9 ms·

Seattle is quickly becoming 'bay area'-ish from what I can tell. Housing is certainly becoming difficult at incredible rates. Here in Bellevue, a colleague of m

Seattle is quickly becoming 'bay area'-ish from what I can tell. Housing is certainly becoming difficult at incredible rates. Here in Bellevue, a colleague of mine bought a house for ~400k, it's now worth well over ~500k only a year later. Many houses in that area also sell for at least 700k+ assuming you can even get an offer in before a cash buyer grabs it. Don't even get me started on the traffic. I run as many of my errands before 8am as possible. I personally know I will never be able to afford housing close to work based on how things are now. Currently I'm just saving my pennies and hoping I can move to another job with a lower cost of living somewhere else in a few years. Edit: For reference, I am just a just above 'entry level' engineer at Microsoft. I'm paid well, but not well enough for the housing around here.

irrational 9y ago
Same in Portland. A house down the street was purchased for 180k 2 years ago and recently sold for 520k. And that isn't some outlier. It seems all anyone wants to talk about is how quickly home prices have inflated.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  It's funny that the Fed is still dreaming about having low inflation while the number one expense most people will have experiences rampant inflation.
  - guelo 9y ago
    Housing is not experiencing rampant inflation when you look at the nation as a whole. We have one currency so the Fed has to try to strike a balance that works for everyone.
    - teemwerk 9y ago
      That's an interesting thought, does the government have cpi-like numbers for different localities, or just the one number? Rents are included in cpi, but home prices aren't. Now, of course they are correlated, but that's certainly one of the arguments against using cpi. edit: answered my own question, the bureau of labor statistics has more numbers than you can shake a stick at.
  - nightski 9y ago
    Isn't it very localized?
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Based on this it's nationwide: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA
      - ghaff 9y ago
        That says it’s about back to where it was 10 years ago. Mind you there was a fairly big run up to the peak of the bubble but most people here aren’t complaining about prices having risen again to 2007 levels.
  - dtech 9y ago
    It's impossible to control skyrocketing house prices in booming tech areas with anything other than a massive amount of new housing developments. Even if everything you can buy suddenly got 10% cheaper, the houses in those areas would immediately increase back to the old level because the prices is driven by a high demand relative to supply.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Makes sense. To me it just seems they act as if inflation was low but in reality they are creating huge asset inflation with the low interest policy.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    I want to remark that its not inflation, its just regular demand shock to the market. Specially housing takes time to match the supply to demand. Inflation is generalized increased of nominal costs, not particular to an asset, nor in 'real terms' which is what is happening here.
- joebubna 9y ago
  Can confirm. I both recently sold my home, and used to be a licensed real estate appraiser before switching to Software Dev. Our house in the not-super-desirable area of NE Portland was worth ~$265k when we looked at the data in late February/March of this year (strong data supporting that number). When we finally put it on the market in the beginning of May, it sold in 1 day, with multiple offers, for a sales price of $312k. Yes, that's a $47k increase in value in just over 2 months. When spring hit, real estate prices went bonkers in Portland this year. Also, we bought the house for $160k ~five years ago.
  - rcoder 9y ago
    We bought a small one-bedroom condo in downtown PDX for my brother to live in ~3 years ago b/c it seemed like a better investment than random stocks/ETFs. He lived there for a year, and we rented it part-time for another four months. Purchase price was $145k. Sale price (after only 16 months) was $190k. We used to proceeds from that sale to buy a two-bedroom house for my parents move into for their retirement. Paid $250k last October; recent sales in the neighborhood suggest it's worth $310-325k now. So yeah, agreed re: bonkers Portland housing price inflation.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Not inflation, demand shock. Inflation is generalized increase in prices. Im sure beers and miso-fries have barely changed prices if at all.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    My house is alrfull day worth almost 100k more only 6 months later. It’s crazy. Beaverton and Hillsboro are really seeing pricing skyrocket.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Im sure portland is getting a lot, but 300% market price increase in real estate in 2 years sounds like a lot.
0xbear 9y ago
400k in Bellevue buys you a dilapidated shack at the outskirts. For anything decent you’re talking $1m and up.
- haalia 9y ago
  At this point I'd be perfectly happy with a dilapidated shack in Bellevue. Anything to cut down on the soul-crushing commute. Now if only employers embraced remote-work fully, I'd move to Gold Bar or somewhere else in the Cascades and dispense with the city altogether.
  - latencyloser 9y ago
    I'd give anything to work remote here. My partner and I have discussed buying a small 'ranch' on the other side of the cascades as a 'weekend home' and downsizing to a small studio here on weekdays. We figure the two combined would be about what we pay in rent each month now, if not a little more, but at least we'd be able to escape on weekends. We love pnw, but hate having to live in the most crowded part of it for the sole purpose of making our commute tolerable.
  - sputknick 9y ago
    Come to Monroe, commute isn't terrible, drive is nice, town is great. I wouldn't go closer to Seattle now even if I could afford it.
projectramo 9y ago
This is actually hopeful since there are so many secondary and tertiary tech cities. This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.
- pc86 9y ago
  Or perhaps actually trying to fix the root issue rather than scrambling for the "F you, I got mine" route and buying property you don't need now on the speculation that its value will increase over the next decades. Companies should be incentivized (by us, software developers) to hire remote workers for jobs that don't need to be physically in an office.
  - projectramo 9y ago
    Please lay out your plan in more detail. I just want to see the logic of this. You think I can put downward pressure on property prices by insisting on a remote job? I don't think hiring companies take joy in making your life difficult. They would hire more remote workers if they felt it could work. I prefer working remotely but find it much harder to manage.
    - eip 9y ago
      It's super easy. You just tell them my rate to work remote is X. My rate to work on site is 1.75X. Been remote for 10+ years. Make bay area salary and live in a huge house on the beach.
  - gowld 9y ago
    How did you fix the root issue?
- WalterSear 9y ago
  Self-driving cars are going to be rewriting the commute paradigm. It's important to factor that in.
unohoo 9y ago
best thing you can do -- buy a town home or home -- try to manage the minimum 10% down payment (if you can manage 20%, thats great) and then rent out the bedrooms to other single folks. I wish i had done that when i was a entry level software engr.
- latencyloser 9y ago
  I'm just above entry level, but by no means a recent grad. Not all of us were lucky enough to land a big software gig right out of college ;) My family probably wouldn't be too happy to suddenly have roommates. Hah. But yes, if you're young and single, that's a solid option I would think.
RickS 9y ago
> I personally know I will never be able to afford housing close to work based on how things are now. Currently I'm just saving my pennies and hoping I can move to another job with a lower cost of living somewhere else in a few years. This is exactly my situation as well. The neighbor to my left bought his house 3 years ago for 320. The neighbor to my right just bought an equivalent house for 570. No can do. Unlike SF, however, the balance here does seem "worth it". I looked at the job market were I to return to Virginia right now, and while the land is cheap and plentiful, it took some digging to even find a posted role that felt promising. Tech hub job markets are no joke.

