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American Suburbs Swell Again as a New Generation Escapes the City

94 points by sndean 7y ago

bvttf 7y ago
http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
rolltiide 7y ago
Do Not Get Priced Out
droithomme 7y ago
The idea the article proposes, that $782,000 for a house in North Carolina is an example of "affordable housing", is incredible. Is the article's author a Rockefeller?
- opportune 7y ago
  They're comparing it to the Greater Seattle Area (specifically Bel-Red) housing market. Don't they mention that the same house would cost double there?
- electricslpnsld 7y ago
  The triangle tends to be pricey. Good public schools, both primary and Uni level, lots of tech work, nice weather 10 months of the year, close to the coast and the mountains. Apex and Cary tend to get lots of Yankee expats (compared to Long Island 700K is nothing), also driving up prices there. Drive 20 minutes and you can get a nice place for half that.
  - sgerenser 7y ago
    I live in the same neighborhood as the individuals profiled in the article and my house (new construction, 2500 sf) cost less than half of that price, purchased around the same time. Even though Apex is growing quickly $782K is still very high by local standards. I’m sure it was still a “bargain” compared to Redmond.
  - simonebrunozzi 7y ago
    Is there anything there with a weather comparable to California? Meaning, "almost as good as"
- deleted 7y ago
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hoodwink 7y ago
This article doesn’t jive whatsoever with my anecdotal experience as an urban dwelling elder millennial. As my friends and family form families, they either stay in the city. After all, having a kid or two and staying in NYC or SF is the ultimate status symbol. Or they move to more livable cities such as Philadelphia from NYC or Austin from SF or Pittsburgh from Chicago. The exception is moving back to the suburbs to be close to our boomer parents who of course still live there. Seriously, no one I know my age (35) willingly moves to the suburbs. Curious if this is my bubble or consistent.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Do you and your friends make a lot of money? I’m the same age, and the only people I know starting families in the city are high income professionals. My wife and I (snobby city people) toughed it out until our daughter was ready for kindergarten, but even we weren’t willing to spend $1 million+ on a house in one of the few good school districts in DC when the time for that came. I’ve traded cocktails at the Peninsula for, well, cocktails at the Maggianos, but I can park right next to the entrance and not have to drag a stroller around, so that’s pretty great.
  - hoodwink 7y ago
    Based on these replies, I guess it is just my bubble. My peers and I graduated into the finance boom and were able to ride the paycheck economy before the Great Recession.
    - dajohnson89 7y ago
      what is the paycheck economy?
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    I’ve traded cocktails at the Peninsula for, well, cocktails at the Maggianos, but I can park right next to the entrance and not have to drag a stroller around, so that’s pretty great. Driving to a bar to drink alcohol is great? It's better than being able to walk to a bar or take public transit? How? To me that sounds incredibly reckless.
mostlyjason 7y ago
I like to fantasize sometimes about having a giant house in Raleigh for the price of my one bedroom in SF. I just don’t know anyone moving from SF to Raleigh. The people I know are moving to Berkeley or the peninsula after they have kids. It’d be nice if they had done data to back up their demographic trend other than just claiming it based on anecdotal stories.
- hoodwink 7y ago
  I just left SF for North Carolina. This is merely anecdata, but there are plenty of big city folk here with me, including from SF.
- atwebb 7y ago
  Curious, would you not prefer a modest house and early retirement or options to a giant house in another area? Maybe you can grab both right now, I don't know, but 3-400k can buy a house in extremely nice areas in flyover states, why not find a nice one, buy that and live relaxed?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - metaphor 7y ago
    > ...3-400k can buy a house in extremely nice areas in flyover states, why not find a nice one, buy that and live relaxed? Although the general sentiment is agreeable, there's nothing relaxed about maintaining a $400k home. I like to think of it as a different class of stress that's decoupled from work that pays the bills.
    - atwebb 7y ago
      We can disagree on this one, the amount of time a home takes for maintenance vs a 9-5 isn't a close call for me.
- m-ee 7y ago
  It's annecdata but I just had a coworker move from Alameda to NC. Combination of home prices and avoiding the miserable commutes. Probably mostly the later since they could have easily afforded to buy here and Alameda doesn't share SF's problems with schools and crime.
atwebb 7y ago
I doubt it's a net loss for cities and compliments the swing a decade ago now that people have families and the suburbs offer more of the amenities they're looking for, similarly to downtown offering more amenities for the childless or single. Of course downtown's have things for families but they have a lot of other bosses, business, tourists, industrial...suburbs tend to serve families and retirees and businesses related to those demographics.
