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There are still alot of cheap real estates along the BART and caltrain stops https://www.estately.com/bay-area-home-affordability-transit-stop https://www.esta

There are still alot of cheap real estates along the BART and caltrain stops https://www.estately.com/bay-area-home-affordability-transit-stop https://www.estately.com/bay-area-home-affordability-transit... Pittsburg/Bay Point $430,000 Blossom Hill $657,000 San Jose $680,000 And the largest job growth recently has been East Bay, around Pleasanton. If you are young and starting out, making $110-140k, try living in east bay or san jose and rent a room for $1k - 1.5k, you should be able to save enough money for a down payment for a house soon enough. The stories I've heard for people that couldn't afford their rent, are people living in $3k apartments in SF.

closeparen 8y ago
Sure, you can always trade off privacy and commute time to make the numbers work out. But not having to do that is an incredibly compelling form of compensation that companies can provide at minimal cost by offering work elsewhere. This is not a thing for white collar workers almost anywhere else in the US.
WillEngler 8y ago
Let me try and complicate this :) First, I submit that $430,000 is still expensive. Instead of buying the median home in Pittsburg and commuting 60+ minutes on BART to downtown SF, I could add an h and buy a huge home in my favorite neighborhood in Pittsburgh PA for about the same price and have a chill bicycle commute: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Pittsburgh-PA/pmf,pf_pt/house,condo_type/11288076_zpid/26529_rid/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Pittsburgh-PA/pmf,pf_p... (Obvious and legitimate objections: fewer job options, snow.) This is just me trying to say, $430k for that arrangement does not strike me as "cheap" given alternatives in other metros. I agree that with a tech salary it's possible to save up for a down payment and buy in the Bay Area. But the risk seems unacceptable to me. Paying ~$1M for a house is a big bet that the Bay Area housing market stays hot. I don't want my wealth to be so tied up in a hyperlocal bet like that. I see things going one of two ways (and this is probably over-simplistic). Option 1: A $1M starter home is the new normal. Prices stay flat or keep rising over the long haul. In that case my investment is sound. But I don't want to live in that kind of place. Where will my kids' teachers live? How will I cope with the moral ickiness of living in a place where housing costs create extreme spatial segregation of the professional class from the service class? Option 2: The vision painted above is unsustainable. Something has to give (maybe a big financial crash; maybe just state-mandated upzoning that quickly increases housing supply) and the value of my investment drops by a lot. Either way, I'm planning to save up on the West Coast and use my nest egg back in the Rust Belt.
- joefranklinsrs 8y ago
  You make compelling arguments. For me, a house isn't an investment but it's a place where I house my family. (sure, houses in silicon valley have gone up 1.5-2X in a few years. However, stocks have gone up 2-10X). If you're young, there's no point of getting a house. If you are close to have a family, one of the most important thing is KEEPING your job. If you are remote in Pittsburg, and you have to get a new job, it might take a few months of interviewing and flying in for interviews to find a remote job that pays your old salary. Do you want to risk that even to your family? most likely you wouldn't. You have 18 years of mortgage and college tuitions to pay for.
  - WillEngler 8y ago
    Agreed on most of what you're saying here. > For me, a house isn't an investment but it's a place where I house my family. I really want to view the world this way :) I wish housing were a boring commodity that depreciates in value over time like a car. With prices being what they are, I am _forced_ to think of housing as an investment because of how much of my net worth will be tied up in it.
    - fro0116 8y ago
      Exactly this. A house _is_ an investment, regardless of how someone wants to think about it. Buying a house involves a significant opportunity cost over renting since it requires locking up capital (a down payment, or the entire value of the house if buying in cash) in an illiquid asset that could have been invested in liquid assets like stocks (that have historically performed better than real estate over longer time horizons for most housing markets, and often more than makes up for the fixed costs of renting once maintenance costs, taxes, and mortgage interest rates are taken into account, but that's only tangential to the point I'm trying to make). Also, most people buy their houses on mortgages, so they're investing with 5-10x leverage over the down payment and paying interest for that leverage. This level of leverage would be considered outright insane for any other long term investment, but most people won't even think twice before locking a large majority of their net worth behind a down payment. This puts their financial well-being at the mercy of the whims of the local real estate market due to the 5-10x amplified gains/losses, and practically removes their ability to meaningfully diversify and de-risk their portfolio. Now of course I'm not saying buying a house can never make sense financially or otherwise, just that refusing to think of it as an investment can be dangerous because it can blind you to the nuanced risk/reward calculations involved in one of the most impactful financial decisions you can make in your lifetime. For myself, the right time to buy a house would likely have to be when I've saved up enough money that the upfront investment for the purchase of the house is about 30% of my net worth if I'm buying with cash, or less than 10% of my net worth if I'm buying with a mortgage, to counteract the extra exposure to real-estate from the 5-10x leverage. That may mean that the time to buy a house in the Bay Area may never come for me, but I'm perfectly fine with that because the alternative would compromise my ability to keep my investments reasonably liquid and diversified, which could prove to be disastrous in these uncertain financial times ahead of us.
aphextron 8y ago
Have you ever tried commuting from Pittsburg/Bay Point? Have you seen what $680k will buy you in San Jose? These are not at all practical suggestions. The outlook for a 20 something engineer in the Bay Area is absolutely brutal. The people who got in 10 years ago are doing ok so long as the housing market keeps up. But there's nothing left here for anyone trying to start a life.
- joefranklinsrs 8y ago
  > commuting from Pittsburg/Bay Point? As I mentioned, the biggest job growth recently have been in east bay. You'll likely have good chances finding jobs closeby. > $680k will buy you in San Jose Google is heavily investing in downtown San Jose, buying up lands. There's also the transbay joinup of BART and caltrain.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    The current optimistic estimate for Caltrain Downtown Extension (and we know what happens to estimates for transit-related projects in SF) is 2027.
  - jmspring 8y ago
    The Bart commute from Pittsburgh to Pleasanton isn’t a short hop.
fooker 8y ago
A similar property near downtown Salt Lake City is $250k. For the right job, I would absolutely prefer that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
iman453 8y ago
Would you have any source for the largest job growth being around Pleasanton. Would love to read up more on it.

