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Americans are rethinking where they want to live

economist.com

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Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#71

Post by ravitation »

dmode wrote: post #32

This article and similar ones have been written at least a 1000 times for the last decade with a clear political tinge. The poster child is always around how people want to move to Florida and Texas. But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle which has probably seen the biggest tech migration and grown into the second biggest tech hub in the country, far greater than Austin or Miami (hyped up constantly…

> My working hypothesis is that people in general want to live in California like places, if they can afford it.

This is my general thinking as well, and it happens to fit with my current life experience.

I'm unconvinced that there has been, generally speaking, a fundamental change in the preferred environment people wish to live in; instead it seems more likely that traditionally popular American urban areas are just too expensive and offer relatively little (compared to other parts of the world) in terms of services to justify living there... Even for those that might otherwise choose to.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#72

Post by coldpie »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #22

> First, people have been leaving large, dense, expensive urban cores for smaller, less-dense cities and suburbs. Second, people and companies have been moving to warm, low-tax states in the South and Southwest. Seems like there could be a convergence of the demographic trend of millennial family formation with pandemic related increase in people's perception of the value of square footage that is pushing people towa…

> That we're seeing people abandon certain urban places

I suspect that "abandon" is way overstating the case. Where I live, in the Twin Cities, the most growth in the state is in the cities themselves, while rural areas are continuing their decades-long decrease[1]. The enormous cities (SF, NYC) may be seeing a bit of a decrease in population, but I don't think it generalizes beyond those specific ones to urban areas across the country.

[1] https://www.fox9.com/news/twin-cities-fuel-minnesotas-popula...

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#73

Post by jetsetgo »

dmode wrote: post #32

This article and similar ones have been written at least a 1000 times for the last decade with a clear political tinge. The poster child is always around how people want to move to Florida and Texas. But somehow it forgets to include Washington and Seattle which has probably seen the biggest tech migration and grown into the second biggest tech hub in the country, far greater than Austin or Miami (hyped up constantly…

It's just NY and the 10x10ft coffin apartments that people want to leave.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#74

Post by opportune »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #22

> First, people have been leaving large, dense, expensive urban cores for smaller, less-dense cities and suburbs. Second, people and companies have been moving to warm, low-tax states in the South and Southwest. Seems like there could be a convergence of the demographic trend of millennial family formation with pandemic related increase in people's perception of the value of square footage that is pushing people towa…

I really think it’s mostly lack of supply. If the problem were solely due to lower value of MFH vs SFH we wouldn’t see 1bed market rate condos in SF going for $700k.

Of course, all things (including location and sq footage) being equal, it seems logical most people would prefer SFH. No shared walls, nobody living above you, no/less-influential HOA, potentially large upside of land appreciation. However that is a false dichotomy because prices are higher (because land prices are likely to be high anywhere a SFH is near large condos). So what really matters is the demand curve for SFH vs MFH - MFH may be an “inferior good” in the economic sense but it is not so inferior that, for example, rich techies are buying $500k SFH in Richmond, CA rather than $800k condos in SF.

The whole narrative of a mass exodus is pretty suspect in general anyway. There is not a huge amount of vacant housing in most cities - the carrying and opportunity costs are too high, though IMO they should be higher. For every person leaving an urban area, on average, someone is replacing them.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#75

Post by sanderjd »

goostavos wrote: post #37
larrymyers wrote: post #10

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower? * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance. * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc. * Our kids can walk…

+1. Walkability is the main thing that keeps me in the city. A very large part of me wants to go back to the suburbs, rent a house, have a yard, garage -- space in general. However, every time I actually visit someone in the suburbs, the long drive there, watching things get more and more spread apart until it's just strip malls, grocery stores, and subdivisions, really saps the excitement out of having more space fo…

There's no reason (besides inertia) that we can't have both. This is how thriving smaller downtowns are, single family homes within walking distance to amenities. It's just that all those areas get really expensive because there are so few of them. But there don't have to be so few places like that.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#76

Post by systemvoltage »

numbers wrote: post #13
systemvoltage wrote: post #3

COL/SOL in California is appalling. SOL continues to degrade here to the point where certain parts of Bay Are (Oakland, Hayward) look more like Syria than first world nation. Trash is everywhere, even in nicer neighborhoods. Not a single park here in East Bay without encountering a homeless person. And, then I meet people here that continue to defend 1) Food is amazing 2) SF sucks! Oakland is the best place ever 3) W…

Yes, SOL of living has been going downhill in the Bay Area in the last 10 years. I grew up here and I can see everything just getting old and uncared for. Moving to Portland in 2022.

> Moving to Portland in 2022.

Portland isn't any better. I recommend going to a centrist or even Red state. Arizona is great.

> In 2017 Portland ranked third. Now it has dropped to 66th out of 80.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/12/portland-...

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#77

Post by donatj »

I live just west of Minneapolis with my wife in a house that's been in my family for generations.

I don't want to leave but the continuous stream of car jackings, home invasions, petty theft and seemingly random acts of violence have me rethinking this.

Calls to defund the police sound pretty tone deaf when your elderly neighbor is assaulted in their own home and robbed.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#78

Post by duxup »

larrymyers wrote: post #10

My family and I decided to stay on the north side of Chicago, a very high cost of living location, despite no longer needing to head downtown every day for work. Why not move outside of Chicago where our cost living would be substantially lower? * We wanted to keep our kids in the same school, which is walking distance. * We like being walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's offices, etc. * Our kids can walk…

And some of us in the burbs wouldn’t mind moving down there too for the same reasons.

Re: Americans are rethinking where they want to live

#80

Post by Clubber »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #66
dublinben wrote: post #11

It bodes poorly for the environment if people are increasingly moving from denser cities to sprawling suburbs. This is in many ways a self-inflicted problem of high-cost cities, but it should be a national priority to reverse this trend.

It's always crazy to hear that suburbs are cheaper. Dense living inherently requires less infrastructure and less transportation, so it should be considerably cheaper. It's only through the subsidisation of suburbia and the low supply/high demand of high density urban areas that this is the case. Car centric suburbs aren't just terrible for the environment, terrible for safety and terrible for transportation; they're…

With remote work becoming the norm, it is significantly less terrible. I remote 100% and the only time I drive is to visit family and friends. I put around 1500 miles a year on the car.
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