irrational 9y ago

Same in Portland. A house down the street was purchased for 180k 2 years ago and recently sold for 520k. And that isn't some outlier. It seems all anyone wants to talk about is how quickly home prices have inflated.

maxxxxx 9y ago
It's funny that the Fed is still dreaming about having low inflation while the number one expense most people will have experiences rampant inflation.
- guelo 9y ago
  Housing is not experiencing rampant inflation when you look at the nation as a whole. We have one currency so the Fed has to try to strike a balance that works for everyone.
  - teemwerk 9y ago
    That's an interesting thought, does the government have cpi-like numbers for different localities, or just the one number? Rents are included in cpi, but home prices aren't. Now, of course they are correlated, but that's certainly one of the arguments against using cpi. edit: answered my own question, the bureau of labor statistics has more numbers than you can shake a stick at.
- nightski 9y ago
  Isn't it very localized?
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Based on this it's nationwide: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA
    - ghaff 9y ago
      That says it’s about back to where it was 10 years ago. Mind you there was a fairly big run up to the peak of the bubble but most people here aren’t complaining about prices having risen again to 2007 levels.
- dtech 9y ago
  It's impossible to control skyrocketing house prices in booming tech areas with anything other than a massive amount of new housing developments. Even if everything you can buy suddenly got 10% cheaper, the houses in those areas would immediately increase back to the old level because the prices is driven by a high demand relative to supply.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Makes sense. To me it just seems they act as if inflation was low but in reality they are creating huge asset inflation with the low interest policy.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I want to remark that its not inflation, its just regular demand shock to the market. Specially housing takes time to match the supply to demand. Inflation is generalized increased of nominal costs, not particular to an asset, nor in 'real terms' which is what is happening here.
joebubna 9y ago
Can confirm. I both recently sold my home, and used to be a licensed real estate appraiser before switching to Software Dev. Our house in the not-super-desirable area of NE Portland was worth ~$265k when we looked at the data in late February/March of this year (strong data supporting that number). When we finally put it on the market in the beginning of May, it sold in 1 day, with multiple offers, for a sales price of $312k. Yes, that's a $47k increase in value in just over 2 months. When spring hit, real estate prices went bonkers in Portland this year. Also, we bought the house for $160k ~five years ago.
- rcoder 9y ago
  We bought a small one-bedroom condo in downtown PDX for my brother to live in ~3 years ago b/c it seemed like a better investment than random stocks/ETFs. He lived there for a year, and we rented it part-time for another four months. Purchase price was $145k. Sale price (after only 16 months) was $190k. We used to proceeds from that sale to buy a two-bedroom house for my parents move into for their retirement. Paid $250k last October; recent sales in the neighborhood suggest it's worth $310-325k now. So yeah, agreed re: bonkers Portland housing price inflation.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Not inflation, demand shock. Inflation is generalized increase in prices. Im sure beers and miso-fries have barely changed prices if at all.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  My house is alrfull day worth almost 100k more only 6 months later. It’s crazy. Beaverton and Hillsboro are really seeing pricing skyrocket.
conanbatt 9y ago
Im sure portland is getting a lot, but 300% market price increase in real estate in 2 years sounds like a lot.

