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I hate when people use the word bubble but I think we finally have a real bubble here. Google opening a new campus in San Jose, Amazon in NYC. I mean, how expen
by bsvalley 8y ago
I hate when people use the word bubble but I think we finally have a real bubble here. Google opening a new campus in San Jose, Amazon in NYC. I mean, how expensive can it be to live in one of these already expensive places? We’re at a breaking point where salaries offered by tech giants aren’t keeping up with the price of real estate. We’re talking engineers, etc. not even able to afford a home. Now if you don’t work for a google or an amazon etc. How do you survive in these places? We need stores, transportation, plumbers, gardners etc.
I see a bubble here. It’s gonna get ugly soon.
- dunpeal 8y agoSan Jose is among the most affordable urban locations in California. Tech talent doesn't want to live in the sticks. Especially young tech talent. I understand them because I am one of them. What good is a nice compensation package if I have to live in the middle of nowhere?
- wcfields 8y agoAffordable for whom? [1] Rent is extremely high and so is buying [2] [1] https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/san-jose,ca_rb/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/san-jose,ca_rb/ [2] https://www.zillow.com/homes/San-Jose-CA_rb/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/San-Jose-CA_rb/
- starpilot 8y agoSan Jose is more expensive than LA and close to Boston in rent: http://d3exkutavo4sli.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/zumper-rent-december.png http://d3exkutavo4sli.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017.... Also it really is the blandest area I've ever lived in in California. I don't think there's another city with a higher CoL:QoL ratio.
- dunpeal 8y agoMore expensive than LA? Where exactly in LA? I'd suspect the parts of LA you'd like to live in - Santa Monica, for example - are far more expensive than the livable parts of San Diego.
- bsvalley 8y agoSilicon Valley for instance is sitting on top of a giant swamp. In the 70’s it looked like the middle of nowhere. In 2018, it looks like a bunch of office buildings and strip malls. Is this attractive? Young folks are looking for the fame that’s what it is. The google’s, facebook’s etc. Yes there’s always san francisco but these are just extensions of the headquarters just to make sure they get hold of everyone. If the fame was in the middle of nowhere people wouldn’t hesitate a second to move to that place. If it’s not you, someone else will.
- automatoney 8y agoI don't speak for all young folks, but at least for me I just want to be in a big city where there's a lot going on - people from all over, interesting events and new experiences. Oh and also good public transportation, most young people aren't super into owning cars. It's hard to say if people would move to the middle of nowhere for the big names, I'm sure a lot of people would but I definitely would not, and I believe many of my friends feel similarly.
- weirdstuff 8y agoIt's a bit of circular logic. Big names are where big populations are. By that criteria San Francisco city has more "nowhereness" than San Jose. New York metro area is much more nowhere than Tokyo metro if you want to go buy sheer population in a continuous urban conglomeration. And to me, personally, NYC is just as nowhere as Boise, Idaho. Just a bunch of people living in groups doing things they find interesting, or can't leave due to financial/family/personal reasons. You can do lots of stuff in and around Boise that the same people can't do in NYC and visa versa, depending on individual preferences. Many folks I know get bored quickly in NYC and SF. I do. I still love NYC and SF, though. I suffer from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome ;)
- not_kurt_godel 8y ago> NYC is just as nowhere as Boise, Idaho. Just a bunch of people living in groups doing things they find interesting, or can't leave due to financial/family/personal reasons I am having difficulty thinking of any group of humans living anywhere that doesn't meet this definition. The same could be said for a mining town in Siberia, or an uncontacted tribe living in the Amazon, or prisoners in a prison. > You can do lots of stuff in and around Boise that the same people can't do in NYC and [vice] versa, depending on individual preferences. The list of things you can do in Boise that you can't do in NYC is effectively zero if you exclude "the outdoors" as a category. For people who don't prioritize the outdoors as highly as other things in life, this makes Boise effectively nowhere by comparison.
