4 ms·

This pretty much matches my experience with friends who now in their 20s grew up in the bay. Most are in Seattle, Sacramento, Portland, or other more affordable

by taurath 11y ago

This pretty much matches my experience with friends who now in their 20s grew up in the bay. Most are in Seattle, Sacramento, Portland, or other more affordable places. The ones who couldn't/didn't finish college or get into tech live elsewhere. I have a friend who is coming up on 28, having just moved from his parents house in Los Gatos a year ago. He moved into the slums with 3 roommates, paying around 60% of what his parents pay for their mortgage for his share of rent. He managed to find a job in tech which is how he can afford the place. Basically you move out of a mansion and into a ghetto, stay under your parents, or move away. I'm up in Seattle desperately trying to save money for a down payment faster than housing prices are going up - if I wait a year it'll be an extra 30-50k for the same property. But if I overextend to try to buy a place and the market crashes I'm completely SOL. Its very difficult to make any long-term decisions or enter the housing market. But still, if you're not in it, you're giving up a lot of your future buying power. Friends of mine managed to buy a very very cheap place in the bay and lived there for a few years, and used the equity to buy a much nicer place in the Seattle area. No idea really what to do - I feel like the market is totally capping out at some point and isn't sustainable - I have to place a bet whether it will rise continuously or crash and if I get it wrong I'm up shit creek.

shostack 11y ago
This is part of the problem though--because the housing market takes such huge swings, people can't plan for their future. Do you take the gamble that you'll be able to save up and buy a home somewhat near employment one day if the market comes down? Or do you just live your life with the assumption of never buying, and if luck strikes and prices plummet, buy then?
jseliger 11y ago
I'm up in Seattle desperately trying to save money for a down payment faster than housing prices are going up - if I wait a year it'll be an extra 30-50k for the same property. But if I overextend to try to buy a place and the market crashes I'm completely SOL. Its very difficult to make any long-term decisions or enter the housing market. This is why so many people move to Texas: http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/17/10-reasons-texas-is-our-future/ http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/17/10-reasons-texas-is-our-fut.... Most years, three to six of the fastest growing counties are in Texas. Texas's biggest cities have relatively free land-use laws, so that as demand rises new housing gets built and, in city centers, denser housing gets built. This dynamic has been going on for a while: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-of-two-town-houses/306334/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o...: In 2000, my husband and I moved out of our mid-1970s three-bedroom town house in Los Angeles and into a brand-new three-bedroom town house in Uptown Dallas. At the time, the two were worth about the same, but the Dallas place was 1,000 square feet bigger. We’ve moved back to L.A., and we’re glad we kept our old house. Over the past seven years, its value has roughly doubled. By contrast, we sold our Dallas place for $6,500 less than we paid for it. It’s not that we bought into a declining Dallas neighborhood: Uptown is one of the hottest in the city, with block upon block of new construction. But the supply of housing in Dallas is elastic. When demand increases, because of growing population or rising incomes, so does the amount of housing; prices stay roughly the same. That’s true not only in the outlying suburbs, but also in old neighborhoods like ours, where dense clusters of town houses and multistory apartment buildings are replacing two-story fourplexes and single-family homes. It’s easy to build new housing in Dallas. Not so in Los Angeles. There, in-creased demand generates little new supply. Even within zoning rules, it’s hard to get permission to build. When a local developer bought three small 1920s duplexes on our block, planning to replace them with a big condo building, neighbors campaigned to stop the project. The city declared the charming but architecturally undistinguished buildings historic landmarks, blocking demolition for a year. The developer gave up, leaving the neighborhood’s landscape—and its housing supply—unchanged. In Los Angeles, when demand for housing increases, prices rise. Seattle has been better about expanding housing supply than most of CA, but it's not nearly as good as Texas cities.
- taurath 11y ago
  Expanded housing supply to me just means sprawl unfortunately. I do agree that Seattle/CA should be building way faster on existing land and upzoning. Its gonna take them 20+ years to put a light rail in, which to my mind is pretty nuts.

by taurath 11y ago

shostack 11y ago

This is part of the problem though--because the housing market takes such huge swings, people can't plan for their future. Do you take the gamble that you'll be able to save up and buy a home somewhat near employment one day if the market comes down? Or do you just live your life with the assumption of never buying, and if luck strikes and prices plummet, buy then?

jseliger 11y ago

I'm up in Seattle desperately trying to save money for a down payment faster than housing prices are going up - if I wait a year it'll be an extra 30-50k for the same property. But if I overextend to try to buy a place and the market crashes I'm completely SOL. Its very difficult to make any long-term decisions or enter the housing market. This is why so many people move to Texas: http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/17/10-reasons-texas-is-our-future/ http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/17/10-reasons-texas-is-our-fut.... Most years, three to six of the fastest growing counties are in Texas. Texas's biggest cities have relatively free land-use laws, so that as demand rises new housing gets built and, in city centers, denser housing gets built. This dynamic has been going on for a while: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-of-two-town-houses/306334/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/a-tale-o...: In 2000, my husband and I moved out of our mid-1970s three-bedroom town house in Los Angeles and into a brand-new three-bedroom town house in Uptown Dallas. At the time, the two were worth about the same, but the Dallas place was 1,000 square feet bigger. We’ve moved back to L.A., and we’re glad we kept our old house. Over the past seven years, its value has roughly doubled. By contrast, we sold our Dallas place for $6,500 less than we paid for it. It’s not that we bought into a declining Dallas neighborhood: Uptown is one of the hottest in the city, with block upon block of new construction. But the supply of housing in Dallas is elastic. When demand increases, because of growing population or rising incomes, so does the amount of housing; prices stay roughly the same. That’s true not only in the outlying suburbs, but also in old neighborhoods like ours, where dense clusters of town houses and multistory apartment buildings are replacing two-story fourplexes and single-family homes. It’s easy to build new housing in Dallas. Not so in Los Angeles. There, in-creased demand generates little new supply. Even within zoning rules, it’s hard to get permission to build. When a local developer bought three small 1920s duplexes on our block, planning to replace them with a big condo building, neighbors campaigned to stop the project. The city declared the charming but architecturally undistinguished buildings historic landmarks, blocking demolition for a year. The developer gave up, leaving the neighborhood’s landscape—and its housing supply—unchanged. In Los Angeles, when demand for housing increases, prices rise. Seattle has been better about expanding housing supply than most of CA, but it's not nearly as good as Texas cities.

taurath 11y ago
Expanded housing supply to me just means sprawl unfortunately. I do agree that Seattle/CA should be building way faster on existing land and upzoning. Its gonna take them 20+ years to put a light rail in, which to my mind is pretty nuts.