pmoriarty 7y ago
This might be a good time to mention a documentary called The End of Suburbia[1], which lays out the case for the existence of the suburbs being fueled and sustained by the easy availability of cheap oil and then goes on to forecast the death of the suburbs as cheap oil stops being so easily available. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Do we have any estimates on when oil will stop being cheap. It was my understanding that the planet will be well and truly fucked beyond repair if we ever managed to use up all the easily available oil.
  - brownbat 7y ago
    Well, OPEC feels it needs to artificially limit supply to keep prices from cratering, while fracking has basically permanently displaced several producers. Also, electrification and renewables threaten future demand (though that may be taken up by plastics). At some point between now and the heat death of the universe, the Earth will stop pumping oil. I wouldn't bet that peak oil is super imminent though.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Hopefully oil won't become expensive because we used it all up, but because we finally price in all the externalities.
    - masonic 7y ago
      That's really well-put and succinct.
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    We have more oil than earlier estimates because of fracking. But we have an easy alternative for gas in cars already available, electric vehicles.
- 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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brownbat 7y ago
Kevin Drum's rebuttal, citing census data and Brookings estimates: "there never really was much of a back-to-the-city trend in the first place... With only tiny variances, the suburbs have been gaining population for 70 years relative to cities (and rural areas)..." Millenials' preferences appear roughly similar to the preferences of other generations. It's almost as if millenials don't love avocado toast so much as they love defying sweeping stereotypes about cohorts divided by arbitrary birth years. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/millennials-love-the-burbs/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/millennials-l... .
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  Population doesn’t tell the story WRT lifestyle preferences, vacancy rates and prices do, and both indicate that millennials prefer urban living.
  - ericd 7y ago
    People generally seem to prefer cities when they're single and/or childless. Maybe millenials are just taking a bit longer to leave that phase than previous generations?
    - mymythisisthis 7y ago
      The split I see. Progressive parents are staying in the city and fighting. They're Hipsters, and they are organizing; community events, volunteering in schools, etc. The ones that are moving to the suburbs are the ones that are bit traditional, not into fighting for social causes.
- flukus 7y ago
  That article might be dated considering it's only got an estimate for 2010 and I don't see a published date. And that vertical axis seems to be representing different things, or is the remainder rural? Anecdotally I see more families in inner city Melbourne than there was a decade ago, but I also see things like kids sporting events becoming local affairs when they used to involve driving kids around the city a lot more, so some areas are definitely adapting to more inner city parents with no cars.
mi100hael 7y ago
Living in the St. Louis area, I can say that this example of Glendale used in the article is awfully strange. Makes me suspicious of other conclusions drawn by the author. > Glendale, Mo., which is hobbled by the loss of such St. Louis corporate anchors as Anheuser-Busch." Glendale is a very tiny municipality (1 of 88) in St. Louis county with a population of 5,924 in 2010 and 5,886 in 2017. Over the same time period, median home prices are up from about $340k to $390k. Hardly what I'd call "hobbled." In fact, St. Louis County as a whole (which doesn't include the city but does include some rather dense urban "suburbs") has remained relatively flat and St. Charles County, the next ring out, has seen steady growth.[0] [0] https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/census-st-louis-city-lost-st-charles-county-gained-and/article_738cfe8f-a15e-5da8-9ad7-a38d8027ea71.html https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/census-st-louis-ci...
- deleted 7y ago
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- sureaboutthis 7y ago
  People who don't live in the area are thoroughly clueless as to the geo-political makeup of what we citizens here call St. Louis. Proof of that are the countless articles pointing to the population of the city being less than 300K while completely ignoring the nearly 3 million of us who live in the area outside the 66 sq miles of the city. And I haven't a clue how they make a connection between Anheuser-Busch--which is just as active in the city of St. Louis--and Glendale down the street from me.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Given the problems cities are having these days, and the cost of housing (and the lack of housing), I'm not surprised.
