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Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

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221–230 of 718 posts

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#221
post #55

Every person I know who's left California did it because of housing costs (except for one, who did it to get away from "the damn liberal government that wants to take my guns"). We have a major housing cost crisis in this state, as well as a big NIMBY problem. There have been good solutions run up through the state house, that either fail to pass or get so watered down they are no longer effective, in large part beca…

Also moved from SF to Nashville, TN.

Lot's of factors:

  - Cost of living  
  - Housing  
  - I am self employed (no state taxes)  
  - Attitude, entitlement, hypocrisy
  - Petty crime rampant (drug use, break ins, theft, defecation)  
  - Extreme political climate in SF/CA

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#222
post #208
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY has not been putting up housing at an insane rate. Housing in NY is actually being constructed at one of the lowest rates in the last century. Adjusted for business cycles (we're in a peak now), NY is building less housing than they have build in ~100 years, and Manhattan is at its lowest density since the 1890s. The current period is only a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when basically no new housing was constructe…

Manhattan has a glut of luxury condos that are sitting vacant but Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint and LIC have seen a boom ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york... ) over the past few years. Commercial real estate has gone up a lot as well and has led to a ton of vacant retail space. My father had a carpentry shop in bushwick and just had his land lord triple their rent.

The right metric is new homes per capita by which NYC is about as bad San Francisco.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#223
post #86
post #68

Cost of living is real. Weather is real. Outside of a few highly nomadic ultra-high net worth types the tax advantages of moving states is just too trivial in absolute terms for most people to bother with. The idea that masses of people are moving for lower taxes seems like a rhetorical invention of the WSJ editorial page versus anything rooted in reality.

Disagree strongly on taxes. Moving from CA to WA, could save a family making $100,000 nearly $1,000 per month.

ca.gov says state taxes for someone making $100k are $6,466.00. That's less than half your claim.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#224
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houston. It is very humid. Most of the time. But we have air conditioning. Every place has air conditioning. And it run's constantly. But still my power bill is just a fraction of what it was in California. From late fall through early spring the weather is very California-like: cool and crisp in the morning and warm and dry in the afternoon.

If you accept a life spent indoors in air-conditioned spaces you weren't taking advantage of what you were paying for in California.

Most people in California are this way though. All of my family who still lives out there pay a premium to watch the same TV shows I watch and to watch Netflix while sitting on their behinds indoors. Very few people are out hiking every possible minute or going out to the coast even when living nearby.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#225
post #86
post #68

Cost of living is real. Weather is real. Outside of a few highly nomadic ultra-high net worth types the tax advantages of moving states is just too trivial in absolute terms for most people to bother with. The idea that masses of people are moving for lower taxes seems like a rhetorical invention of the WSJ editorial page versus anything rooted in reality.

Disagree strongly on taxes. Moving from CA to WA, could save a family making $100,000 nearly $1,000 per month.

Yup. I just moved from CA to WA. It was like an instant ~10% raise of state taxes alone.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on the upside, in Texas you might be able to live in a community with real, integrated diversity.

As far as I could tell, everyone in Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio lives in gated communities with almost nothing in walking distance and very, very few people walking around.

Thats the same thing with California outside of SF and some parts of LA...

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#227

> New York, California and Illinois have been hemorrhaging residents. Well, no. At least California (about which I see a lot of these stories) is gaining residents. Yes, it has negative net interstate migration. But it has both positive net natural population growth and positive net total migration, because the positive net international migration more than offsets negative net interstate migration.

So, white flight?

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#228
post #208
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY has not been putting up housing at an insane rate. Housing in NY is actually being constructed at one of the lowest rates in the last century. Adjusted for business cycles (we're in a peak now), NY is building less housing than they have build in ~100 years, and Manhattan is at its lowest density since the 1890s. The current period is only a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when basically no new housing was constructe…

Manhattan has a glut of luxury condos that are sitting vacant but Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint and LIC have seen a boom ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-pushes-new-york... ) over the past few years. Commercial real estate has gone up a lot as well and has led to a ton of vacant retail space. My father had a carpentry shop in bushwick and just had his land lord triple their rent.