0xbear 9y ago

400k in Bellevue buys you a dilapidated shack at the outskirts. For anything decent you’re talking $1m and up.

haalia 9y ago
At this point I'd be perfectly happy with a dilapidated shack in Bellevue. Anything to cut down on the soul-crushing commute. Now if only employers embraced remote-work fully, I'd move to Gold Bar or somewhere else in the Cascades and dispense with the city altogether.
- latencyloser 9y ago
  I'd give anything to work remote here. My partner and I have discussed buying a small 'ranch' on the other side of the cascades as a 'weekend home' and downsizing to a small studio here on weekdays. We figure the two combined would be about what we pay in rent each month now, if not a little more, but at least we'd be able to escape on weekends. We love pnw, but hate having to live in the most crowded part of it for the sole purpose of making our commute tolerable.
- sputknick 9y ago
  Come to Monroe, commute isn't terrible, drive is nice, town is great. I wouldn't go closer to Seattle now even if I could afford it.

projectramo 9y ago

This is actually hopeful since there are so many secondary and tertiary tech cities. This means: we should all buy houses in the secondary tech hubs that are still affordable so our kids can afford to have families at tech firms when housing becomes unaffordable.

pc86 9y ago
Or perhaps actually trying to fix the root issue rather than scrambling for the "F you, I got mine" route and buying property you don't need now on the speculation that its value will increase over the next decades. Companies should be incentivized (by us, software developers) to hire remote workers for jobs that don't need to be physically in an office.
- projectramo 9y ago
  Please lay out your plan in more detail. I just want to see the logic of this. You think I can put downward pressure on property prices by insisting on a remote job? I don't think hiring companies take joy in making your life difficult. They would hire more remote workers if they felt it could work. I prefer working remotely but find it much harder to manage.
  - eip 9y ago
    It's super easy. You just tell them my rate to work remote is X. My rate to work on site is 1.75X. Been remote for 10+ years. Make bay area salary and live in a huge house on the beach.
- gowld 9y ago
  How did you fix the root issue?
WalterSear 9y ago
Self-driving cars are going to be rewriting the commute paradigm. It's important to factor that in.

unohoo 9y ago

best thing you can do -- buy a town home or home -- try to manage the minimum 10% down payment (if you can manage 20%, thats great) and then rent out the bedrooms to other single folks. I wish i had done that when i was a entry level software engr.

latencyloser 9y ago
I'm just above entry level, but by no means a recent grad. Not all of us were lucky enough to land a big software gig right out of college ;) My family probably wouldn't be too happy to suddenly have roommates. Hah. But yes, if you're young and single, that's a solid option I would think.

RickS 9y ago

> I personally know I will never be able to afford housing close to work based on how things are now. Currently I'm just saving my pennies and hoping I can move to another job with a lower cost of living somewhere else in a few years. This is exactly my situation as well. The neighbor to my left bought his house 3 years ago for 320. The neighbor to my right just bought an equivalent house for 570. No can do. Unlike SF, however, the balance here does seem "worth it". I looked at the job market were I to return to Virginia right now, and while the land is cheap and plentiful, it took some digging to even find a posted role that felt promising. Tech hub job markets are no joke.