SN76477 7y ago
My family and I moved to the suburbs about 5 years ago. Less traffic, better schools and no weirdos wandering the streets at night.
- elindbe2 7y ago
  Living in a big city, its funny/sad how big an impact the weirdos have on my opinion of the city.
jhbadger 7y ago
One thing is that "suburb" doesn't necessarily mean the sterile tracks of ranch houses with nary a store or restaurant within miles that is the cliché. Many smaller towns/cities are technically "suburbs" in that they are within commuting distance of a large city but are still walkable/public transit friendly and have their own downtowns.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
homerhomer 7y ago
We just recently moved from a city to the burbs. Our choice was multi-factored. It was price of a bigger house, better schools, less congestion and crime. My old house was 900sf, perfect for 1 to 2 people, but it got cramped when my son was born. We looked into expanding but for the cost of adding a room with a bathroom ($100k) we decided that it wasn't worth it. With schools we got lucky, the elementary school was just recently built and looked great. But there was an issue, the schools that my son would be going after grade school were rated very poor. This was a concern. Traffic bad and seemingly only getting worse. Traffic projects have been in endless gridlock between car commuters and the bicycle community. Not sure about other large cities, but mine (Portland, OR) has a pretty big homeless and crime issues as of lately. Gone are the days of how clean our city is and now it's just littered with trash and tent communities. It's not uncommon to see a heroine needle if walking in a city park. In the last year, we had somebody try to break into my shed and my wife and 4 years old Son were confronted in our driveway by a homeless individual, who said that he was considering suicide. I still have a soft spot for PDX and I think it's a great place, but we decided get out. ha ha sounds like I'm repeating the same story of earlier genereations, ha ha nothing new. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/our-city-has-become-a-cesspool-police-union-president-blames-mayor-for-homeless-problems/283-574760140 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/our-city-has...
- kartan 7y ago
  > My old house was 900sf, perfect for 1 to 2 people That is 80m2. I grew up in a 75m2 apartment (810sf) with my parents and two brothers. I guess that "cramped" is a matter of perspective. :) > Not sure about other large cities, but mine (Portland, OR) has a pretty big homeless and crime issues as of lately. It makes me sad to hear about that. We are in the XXI century and we have good ways of helping homeless people and reduce crime. I understand that you leave to a better place, but that does not solve the problem. > confronted in our driveway by a homeless individual, who said that he was considering suicide. I hope that you have find a good place for you and your family but do not forget the people that you left behind. Their lives are a tragedy that can be averted.
  - adreamingsoul 7y ago
antisthenes 7y ago
Is there a way to live in the city without paying exorbitant fees to an HOA for crumbling infrastructure and their cronyist maintenance contracts? Every time I look at real estate, the HOA fees pretty much make condo living a no-go. I'm somehow supposed to believe that it takes $800/mo to service a small 2-br apartment? In many cases that doesn't even include utilities.
- zamfi 7y ago
  This often includes either a) full-time staff, in the case of building with doormen or maintenance staff, or b) payback of construction loans or mortgages taken to pay for maintenance. But: do you live in a house? I assume you haven’t had to maintain it much yet...new roof, new heating, new sewer line, renovations, etc. all cost tons of money. I’d be surprised if for a house > 50 years old, you’re paying less than a few hundred a month on maintenance on average.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    The rule of thumb for home maintenance is 1% of purchase price per year. Which isn't $800/month for most people, but is around the few hundred per month you mentioned.
  - antisthenes 7y ago
    I actually have already (replaced the AC compressor, which cost ~$1600). Landscaping was about $500 for the whole year. Either way, that's only $2100, compared to something like $10,000 I would have paid in HOA fees in an older condo around the same area. Renovations are not-at-all comparable, as they are strictly an improvement. I don't know of a single HOA that came in and renovated someone's condo for free. 1% of house/land value is still cheaper than HOA fees in 90% of cases.
- cardiffspaceman 7y ago
  I lived in a condo which was 2/3 owned by one corporation. The high-cost maintenance that only happens every 20-50 years was NOT amortized into the HOA fee. It was expected that special assessments would pay for such things. And the corporation for its part was happy with that arrangement. In the short term the regular HOA fee was lower.
burlesona 7y ago
