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Keeping in mind that a large portion of these people live in areas outside of Dallas, with the average home price only several hundred grand above $150k[1]. In

Keeping in mind that a large portion of these people live in areas outside of Dallas, with the average home price only several hundred grand above $150k[1]. In the greater Seattle area you'd be stressed to find a back alley condo for that cheap. My rent in the outskirts of Redmond for a 3 bedroom apartment is more than my mother's mortgage for her 5 bedroom house in Bellevue, which, despite being a 70 year old split-level home with low ceilings and a hill for a lot in a forgotten neighborhood without so much as one sidewalk, was appraised two years ago for over $750,000. I can afford to live on my own, but hell if I can afford a reasonable down payment on a house within 25 miles of where I work. 1. http://www.zillow.com/dallas-tx/home-values/ http://www.zillow.com/dallas-tx/home-values/

dionidium 10y ago
Well, right, which is why the parent said it was a "very coastal/urban-centric view." What he's describing about Dallas is true for the nearly 200 million Americans who live in the Midwest and the South. Cheap housing is the norm in the United States. I'm not bothered by people on the coasts complaining about housing costs, but you look foolish when you make generalizations about your generation that don't apply to the majority of the country.
- vasilipupkin 10y ago
  Is it cheap relative to incomes in that area ? Sure, lots of cheap houses in areas with low incomes. So?
  - dionidium 10y ago
    The discount on housing is far bigger than the discount on salaries
  - majormajor 10y ago
    How much higher do you think the incomes for most jobs are in big coastal areas? It tends to be "very little."
    - vasilipupkin 10y ago
      Hie much do you think it costs to live in far parts of Brooklyn? Relatively little. Yet you are 1 hr away from the heart of NYC
      - treehau5 10y ago
        As my friends who recently moved down here (Charlotte) from Brooklyn who worked in NYC tell me: still way too much, especially to have to deal with that traffic every day. Rent in Brooklyn got them 12 acres 40 minutes away from Uptown Charlotte, and a house to boot.
        randallsquared 10y ago
        I've lived in a bunch of US places, including rural Colorado and the Atlanta, Boston and DC metro areas, and I will say that Charlotte is a special case. People here complain about housing costs and traffic, and I just smile quietly.
  - tropo 10y ago
    Yes. You're getting 1.5x the income (usually with longer hours) and paying 5x for the house. You're also paying more for other random stuff like groceries, eating out, gasoline, electricity, etc. You're also paying lots more for taxes. Some states have no income tax. Some states have no sales tax. Some have neither!
    - vasilipupkin 10y ago
      Well, maybe 1.5 the salary, but I bet total comp at Google in SF is way more than 1.5x best Ohio employers. But there is also California weather and NY culture that account for part of the cost of living premium. Don't think that has any value ? Great for you, you can live in Decatur. Ilinois.
      - twelve40 10y ago
        ? Google employs ~30k people here. The rest 7.5 million should pack up and move to Decatur? I actually don't see what can be done about it. But it's a bit strange to project Google numbers to the entire generation.
        vasilipupkin 10y ago
        Lots of those 7mln live in homes that they bought many years ago, before the boom. If they sold them and moved to Decatur, they would be very rich.
      - dionidium 10y ago
        Of course, but Google is an outlier in just about every sense. Most people in San Francisco don't earn the equivalent of Google's total comp. Also, what's this nonsense about Decatur, Illinois? St. Louis and Cincinnati and Nashville and Pittsburgh and so on all have a bunch of pre-WWII, walkable, interesting neighborhoods, with little restaurants and bars and people putting on poetry readings and bands playing in basement clubs and jazz quartets playing at wine and cheese parties and concert halls that host national acts and major sports franchises and yuppies and hipsters and Python Meetups and comedy clubs and big pretty parks and coffee shops and whatever else you can think of. No, they are emphatically not like San Francisco or NYC. But don't be silly. Millions of people live in those places. Did you really think they're all just skipping stones and waiting to die? I'm quite glad I grew up here, because I think I'd be just the type of asshole who'd make jokes about Decatur, Illinois had I not. And you know what? I'd have been wrong.