They have seen a "boom" relative to 2009-2012 when literally zero new housing was built, they have not seen a boom relative to 1900 - 2009, especially when accounting for business cycle. I understand that you are seeing what you perceive to be a lot of housing construction, but relative to historical trends and population/household size trends, there is very little housing construction happening in NYC.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#229
post #81
post #55

Every person I know who's left California did it because of housing costs (except for one, who did it to get away from "the damn liberal government that wants to take my guns"). We have a major housing cost crisis in this state, as well as a big NIMBY problem. There have been good solutions run up through the state house, that either fail to pass or get so watered down they are no longer effective, in large part beca…

All of the people I know who left NYC also left because of housing costs, even though New York has been putting up new housing at an insane rate. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/mortgages/migration-study/

Is it housing cost or housing risk? Is one thing to put a million dollars into a home and sell it for $1.4m five years later. It’s another thing to owe s million on a place that’s now worth $400k.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#230
post #3

I live in California. An interesting thing we learned is that if we move out of the country for, say, 3 years, unless we set up our lives so we have no intention of remaining California residents, the state will continue to pursue us for income taxes even while overseas. Federal law has a different system which makes more sense -- a tax exemption while overseas. Given that we expect to spend a substantial amount of t…

Yep, I heard of this too. The guy who helped invent the processor moved to Nevada to an apartment, and California tried to say that an apartment isn't a permanent residence and stalked the guy even sending state employees to dig through his trash. He ended up suing California in Nevada and a judge ordered the state to pay him a lot of money, but the state found a loop hole to wiggle out of paying what the judge ordered.

New York is supposed to be very aggressive too. So say you left New York and left items in storage, the state might say you never left.

Same with going to college or the military, you are still considered a resident of your last state since it's assumed your heading back home after college and during the summer breaks, unless you decide to live and stay where you go to college after instead of returning home then you'd need to take steps to change your domicile and move your stuff. One of the reasons you don't have to change your license after 30 or so days, same as someone on vacation since they intend to return home and not living where you are visiting.

I know digital nomads and full time RVers run into this issue, since you are technically homeless for living in a vehicle but still need a driver license and registration somewhere, but a few states are friendly to full time RVers, with South Dakota being the easiest to setup domicile where they only require you to rent a PMB and spend a night at a hotel or campground but all about intent. Some states won't help you unless multiple proofs or you get assistant from a homeless shelter. So if you retired buying a half a million dollar RV, the state considers you the same as a homeless person living on a park bench even if you don't consider yourself homeless.

So you should sell your house, take all your stuff but if you want to keep it in storage rent storage in your new state, update bank to the new state if it's a national bank - if it's a local only bank or credit union need to close your account, update your will for the new state, cancel or switch gym membership if a national gym (like planet fitness, change your home club to your new state) and other steps. Then estate taxes too. I know I was reading once some man who lived in NJ rented a locker in NY and New York decided he was a resident because of that. Then some places will claim you as resident based on where you purchase a grave plot. Seems like this stuff can be tricky, especially the richer you are. I know rich people with multiple homes, domicile issues seem big, but even people who live in RVs have to plan for this. For example recently President Trump declared Florida as his domicile instead of Florida since he owns properties in both states.

Most people only have one house, so that's both their domicile and residence. Then if you are famous, your family get to profit from your likeness when you die, so say you were Elvis, and courts ruled that's based on the state you were domiciled in. Tennessee for example is much more protective and allows family to profit the longest compared to other states, as remember reading someone died and family was trying to argue if they were really a Tennessee or California resident.

So domicile is based on both intent and action. Kinda interesting someone who lives in a RV has to understand and do the same legal steps as a multi-millionaire with multiple houses, but I guess they never considered people would live in RVs, or work remotely traveling. Probably Americans working and living overseas is a minority too, but some states like California don't want to let their residents go. I know someone in a RV group posted they left South Carolina to retire and RV full time seeing the country, and haven't been back to SC for over a year, and the state still wanted to tax them over 6,000 and they charge property taxes on vehicles. Then VA considers a RV a luxury and taxes them extra compared to cars even if your RV is your home. Then someone from Michigan didn't want to change states to one of the friendlier ones, so rented a mailbox and changed his license online, later to get a threatening letter from the DMV since they didn't consider it a valid address, leaving them the option of switching states or using a friend or relatives address. Then I guess after a full time RVer switches domicile, then legally they are just on a long vacation since SD says you have to return once every 5 years.

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