I’d love to see a study more controlled for cost of living. > In the early 2010s, after the financial crisis walloped the housing market, average growth rates in cities with populations greater than 250,000 outpaced the suburbs. But over the past five years, the average annual growth in America’s big cities has slowed by 40%, to 0.69%, according to census estimates. I think it’s no coincidence that when prices dropped significantly, Millennials flocked to cities. That’s where the jobs are, and they could afford it. Since most cities are not really accommodating growth, prices have ballooned, and people are being priced out. I used to live in Raleigh and I knew a few people who moved to Apex. It was always the same story: “I’d rather stay in Raleigh but we can afford Apex.” That’s not to knock on Apex, it is a cute town, but the migration was driven much more by the simple price tag than anything else. Meanwhile what’s happening in Apex now is pretty much the definition of the Growth Ponzi Scheme (ref: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme). The thing that blows my mind the most is how easy it is to accommodate massive growth by simply requiring a connected street grid — what almost every American town and city did before WW2 and the suburban design social engineering projects of the FDR and Eisenhower eras. A grid can scale. The stupid cul-de-sac design is literally engineered to create traffic congestion. How much more land are we going to inflict that abomination on? Really that’s what this all comes down to: there are straightforward, known solutions to scale urban populations well beyond the relatively modest growth that we have in the US, but as long as we refuse to pull our heads out of the sand and grow intentionally we will continue to have this phenomenon where growth ruins places - first in quality of life, and fiscally in a generation when Apex is not the hot new suburb any more but is saddled with the maintenance cost for hundreds of miles of unproductive infrastructure.
- r00fus 7y ago
  > The thing that blows my mind the most is how easy it is to accommodate massive growth by simply requiring a connected street grid — what almost every American town and city did before WW2 and the suburban design social engineering projects of the FDR and Eisenhower eras. A grid can scale. The stupid cul-de-sac design is literally engineered to create traffic congestion. How much more land are we going to inflict that abomination on? Cul-de-sac design (and the related 3-leaf clover design where you have multiple cul-de-sacs all emptying into a single artery, allow for more private front porch experiences and kid-play areas. It was a reaction to the inability of most residential towns to keep out the gangs, racers and high-speed commuters (ie, bad combo with pedestrians, kids playing in the street). How do cul-de-sac designs cause congestion?
OrwellianChild 7y ago
This article blows my mind due to this single sentence: The couple found a sprawling five-bedroom house next to a horse farm for $782,000, half the cost they would have paid in the Seattle suburb they left behind. This implies that the family in the article was shopping for a $1.5M home in a "Seattle suburb" that is most likely in the Bellevue/Redmond area in the year 2015. In that year, the average sale price in the region was between $855K (Bellevue, WA) and $598K (Redmond, WA), implying that they were aspiring to live well above the median lifestyle in two of the richer suburbs in the Seattle area. [1] I don't know how to square this family's story with the surrounding narrative in the article. This family could afford to live almost anywhere. They could afford to pay taxes to fund schools and other municipal services. They could choose to live somewhere that has none of the problems the article decries, simply by buying in. Methinks this is a story about false advertising on the part of "Millennial Mayberry", rather than suburban flight. [1] https://public.tableau.com/shared/9P33834MX?:display_count=yes&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/shared/9P33834MX?:display_count=y...
- noobermin 7y ago
  Are you surprised really that it's native content?
- mruts 7y ago
  That's not what it implies. The article is just talking about the price of housing in Seattle. The journalist was comparing the cost of the home the family bought, with a theoretical similar house in the city. Moreover, almost everyone is highly leveraged when "buying" a home. Hell, I my wife and I could swing a 1.5m mortgage if we really wanted to. According to mortgage calculator, a 1.5m house would take 60k down-payment and 1.5k/month[1]. That's very reasonable for a large portion of the population. I've paid triple that amount in rent for apartments. [1]: 30-year, 60k realtor cut, 4.2% fixed rate, $2400 property taxes/year, average credit Edit: Yeah I think the calculator is giving wrong results. There's no way that's possible.
  - apohn 7y ago
    >According to mortgage calculator, a 1.5m house would take 60k down-payment and 1.5k/month[1]. Did you miss a zero somewhere or did the calculator have a bug? There's no way 60K down and 1.5k/month is correct. It's much higher than that for a $1.5M home.
lanrh1836 7y ago
I think the decision to move to the burbs is almost entirely out of the question as an LGBT. Urban centers are the only places with thriving LGBT communities, and I think I would feel very alone if I moved away from one.
Xcelerate 7y ago