- ghaff 10y ago
  For that matter, get an hour west of Boston and prices, while they may be higher than the national norm, aren't anywhere close to the Bay area stratosphere. So much of the discussion about housing prices here is about a very narrowly-defined set of urban areas--mostly on the coasts--plus the SV suburbs/exurbs. It's even unclear how real the urbanization trend is as opposed to a preference for a small set of dense locations by college-educated people in a specific age range.
  - 1872397523 10y ago
    I have seen articles all over the place and comments all over this forum that suggest we all want to move into apartments in the city. I think a lot of it is propaganda by the real-estate industry as they are making ridiculous amounts of money by selling apartments. Governments also benefit as they can save money providing infrastructure.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      I don't know about propaganda but, for whatever combination of cause and effect, urban living in a mostly narrow set of locales is more preferred than in the past by a demographic that is well-represented here. However, the pricing complaints are about San Francisco, not Detroit.
- Rumudiez 10y ago
  Part of my point was to provide what feels like a more typical example for this audience. The parent made an anecdotal reference to imply he is an average HN user, to which I made a counterpoint with my own anecdote asserting I'm closer to an average user in terms of housing cost. They're subjective but it's important to realize both scenarios and everything in between exist, and to acknowledge when you're only considering the extremities of that range.
  - majormajor 10y ago
    That was my whole point. I may be a "typical" United States HN user paying thousands a month in rent, but "typical for HN" is a very small group, and "typical for millions and millions of other Americans" is something very different.
- luckydata 10y ago
  39% of the US population lives in a coastal state, that's not insignificant either. Most of those people have a problem with affordability, you can't just shrug the problem away.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    There is more demand for housing in the coastal states. So the prices are higher. People should react to expensive, high-demand housing in the same way that they react to every other type of high-demand, expensive luxury good. Which is to say: If you can't afford to live in a coastal state, then what you need more than anything else is a U-Haul.
    - tomc1985 10y ago
      Those of us born in coastal states might have an issue with that. Affluence and gentrification destroy the character of interesting communities. Careless indifference deserves no place here.
      - dionidium 10y ago
        It's not careless or indifferent to acknowledge that the demand exists. It is a fact of the world. A fact that, yes, I understand, you do not like. But I haven't seen a single proposal that does anything to realistically address it. The demand is there and it's not going away. Whatever you're hoping for, it's too late.
        mistermann 10y ago
        Bringing a massive amount of supply to market would solve it, but because of nimby and other reasons it will never happen.
        dionidium 10y ago
        Right. High prices or lots of new housing. Pick one.
- jellicle 10y ago
  But in the flyover states where housing is admittedly cheap compared to the coasts, so too are the wages. "Cheap" housing only goes so far when your employment is 30 hours per week at the local Walmart for $9/hour. You're trying to pretend this is some "coastal" phenomenon, but you can't get there from here - you can't get the number of young people who have left the nest down from 60+% to just barely over 30% without it involving the entire country. Young people in middle America can't afford to move out either.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    I agree that it's a country-wide phenomenon. But everything else in your post is almost comically out of touch, which is to say that there are obviously other factors.
    - pmiller2 10y ago
      Not sure why you say that. GP post perfectly describes my home town in BFE Midwest.
      - dionidium 10y ago
        Because it's ignorant of basic facts. The median household income in the St. Louis metro area is $55k. It's $79k in the San Francisco metro, which is obviously quite a bit higher. But you'd need to earn 159k per year in San Francisco to match the spending power of that $55k in St. Louis. And even that wouldn't be nearly enough to reach parity in home purchasing. Housing is 790% more expensive in San Francisco! I get that it's fun to joke about flyover country, but the numbers are what they are. People simply are not struggling to move out of the house in St. Louis in the same way that they are in the Bay Area, for example. Which is to say, once again, that there must be other factors at play. http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/st.-louis-mo/san-francisco-ca/55000 http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/st.-louis-mo/san-fr...
