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>So now house prices in Mountain View and Sunnyvale go from $800K -> $2.4M, This just proves that the housing crises was the same before. A regular middle-clas

>So now house prices in Mountain View and Sunnyvale go from $800K -> $2.4M, This just proves that the housing crises was the same before. A regular middle-class income cannot afford an $800k home. The problem is the same before and after: there isn't enough supply for people who want homes. Until you look at sales numbers and supply, your analysis is meaningless. Increased wages don't make housing prices increase. >not realizing that if they did hire remote workers, the same thing would happen in their communities. Again, this is bullshit. Google could hire 10,000 remote employees at SV wages in somewhere like the Detroit area and it would have a negligible impact on housing prices because the supply is so large. Remember, techies still make up a tiny percentage of the bay area population. 1% of the population being flush with cash should have absolutely zero impact on a healthy housing market.

nostrademons 8y ago
I don't deny that the root cause of this issue is lack of supply. I'm saying that over short time periods (and sometimes over long ones where NIMBY policies rule), lack of housing supply is a given, and so the consequence of more money for housing is not more housing, it's higher housing prices. 1% of the population being flush with cash has virtually no effect on a housing market where 5% of the housing stock turns over every year. It has a very large effect when < 1% of the housing stock turns over. If people start seeing an effect, they have every incentive not to turn their house over while its value is still going up. Right now, Mountain View has 111 homes for sale in a city of 80,000. Sunnyvale has 156 in a city of 150,000. Cupertino has 56 in a city of 40,000, San Francisco has 706 in a city of a million. Realistically, if these big tech companies offered full remote work (which they actually do, if you've been at the company long enough, but a relatively small portion of the employees meet the tenure & job performance requirements), you wouldn't get 10,000 remote employees in Detroit. You'd get 100,000 remote employees who are free to move around the U.S. to whichever city they prefer most. It's highly likely they will clump in cities that are desirable for techies - Seattle, Portland, Boulder, Austin, Boston, NYC, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham. All except the last 2 are already getting their own version of a mini-housing-crisis, but not to the extent that the Bay Area is.
- wyclif 7y ago
  What would you say the "dark horse" second or third-tier tech cities are in the US right now, the ones that still have good infrastructure and quality of life but aren't suffering from a housing crisis?
OrgNet 8y ago
I guess if they insist in staying in this area, they need to start building tiny homes neighbourhoods...
shard972 7y ago
I don't think they would open an office in Detroit, might affect their diversity numbers too much /s

nostrademons 8y ago

I don't deny that the root cause of this issue is lack of supply. I'm saying that over short time periods (and sometimes over long ones where NIMBY policies rule), lack of housing supply is a given, and so the consequence of more money for housing is not more housing, it's higher housing prices. 1% of the population being flush with cash has virtually no effect on a housing market where 5% of the housing stock turns over every year. It has a very large effect when < 1% of the housing stock turns over. If people start seeing an effect, they have every incentive not to turn their house over while its value is still going up. Right now, Mountain View has 111 homes for sale in a city of 80,000. Sunnyvale has 156 in a city of 150,000. Cupertino has 56 in a city of 40,000, San Francisco has 706 in a city of a million. Realistically, if these big tech companies offered full remote work (which they actually do, if you've been at the company long enough, but a relatively small portion of the employees meet the tenure & job performance requirements), you wouldn't get 10,000 remote employees in Detroit. You'd get 100,000 remote employees who are free to move around the U.S. to whichever city they prefer most. It's highly likely they will clump in cities that are desirable for techies - Seattle, Portland, Boulder, Austin, Boston, NYC, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham. All except the last 2 are already getting their own version of a mini-housing-crisis, but not to the extent that the Bay Area is.

wyclif 7y ago
What would you say the "dark horse" second or third-tier tech cities are in the US right now, the ones that still have good infrastructure and quality of life but aren't suffering from a housing crisis?

OrgNet 8y ago

I guess if they insist in staying in this area, they need to start building tiny homes neighbourhoods...

shard972 7y ago

I don't think they would open an office in Detroit, might affect their diversity numbers too much /s