I grew up in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, and last year I moved from rural East Tennessee to the Bay Area. Having lived in all three (rural, suburban, and city), the suburbs are definitely my least favorite. Suburbs sort of combine the worst aspects of city and rural life; too many people around that you don't really get space, privacy, or scenery, yet not enough people for there to be any interesting restaurants, farmer's markets, museums, coffee shops, or really just anything to do. I love the Bay Area because it offers all the amenities of a big city, yet all sorts of natural beauty is within an hour's drive away. One of my relatives visited recently and was shocked at how you can be in downtown SF one minute and then standing in an old-growth forest of redwood trees twenty minutes later. Unfortunately, I imagine once my wife and I have children, expenses will become rather difficult. I'm not sure how well a tiny apartment will accommodate a growing family, especially if we have two or three kids. So... I'll probably end up back in the suburbs eventually, but I'm not in a hurry, and it certainly isn't my preference to be there.
- freetime2 7y ago
  > Unfortunately, I imagine once my wife and I have children, expenses will become rather difficult. I'm not sure how well a tiny apartment will accommodate a growing family, especially if we have two or three kids. So... I'll probably end up back in the suburbs eventually, but I'm not in a hurry, and it certainly isn't my preference to be there. You may find that your preferences change as a result of having children. Also - there are a lot of different living options falling somewhere between San Francisco and Atlanta suburbs with regards to population density. E.g. a small city with a walkable downtown, restaurants, etc., but affordable enough to own a decent-size house and a car.
  - mruts 7y ago
    Suburbs are way worse for children than cities are. As a teen/pre-teen in a city you have independence, you can go to places with your friends and hangout. Suburbs make your children dependent on you for rides and consequently stunts their emotional maturity.
    - 7y ago
didibus 7y ago
Nothing sucks the soul and joy of life out of me more than a suburb, yet cost of cities and the space needed to raise kids mean they're not all negatives. I just wish we could do better, because no one should be forced to live in such soulless place,yet no one should have to pay so much to afford an extra bedroom.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
helen___keller 7y ago
There are so many confounding factors in any discussion about this, it's almost meaningless to try and draw generalizations across an age cohort without first stratifying by city. The urban design of a region dictates what "suburb" means. A New England suburb is vastly different from a Florida suburb. The zoning laws and building regulations of the past few generations dictate what older housing stock is available. In most cities this means the housing stock is overwhelmingly suburban thanks to the sprawling postwar housing policy. Today's zoning laws and regulations decide the same but for the newer and nicer end of the housing stock. Some cities have moved to more density-friendly policy for new construction, some cities are still sprawling, and California is largely frozen in amber. The composition of the housing stock as discussed above play a large part in the pricing of suburban vs urban living. Another confounding factor is what the commute looks like, which again is dictated by the past century+ of public policy. A driving commute in greater Boston is generally worse than in your average midsized American city. But rail commutes are viable in many greater Boston towns, and demand trends upwards near rail lines. Finally, as always, education is a big factor in housing for anyone with children. If all the urban schools suck I expect that pushes some families out of the city.
sethammons 7y ago
For half a million bucks, down near my SoCal office, you can get one of the two or so available listings with about 1k sqft and maybe two bedrooms. You probably have to be a dual professional income household to live down there. Want a couple of kids to have their own rooms? Tack on another 50-100% of that price. I don't even get how folks in San Fransisco do it. Go inland an hour or two, hundreds (thousands?) of listings with 3, 4, or 5 bedrooms and 2.5k+ sqft at the same or more affordable prices. You are literally going to double or more your housing costs by being in the city close to work. I decided to go full remote and moved to the middle of beautiful nowhere. I'm closer to the grocery and restaurants (limited as they are) than before. My commute is going across the hallway to my own office space. My three kids all have their own rooms. Unfortunately, they will probably have to move closer to some city when they look for careers.
elindbe2 7y ago
It wouldn't be an "escape" for me, it's just if I want a decent amount of space and good schools and a subjectively "nice" neighborhood then I have to look at more suburban areas. I would like to be able to afford a reasonably big place in a nice green, walkable neighborhood in the city but I don't want to spend 10-20 extra years of my life working to afford it.