closeparen 8y ago

Sure, you can always trade off privacy and commute time to make the numbers work out. But not having to do that is an incredibly compelling form of compensation that companies can provide at minimal cost by offering work elsewhere. This is not a thing for white collar workers almost anywhere else in the US.

WillEngler 8y ago

Let me try and complicate this :) First, I submit that $430,000 is still expensive. Instead of buying the median home in Pittsburg and commuting 60+ minutes on BART to downtown SF, I could add an h and buy a huge home in my favorite neighborhood in Pittsburgh PA for about the same price and have a chill bicycle commute: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Pittsburgh-PA/pmf,pf_pt/house,condo_type/11288076_zpid/26529_rid/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Pittsburgh-PA/pmf,pf_p... (Obvious and legitimate objections: fewer job options, snow.) This is just me trying to say, $430k for that arrangement does not strike me as "cheap" given alternatives in other metros. I agree that with a tech salary it's possible to save up for a down payment and buy in the Bay Area. But the risk seems unacceptable to me. Paying ~$1M for a house is a big bet that the Bay Area housing market stays hot. I don't want my wealth to be so tied up in a hyperlocal bet like that. I see things going one of two ways (and this is probably over-simplistic). Option 1: A $1M starter home is the new normal. Prices stay flat or keep rising over the long haul. In that case my investment is sound. But I don't want to live in that kind of place. Where will my kids' teachers live? How will I cope with the moral ickiness of living in a place where housing costs create extreme spatial segregation of the professional class from the service class? Option 2: The vision painted above is unsustainable. Something has to give (maybe a big financial crash; maybe just state-mandated upzoning that quickly increases housing supply) and the value of my investment drops by a lot. Either way, I'm planning to save up on the West Coast and use my nest egg back in the Rust Belt.