- Fins 8y agoOne impression I got of San Jose was that it IS the sticks. Climate is nice, but culturally it is about as exciting as Omaha (no offense to Nebraska meant).
- twtw 8y agoYes! It's super lame here, please move away or don't move here - I'd like to bring the orchards back to my hometown.
- pbarnes_1 8y agoFins has a point though. I live in SF but was down in SJ recently and honestly... it's just nice suburbia with the same strip malls and everything that's copy-pasted across the US? Am I missing something there that makes it... unique?
- burfog 8y agoThere is no better place for growing apricots. Apricots are simply divine. For this alone, bulldozing would be justified.
- twtw 8y agoI absolutely agree that fins has a point, and I'm serious - if it doesn't work for you, move away. There is certainly no lack of people. I also dislike the strip malls everywhere; I was serious about the orchards part too. I wish that I could rewind to having fewer houses and strip malls and more orchards. But for people who like suburbia but also want to work for technology companies, it works out pretty nicely. If you take the "everything that's copy pasted across the US" and splash in world class semiconductor company HQs (in San Jose and surrounding areas, like Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, etc), you get San Jose. Seems sorta unique to me, but I won't try too hard to sell it to anyone else who disagrees.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- epynonymous 8y ago
- soundwave106 8y agoThere are a lot of places in the United States that are well between "middle of nowhere" and current high housing cost markets like San Francisco and NYC. Technology wise I have heard of decent activity (including in a few of these cities some startup ventures) in places like Austin, the North Carolina research triangle, Miami, Boulder, Phoenix, Portland, Boston, etc. (Internationally, I'm sure there's some other markets people can add.) I have heard of housing costs creeping up in a few of these locations, but as far as I know, most of these still have pretty affordable housing compared to the Silicon Valley as a whole currently. Yes, the culture varies considerably between all these cities, but none of them I would describe as "middle of nowhere".
- pbarnes_1 8y agoOne way to describe the difference between SF/NYC and all these other places is that the former have people from all over the place, and that makes them interesting and sort of mind expanding in a way that's hard to describe. The latter have varying degrees of "melting pot"-ness.
- closeparen 8y agoWhat good is a nice compensation package if I have to put most of it towards rent, live in a crap apartment, or both?
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoIn New York, living in Queens or Brooklyn isn't too bad on an engineer's salary. LIC is actually a pretty good location (although I would have preferred nearer the Barclays Center in BK for the number of trains that go there). One of the obnoxious things about Google's NY campus is that it's on the west side of Manhattan, which means that to get a cheapish rent and a 40-60 minute commute, you have to live on the expensive edges of BK or Jersey. Doesn't really seem worth it imho.
- Eridrus 8y ago> One of the obnoxious things about Google's NY campus is that it's on the west side of Manhattan, meaning to get a cheapish rent for a 40-60 minute commute I don't think this is true. 60 minutes on the A/C/E lines gets you all the way to Jamaica. 45 Minutes gets you all the way to Inwood. It's not convenient to every location, but it is convenient to some cheap locations.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago> One of the obnoxious things about Google's NY campus is that it's on the west side of Manhattan, which means that to get a cheapish rent and a 40-60 minute commute, you have to live on the expensive edges of BK or Jersey. Inwood, Washington Heights, and the western half of Harlem are still pretty reasonable, and on super convenient train lines to Google.
- MichaelApproved 8y agoYou're probably thinking Manhattan but NYC has a lot of affordable areas. Queens or Brooklyn are obvious alternatives to Manhattan but, with the right long-term planning and development, Bronx or Staten Island could make great options. Staten Island has transportation headaches (no subway) but the Bronx is well connected to Manhattan. It's also close to northern suburbs like Westchester County and Connecticut where many people might want to live and commute from.
- rubicon33 8y agoI don't understand how this constitutes a bubble? I totally understand how it is frustrating, even angering, that tech companies continue to do this. But, how's that causing a bubble? In other words, how is this going to "pop"?