94 points by sndean 7y ago

bvttf 7y ago

http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

rolltiide 7y ago

Do Not Get Priced Out

droithomme 7y ago

The idea the article proposes, that $782,000 for a house in North Carolina is an example of "affordable housing", is incredible. Is the article's author a Rockefeller?

opportune 7y ago
They're comparing it to the Greater Seattle Area (specifically Bel-Red) housing market. Don't they mention that the same house would cost double there?
electricslpnsld 7y ago
The triangle tends to be pricey. Good public schools, both primary and Uni level, lots of tech work, nice weather 10 months of the year, close to the coast and the mountains. Apex and Cary tend to get lots of Yankee expats (compared to Long Island 700K is nothing), also driving up prices there. Drive 20 minutes and you can get a nice place for half that.
- sgerenser 7y ago
  I live in the same neighborhood as the individuals profiled in the article and my house (new construction, 2500 sf) cost less than half of that price, purchased around the same time. Even though Apex is growing quickly $782K is still very high by local standards. I’m sure it was still a “bargain” compared to Redmond.
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  Is there anything there with a weather comparable to California? Meaning, "almost as good as"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

hoodwink 7y ago

This article doesn’t jive whatsoever with my anecdotal experience as an urban dwelling elder millennial. As my friends and family form families, they either stay in the city. After all, having a kid or two and staying in NYC or SF is the ultimate status symbol. Or they move to more livable cities such as Philadelphia from NYC or Austin from SF or Pittsburgh from Chicago. The exception is moving back to the suburbs to be close to our boomer parents who of course still live there. Seriously, no one I know my age (35) willingly moves to the suburbs. Curious if this is my bubble or consistent.

rayiner 7y ago
Do you and your friends make a lot of money? I’m the same age, and the only people I know starting families in the city are high income professionals. My wife and I (snobby city people) toughed it out until our daughter was ready for kindergarten, but even we weren’t willing to spend $1 million+ on a house in one of the few good school districts in DC when the time for that came. I’ve traded cocktails at the Peninsula for, well, cocktails at the Maggianos, but I can park right next to the entrance and not have to drag a stroller around, so that’s pretty great.
- hoodwink 7y ago
  Based on these replies, I guess it is just my bubble. My peers and I graduated into the finance boom and were able to ride the paycheck economy before the Great Recession.
  - dajohnson89 7y ago
    what is the paycheck economy?
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  I’ve traded cocktails at the Peninsula for, well, cocktails at the Maggianos, but I can park right next to the entrance and not have to drag a stroller around, so that’s pretty great. Driving to a bar to drink alcohol is great? It's better than being able to walk to a bar or take public transit? How? To me that sounds incredibly reckless.

mostlyjason 7y ago

I like to fantasize sometimes about having a giant house in Raleigh for the price of my one bedroom in SF. I just don’t know anyone moving from SF to Raleigh. The people I know are moving to Berkeley or the peninsula after they have kids. It’d be nice if they had done data to back up their demographic trend other than just claiming it based on anecdotal stories.