joefranklinsrs 8y ago
You make compelling arguments. For me, a house isn't an investment but it's a place where I house my family. (sure, houses in silicon valley have gone up 1.5-2X in a few years. However, stocks have gone up 2-10X). If you're young, there's no point of getting a house. If you are close to have a family, one of the most important thing is KEEPING your job. If you are remote in Pittsburg, and you have to get a new job, it might take a few months of interviewing and flying in for interviews to find a remote job that pays your old salary. Do you want to risk that even to your family? most likely you wouldn't. You have 18 years of mortgage and college tuitions to pay for.
- WillEngler 8y ago
  Agreed on most of what you're saying here. > For me, a house isn't an investment but it's a place where I house my family. I really want to view the world this way :) I wish housing were a boring commodity that depreciates in value over time like a car. With prices being what they are, I am _forced_ to think of housing as an investment because of how much of my net worth will be tied up in it.
  - fro0116 8y ago
    Exactly this. A house _is_ an investment, regardless of how someone wants to think about it. Buying a house involves a significant opportunity cost over renting since it requires locking up capital (a down payment, or the entire value of the house if buying in cash) in an illiquid asset that could have been invested in liquid assets like stocks (that have historically performed better than real estate over longer time horizons for most housing markets, and often more than makes up for the fixed costs of renting once maintenance costs, taxes, and mortgage interest rates are taken into account, but that's only tangential to the point I'm trying to make). Also, most people buy their houses on mortgages, so they're investing with 5-10x leverage over the down payment and paying interest for that leverage. This level of leverage would be considered outright insane for any other long term investment, but most people won't even think twice before locking a large majority of their net worth behind a down payment. This puts their financial well-being at the mercy of the whims of the local real estate market due to the 5-10x amplified gains/losses, and practically removes their ability to meaningfully diversify and de-risk their portfolio. Now of course I'm not saying buying a house can never make sense financially or otherwise, just that refusing to think of it as an investment can be dangerous because it can blind you to the nuanced risk/reward calculations involved in one of the most impactful financial decisions you can make in your lifetime. For myself, the right time to buy a house would likely have to be when I've saved up enough money that the upfront investment for the purchase of the house is about 30% of my net worth if I'm buying with cash, or less than 10% of my net worth if I'm buying with a mortgage, to counteract the extra exposure to real-estate from the 5-10x leverage. That may mean that the time to buy a house in the Bay Area may never come for me, but I'm perfectly fine with that because the alternative would compromise my ability to keep my investments reasonably liquid and diversified, which could prove to be disastrous in these uncertain financial times ahead of us.

aphextron 8y ago

Have you ever tried commuting from Pittsburg/Bay Point? Have you seen what $680k will buy you in San Jose? These are not at all practical suggestions. The outlook for a 20 something engineer in the Bay Area is absolutely brutal. The people who got in 10 years ago are doing ok so long as the housing market keeps up. But there's nothing left here for anyone trying to start a life.

joefranklinsrs 8y ago
> commuting from Pittsburg/Bay Point? As I mentioned, the biggest job growth recently have been in east bay. You'll likely have good chances finding jobs closeby. > $680k will buy you in San Jose Google is heavily investing in downtown San Jose, buying up lands. There's also the transbay joinup of BART and caltrain.
- closeparen 8y ago
  The current optimistic estimate for Caltrain Downtown Extension (and we know what happens to estimates for transit-related projects in SF) is 2027.
- jmspring 8y ago
  The Bart commute from Pittsburgh to Pleasanton isn’t a short hop.

fooker 8y ago

A similar property near downtown Salt Lake City is $250k. For the right job, I would absolutely prefer that.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

iman453 8y ago

Would you have any source for the largest job growth being around Pleasanton. Would love to read up more on it.