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    For instance, in Ohio (as "flyover" as it gets :-)) the median household income is $45,749, and the median house sales price is $135,500, or about 3x median income. In California the median household income is $67,458, and the median house sales price is $405,000, or about 6x median income. So no, it is not actually true that the lower housing prices in flyover states are offset by lower incomes. Housing in California is proportionally twice as expensive as it is in Ohio.

dionidium 10y ago

Well, right, which is why the parent said it was a "very coastal/urban-centric view." What he's describing about Dallas is true for the nearly 200 million Americans who live in the Midwest and the South. Cheap housing is the norm in the United States. I'm not bothered by people on the coasts complaining about housing costs, but you look foolish when you make generalizations about your generation that don't apply to the majority of the country.

vasilipupkin 10y ago
Is it cheap relative to incomes in that area ? Sure, lots of cheap houses in areas with low incomes. So?
- dionidium 10y ago
  The discount on housing is far bigger than the discount on salaries
- majormajor 10y ago
  How much higher do you think the incomes for most jobs are in big coastal areas? It tends to be "very little."
  - vasilipupkin 10y ago
    Hie much do you think it costs to live in far parts of Brooklyn? Relatively little. Yet you are 1 hr away from the heart of NYC
    - treehau5 10y ago
      As my friends who recently moved down here (Charlotte) from Brooklyn who worked in NYC tell me: still way too much, especially to have to deal with that traffic every day. Rent in Brooklyn got them 12 acres 40 minutes away from Uptown Charlotte, and a house to boot.
      - randallsquared 10y ago
        I've lived in a bunch of US places, including rural Colorado and the Atlanta, Boston and DC metro areas, and I will say that Charlotte is a special case. People here complain about housing costs and traffic, and I just smile quietly.
- tropo 10y ago
  Yes. You're getting 1.5x the income (usually with longer hours) and paying 5x for the house. You're also paying more for other random stuff like groceries, eating out, gasoline, electricity, etc. You're also paying lots more for taxes. Some states have no income tax. Some states have no sales tax. Some have neither!
  - vasilipupkin 10y ago
    Well, maybe 1.5 the salary, but I bet total comp at Google in SF is way more than 1.5x best Ohio employers. But there is also California weather and NY culture that account for part of the cost of living premium. Don't think that has any value ? Great for you, you can live in Decatur. Ilinois.
    - twelve40 10y ago
      ? Google employs ~30k people here. The rest 7.5 million should pack up and move to Decatur? I actually don't see what can be done about it. But it's a bit strange to project Google numbers to the entire generation.
      - vasilipupkin 10y ago
        Lots of those 7mln live in homes that they bought many years ago, before the boom. If they sold them and moved to Decatur, they would be very rich.
    - dionidium 10y ago
      Of course, but Google is an outlier in just about every sense. Most people in San Francisco don't earn the equivalent of Google's total comp. Also, what's this nonsense about Decatur, Illinois? St. Louis and Cincinnati and Nashville and Pittsburgh and so on all have a bunch of pre-WWII, walkable, interesting neighborhoods, with little restaurants and bars and people putting on poetry readings and bands playing in basement clubs and jazz quartets playing at wine and cheese parties and concert halls that host national acts and major sports franchises and yuppies and hipsters and Python Meetups and comedy clubs and big pretty parks and coffee shops and whatever else you can think of. No, they are emphatically not like San Francisco or NYC. But don't be silly. Millions of people live in those places. Did you really think they're all just skipping stones and waiting to die? I'm quite glad I grew up here, because I think I'd be just the type of asshole who'd make jokes about Decatur, Illinois had I not. And you know what? I'd have been wrong.
ghaff 10y ago
For that matter, get an hour west of Boston and prices, while they may be higher than the national norm, aren't anywhere close to the Bay area stratosphere. So much of the discussion about housing prices here is about a very narrowly-defined set of urban areas--mostly on the coasts--plus the SV suburbs/exurbs. It's even unclear how real the urbanization trend is as opposed to a preference for a small set of dense locations by college-educated people in a specific age range.
