I mean are you seriously comparing affordability of Austin to the bay area? My sense is that you have only lived in Austin and thus don't know how squeezed things are in the bay area. Not trying to be rude but just trying to point out how much more affordable Austin is relative to the bay area.
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