San Francisco, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by JonFish85 » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:47 PM UTC

base698 wrote: post #270

JonFish85 wrote: post #194

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. As a renter, you're going to be dealing with rents rising year over year.…

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. Want to move to San Francisco to work at a new startup? Oops, you have a…

"Being mobile is a lot better."

For one very specific subset of society. For other people with different priorities (friends, family, what-have-you), owning a home might be "a lot better" for them.

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

#282

Post by michaelochurch » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:47 PM UTC

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. Your argument is done in by basic research into the neighborhood.

Disagree. A lot of neighborhoods have homeowners' associations, which are like New York co-op boards and basically an excuse for non-working house-spouses to get in peoples' way because they have literally nothing else to do.

He's right. Homeownership can be a pain in the ass if you care strongly about the subjective aspects of living in a place. You have an investment that other people can fuck with by building shit near it, and you have people trying to prevent you from changing what you have.

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

#283

Post by LandoCalrissian » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:47 PM UTC

hayward2 wrote: post #17

I don't understand why tech workers in the Bay Area feel guilty about receiving 'high' salaries of $100 - $200k/year. This is not a lot of money... People on Wall street laugh at these amounts. So do specialized doctors, corporate lawyers, investment bankers, etc. Software engineering is unfortunately a very middle class occupation at this point. I'd love to see it get up into the ranks of the upper class (at least f…

That's a very unique view of "Middle Class" considering the median income is $44,389. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

If you earn $100,000 per year that puts you in the top 20% (for a household, if it's just you it's even higher).

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

#284

Post by mncolinlee » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:49 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #230

gknoy wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who recently (this past year) went from being a renter to a homeowner, and had previously been a home owner for several years, it's not all rational... but here are some of the reasons. I don't have to worry about the rent going up every year / six-months. 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 yo…

>>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. Annual property taxes where I live are under one percent of the cost of my home. The author of the buy-rent piece makes assumptions that do not apply to my region of the country.

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

#285

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:51 PM UTC

muzz wrote: post #151

forrestthewoods wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco real-estate is absurdly corrupt. From 2004 to 2007 only an average of 2,220 units were built. From 2008 to 2012 a mere 1,710 units were built [1]. New construction has been impossible. It looks like it's picking up slightly, but not nearly as much as it would in a fair market. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-apartment-construc...

New construction ABOUNDS "22,000 residential units are in various stages of approval and construction." More units are under way now than have been built from 1993-2011.

If you look at most big, established cities (Chicago, New York), the bulk of the housing stock tends to have been built in the construction booms of the 1960's-1980's. New construction is a good, but a city will suffer from its bad housing policies for decades after those policies are fixed, because the process of bringing housing supply in line with housing demand is a very slow one.

As an analogy, consider roads: in the D.C. metro area, road construction is about 10 years behind where it needs to be given the population surge, and they have been building flat-out for a decade now. Imagine if they had spent the last 20-30 years not constructing new roads even as the region grew dramatically in population. That's the state of the San Francisco housing market, and indeed the housing markets of most cities that had policies in place over the last several decades that were hostile to development.

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

#286

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:51 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #226

capulcu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But again - why would you choose to rent if you can own? Rent is thousands of dollars thrown out the window each year. Mortgage (or buying with cash) is the same, with the exception that at the end 1) you own a property that you could, if need be, sell for roughly the same amount you threw out and 2) you stop paying for housing for the rest of your life (minus repairs, yes, but that's insignificatn compared to paying…

Maintaining a home can cost more than you might imagine. The reason it is profitable for landlords (at least for apartments) is due to the fact there many are paying rent within the same building (economy of scale). Second, taxes are significant. Where I live (Fargo, ND) property taxes equal a rent payment alone. So it almost makes more sense (monetarily) to pay rent and invest the extra money into something more luc…

Could you explain why you think you, as a renter, don't pay property taxes?