- bane 8y agoNYC is surprisingly affordable if you can make the mental gymnastics that NYC != Manhattan. You can get single family homes within city limits for $450-$750k. If you can't figure out how to afford a home like that on a six figure salary (let alone with 2 income earners in family situations), what you probably really need is a financial adviser. If you don't want to live in the city, Jersey City is swimming in sub-million dollars single family homes. The D.C. area is actually more expensive in many cases, but you can haul out to a suburb 30 miles away and get more affordable housing on an engineer's salary and metro/commuter train in. It's not the end of the world. Your commute may not be a 10 minute walk door-to-door, but...well...welcome to living in a large U.S. city where the jobs are. The problem these companies are facing is availability of qualified staff. It'll take years to build out the facilities, and cheap places just will never attract the talent pool.
- shiftoutbox 8y agoHahah ; actually living here and no ; it’s not cheep .
- Spivak 8y agoLiving in NY certainly isn't cheap but two six figure earners can more than live comfortably. Hell, if your household income is greater than like 75k then you're pretty much fine -- not living the high life but no real financial worry.
- ggregoire 8y agoFrom a foreigner point of view, it seems completely ridiculous that we are even debating if a couple with 1M per year can afford or not living in NYC.
- why_only_15 8y agoThis is not 1M+ per year, this is 100k+ per year. Six figures = 100k+
- tzury 8y agoBrooklyn, Queens and even Jersey, are all fine, affordable, decent and nearby.
- eigenvector 8y agoI'm somewhat playing devil's advocate here, but isn't it better to drop new FAANG campuses in already large, expensive cities where housing will only get a couple percentage points more expensive than in, say, an affordable mid-sized city where their presence could totally destabilize the local housing market for decades? This is what I always thought was problematic about putting a Google campus in a place like Boulder, a smallish college town with geographic constraints to new housing. Adding over 1,000 Googlers with $200-$500K total comp might as well be a tsunami for a town that size.
- davidw 8y agoBoulder's constraints are almost entirely political. You could even build up in the mountains if you really wanted to (but that would be awful). There's tons of land in a green belt around it that's quite buildable, and of course most of the city is your basic single-family home western american town with a ban on apartments or building even human-scale 2/3/4 story housing.
- bilbo0s 8y agoeigenvector's point still stands. You choose Detroit, or Cleveland, or Birmingham, or whatever and you completely distort their local economy.
- kenneth 8y agoDetroit I'm sure has plenty of real estate waiting for a good use. Yes, a lot of the blight has been razed, but my understanding is that there's still plenty of underused urban buildings.
- bsvalley 8y agoPlaying devil's advocate to your devil's advocate play, isn't it better when a tech giant opens up a new campus in a not-so developed area? This brings new jobs, raises equities, increase resources, etc. We're talking places like Austin TX, Portland OR, etc. They are at a sweet spot today. They should stop here. Because there's a fine line where it has to stop otherwise it becomes a disruptive machine like the Bay Area and NYC.
- abvdasker 8y agoI can't speak to home prices but my anecdotal experience is that rents in New York are not outrageous. They're high, but generally you get more apartment for less money compared to San Francisco. Particularly if you look at living in uptown Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens or Jersey City the rents can actually be a pretty good deal on an engineer's salary. And because New York is much more dense than SF, commutes are generally also much shorter given the abundance of public transportation options.
- melling 8y ago3 million people work in Manhattan. What will an additional 25,000 people do to the real estate market?
- Apocryphon 8y agoMany of the 25k being high-paid white collar professionals.
- electricslpnsld 8y ago> Many of the 25k being high-paid white collar professionals. Which is already a big chunk of NYC. Adding 25K tech folks into the current mass of financiers, hedge fund managers, and tech peeps in a city of 8.5 million isn't going to change much.
- twblalock 8y agoI suppose there are two models: blame successful companies and their employees for high housing prices and try to make them go somewhere else, or derive (huge) economic benefit from their presence by building enough housing to meet demand. If you find yourself hoping that successful companies and successful people don't move to your area, that's a sign that you are doing something seriously wrong.