hoodwink 7y ago
I just left SF for North Carolina. This is merely anecdata, but there are plenty of big city folk here with me, including from SF.
atwebb 7y ago
Curious, would you not prefer a modest house and early retirement or options to a giant house in another area? Maybe you can grab both right now, I don't know, but 3-400k can buy a house in extremely nice areas in flyover states, why not find a nice one, buy that and live relaxed?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- metaphor 7y ago
  > ...3-400k can buy a house in extremely nice areas in flyover states, why not find a nice one, buy that and live relaxed? Although the general sentiment is agreeable, there's nothing relaxed about maintaining a $400k home. I like to think of it as a different class of stress that's decoupled from work that pays the bills.
  - atwebb 7y ago
    We can disagree on this one, the amount of time a home takes for maintenance vs a 9-5 isn't a close call for me.
m-ee 7y ago
It's annecdata but I just had a coworker move from Alameda to NC. Combination of home prices and avoiding the miserable commutes. Probably mostly the later since they could have easily afforded to buy here and Alameda doesn't share SF's problems with schools and crime.

atwebb 7y ago

I doubt it's a net loss for cities and compliments the swing a decade ago now that people have families and the suburbs offer more of the amenities they're looking for, similarly to downtown offering more amenities for the childless or single. Of course downtown's have things for families but they have a lot of other bosses, business, tourists, industrial...suburbs tend to serve families and retirees and businesses related to those demographics.

pmoriarty 7y ago

This might be a good time to mention a documentary called The End of Suburbia[1], which lays out the case for the existence of the suburbs being fueled and sustained by the easy availability of cheap oil and then goes on to forecast the death of the suburbs as cheap oil stops being so easily available. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug

baroffoos 7y ago
Do we have any estimates on when oil will stop being cheap. It was my understanding that the planet will be well and truly fucked beyond repair if we ever managed to use up all the easily available oil.
- brownbat 7y ago
  Well, OPEC feels it needs to artificially limit supply to keep prices from cratering, while fracking has basically permanently displaced several producers. Also, electrification and renewables threaten future demand (though that may be taken up by plastics). At some point between now and the heat death of the universe, the Earth will stop pumping oil. I wouldn't bet that peak oil is super imminent though.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Hopefully oil won't become expensive because we used it all up, but because we finally price in all the externalities.
  - masonic 7y ago
    That's really well-put and succinct.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  We have more oil than earlier estimates because of fracking. But we have an easy alternative for gas in cars already available, electric vehicles.
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brownbat 7y ago

Kevin Drum's rebuttal, citing census data and Brookings estimates: "there never really was much of a back-to-the-city trend in the first place... With only tiny variances, the suburbs have been gaining population for 70 years relative to cities (and rural areas)..." Millenials' preferences appear roughly similar to the preferences of other generations. It's almost as if millenials don't love avocado toast so much as they love defying sweeping stereotypes about cohorts divided by arbitrary birth years. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/millennials-love-the-burbs/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/millennials-l... .

0xB31B1B 7y ago
Population doesn’t tell the story WRT lifestyle preferences, vacancy rates and prices do, and both indicate that millennials prefer urban living.
- ericd 7y ago
  People generally seem to prefer cities when they're single and/or childless. Maybe millenials are just taking a bit longer to leave that phase than previous generations?
  - mymythisisthis 7y ago
    The split I see. Progressive parents are staying in the city and fighting. They're Hipsters, and they are organizing; community events, volunteering in schools, etc. The ones that are moving to the suburbs are the ones that are bit traditional, not into fighting for social causes.
flukus 7y ago
That article might be dated considering it's only got an estimate for 2010 and I don't see a published date. And that vertical axis seems to be representing different things, or is the remainder rural? Anecdotally I see more families in inner city Melbourne than there was a decade ago, but I also see things like kids sporting events becoming local affairs when they used to involve driving kids around the city a lot more, so some areas are definitely adapting to more inner city parents with no cars.

mi100hael 7y ago

Living in the St. Louis area, I can say that this example of Glendale used in the article is awfully strange. Makes me suspicious of other conclusions drawn by the author. > Glendale, Mo., which is hobbled by the loss of such St. Louis corporate anchors as Anheuser-Busch." Glendale is a very tiny municipality (1 of 88) in St. Louis county with a population of 5,924 in 2010 and 5,886 in 2017. Over the same time period, median home prices are up from about $340k to $390k. Hardly what I'd call "hobbled." In fact, St. Louis County as a whole (which doesn't include the city but does include some rather dense urban "suburbs") has remained relatively flat and St. Charles County, the next ring out, has seen steady growth.[0] [0] https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/census-st-louis-city-lost-st-charles-county-gained-and/article_738cfe8f-a15e-5da8-9ad7-a38d8027ea71.html https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/census-st-louis-ci...