- 1872397523 10y ago
  I have seen articles all over the place and comments all over this forum that suggest we all want to move into apartments in the city. I think a lot of it is propaganda by the real-estate industry as they are making ridiculous amounts of money by selling apartments. Governments also benefit as they can save money providing infrastructure.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    I don't know about propaganda but, for whatever combination of cause and effect, urban living in a mostly narrow set of locales is more preferred than in the past by a demographic that is well-represented here. However, the pricing complaints are about San Francisco, not Detroit.
Rumudiez 10y ago
Part of my point was to provide what feels like a more typical example for this audience. The parent made an anecdotal reference to imply he is an average HN user, to which I made a counterpoint with my own anecdote asserting I'm closer to an average user in terms of housing cost. They're subjective but it's important to realize both scenarios and everything in between exist, and to acknowledge when you're only considering the extremities of that range.
- majormajor 10y ago
  That was my whole point. I may be a "typical" United States HN user paying thousands a month in rent, but "typical for HN" is a very small group, and "typical for millions and millions of other Americans" is something very different.
luckydata 10y ago
39% of the US population lives in a coastal state, that's not insignificant either. Most of those people have a problem with affordability, you can't just shrug the problem away.
- dionidium 10y ago
  There is more demand for housing in the coastal states. So the prices are higher. People should react to expensive, high-demand housing in the same way that they react to every other type of high-demand, expensive luxury good. Which is to say: If you can't afford to live in a coastal state, then what you need more than anything else is a U-Haul.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    Those of us born in coastal states might have an issue with that. Affluence and gentrification destroy the character of interesting communities. Careless indifference deserves no place here.
    - dionidium 10y ago
      It's not careless or indifferent to acknowledge that the demand exists. It is a fact of the world. A fact that, yes, I understand, you do not like. But I haven't seen a single proposal that does anything to realistically address it. The demand is there and it's not going away. Whatever you're hoping for, it's too late.
      - mistermann 10y ago
        Bringing a massive amount of supply to market would solve it, but because of nimby and other reasons it will never happen.
        dionidium 10y ago
        Right. High prices or lots of new housing. Pick one.
jellicle 10y ago
But in the flyover states where housing is admittedly cheap compared to the coasts, so too are the wages. "Cheap" housing only goes so far when your employment is 30 hours per week at the local Walmart for $9/hour. You're trying to pretend this is some "coastal" phenomenon, but you can't get there from here - you can't get the number of young people who have left the nest down from 60+% to just barely over 30% without it involving the entire country. Young people in middle America can't afford to move out either.
- dionidium 10y ago
  I agree that it's a country-wide phenomenon. But everything else in your post is almost comically out of touch, which is to say that there are obviously other factors.
  - pmiller2 10y ago
    Not sure why you say that. GP post perfectly describes my home town in BFE Midwest.
    - dionidium 10y ago
      Because it's ignorant of basic facts. The median household income in the St. Louis metro area is $55k. It's $79k in the San Francisco metro, which is obviously quite a bit higher. But you'd need to earn 159k per year in San Francisco to match the spending power of that $55k in St. Louis. And even that wouldn't be nearly enough to reach parity in home purchasing. Housing is 790% more expensive in San Francisco! I get that it's fun to joke about flyover country, but the numbers are what they are. People simply are not struggling to move out of the house in St. Louis in the same way that they are in the Bay Area, for example. Which is to say, once again, that there must be other factors at play. http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/st.-louis-mo/san-francisco-ca/55000 http://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/st.-louis-mo/san-fr...
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  For instance, in Ohio (as "flyover" as it gets :-)) the median household income is $45,749, and the median house sales price is $135,500, or about 3x median income. In California the median household income is $67,458, and the median house sales price is $405,000, or about 6x median income. So no, it is not actually true that the lower housing prices in flyover states are offset by lower incomes. Housing in California is proportionally twice as expensive as it is in Ohio.