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

#287

Post by mwfunk » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:52 PM UTC

hoov wrote: post #219

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've never understood this crazy, if not outright insane obsession with home ownership. And, I don't understand why so many people on HN seem to think it's insane. I'd like to be more in control of my environment. I don't want to be at the whims of a landlord, particularly in the future, when I have children. I want a place that is mine to customize as I see fit. I don't want to have to ask if I can paint, I want t…

I'm guessing that there's nearly a 100% correlation between the people accusing prospective homeowners of having an "insane obsession" and people who live in apartments in SF. SF is one of my favorite cities in the world, but there are a LOT of downsides to it. I find that a lot of the people I know who live there adopt a borderline Stockholm Syndrome attitude about those downsides.

If you live in SF, you have easy access to all sorts of great things, but the downside is that unless you are fabulously wealthy, you are most likely renting an old and not necessarily well-maintained apartment with one (or two or three or more...) roommates, in a neighborhood with a disturbing number of homeless people and/or occasional violent crime, and you have to take the bus (or ride a bike) everywhere you go because it's just too much of an expensive hassle to drive anywhere. I'm not describing the living standards for college students or blue collar people, these are living standards for people who are probably in the top 5% income bracket in the entire country.

Those same people will tell you stuff like, why would you want to own a home? Why would you want to live by yourself? What do you have against homeless people? Why would you want a car in the first place? What's wrong with you, you barbarian!

There's something to be said for those perspectives, and I appreciate the value of living in a really dense and culturally rich city with great public transportation. But so many of the SF residents that I know go way beyond looking on the bright side, to the point of fetishizing the very things that can make SF an unpleasant place to live.

Maybe if I lived there I'd be like that too. It's natural to always want to look on the bright side of whatever your living situation is, it's just annoying when people get super militant about it, to the point of accusing you of being a bad or stupid person if you don't want to live there too.

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

#288

Post by gdilla » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:54 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #247

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…

The Harlem numbers make a good point, both renting and buying involve unrecoverable costs. But it's is a case by case question as to whether one set of costs is higher than the other. Where I live, my rent and utilities are higher than the cost of property taxes, HMO fees, utilities AND mortgage payments for an equivalent townhome. My market's the other extreme from Harlem. Paying less per month for the same thing se…

Also, if you buy, your cost of moving is WAY higher. unless you can know to a high degree of certainty you're staying put for 10+ years at least, renting keeps you mobile. Not everyone can telecommute. Many people should be more mobile to go where jobs are, and that's easier when you're renting.

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

#289

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:56 PM UTC

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.

Not necessarily right in downtown Palo Alto (it has a cute little downtown area), but in the surrounding areas definitely. When I was a summer intern in my employer's Menlo Park office, I had a lunch budget which means I had to figure out how to take advantage of several free lunches a week. I probably hit up a dozen (nice) places, and all were either in strip malls or in isolated buildings surrounded by a big parking lots.

E.g. this is a Michelin-star place in Cupertino: http://goo.gl/maps/VsVNL. Right next to the highway, surrounded by a parking lot. Might as well be a Taco Bell.

This is another Michelin-star place in San Mateo: http://goo.gl/maps/KjdnP.

Of course I'm being somewhat facetious. There's not a lot of places to put a restaurant in the suburbs other than in a strip mall next to a Walgreens or in a building surrounded by a big parking lot. But that's my point--you're paying Manhattan prices to live in a suburb. Not a compact, walkable one like Greenwich, either, but a sprawl-y generic one that looks more or less like the faceless generic suburbs in any other part of the country.

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

#290

Post by bennyg » Mon, Jul 08, 2013, 9:56 PM UTC

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…

I think the problem is the belief that top talent only exists in SV - which is false. To me, I think top talent would be less willing to work insane hours, less willing to have long commutes, and less willing to spend a TON on housing. If Google and Apple HQ moved - it would be seen as the end of SV. The VCs would go too. And I think stuff like this will be happening soon.