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sureaboutthis 7y ago
People who don't live in the area are thoroughly clueless as to the geo-political makeup of what we citizens here call St. Louis. Proof of that are the countless articles pointing to the population of the city being less than 300K while completely ignoring the nearly 3 million of us who live in the area outside the 66 sq miles of the city. And I haven't a clue how they make a connection between Anheuser-Busch--which is just as active in the city of St. Louis--and Glendale down the street from me.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Given the problems cities are having these days, and the cost of housing (and the lack of housing), I'm not surprised.

SN76477 7y ago

My family and I moved to the suburbs about 5 years ago. Less traffic, better schools and no weirdos wandering the streets at night.

elindbe2 7y ago
Living in a big city, its funny/sad how big an impact the weirdos have on my opinion of the city.

jhbadger 7y ago

One thing is that "suburb" doesn't necessarily mean the sterile tracks of ranch houses with nary a store or restaurant within miles that is the cliché. Many smaller towns/cities are technically "suburbs" in that they are within commuting distance of a large city but are still walkable/public transit friendly and have their own downtowns.

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homerhomer 7y ago

We just recently moved from a city to the burbs. Our choice was multi-factored. It was price of a bigger house, better schools, less congestion and crime. My old house was 900sf, perfect for 1 to 2 people, but it got cramped when my son was born. We looked into expanding but for the cost of adding a room with a bathroom ($100k) we decided that it wasn't worth it. With schools we got lucky, the elementary school was just recently built and looked great. But there was an issue, the schools that my son would be going after grade school were rated very poor. This was a concern. Traffic bad and seemingly only getting worse. Traffic projects have been in endless gridlock between car commuters and the bicycle community. Not sure about other large cities, but mine (Portland, OR) has a pretty big homeless and crime issues as of lately. Gone are the days of how clean our city is and now it's just littered with trash and tent communities. It's not uncommon to see a heroine needle if walking in a city park. In the last year, we had somebody try to break into my shed and my wife and 4 years old Son were confronted in our driveway by a homeless individual, who said that he was considering suicide. I still have a soft spot for PDX and I think it's a great place, but we decided get out. ha ha sounds like I'm repeating the same story of earlier genereations, ha ha nothing new. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/our-city-has-become-a-cesspool-police-union-president-blames-mayor-for-homeless-problems/283-574760140 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/our-city-has...

kartan 7y ago
> My old house was 900sf, perfect for 1 to 2 people That is 80m2. I grew up in a 75m2 apartment (810sf) with my parents and two brothers. I guess that "cramped" is a matter of perspective. :) > Not sure about other large cities, but mine (Portland, OR) has a pretty big homeless and crime issues as of lately. It makes me sad to hear about that. We are in the XXI century and we have good ways of helping homeless people and reduce crime. I understand that you leave to a better place, but that does not solve the problem. > confronted in our driveway by a homeless individual, who said that he was considering suicide. I hope that you have find a good place for you and your family but do not forget the people that you left behind. Their lives are a tragedy that can be averted.
- adreamingsoul 7y ago

antisthenes 7y ago

Is there a way to live in the city without paying exorbitant fees to an HOA for crumbling infrastructure and their cronyist maintenance contracts? Every time I look at real estate, the HOA fees pretty much make condo living a no-go. I'm somehow supposed to believe that it takes $800/mo to service a small 2-br apartment? In many cases that doesn't even include utilities.

zamfi 7y ago
This often includes either a) full-time staff, in the case of building with doormen or maintenance staff, or b) payback of construction loans or mortgages taken to pay for maintenance. But: do you live in a house? I assume you haven’t had to maintain it much yet...new roof, new heating, new sewer line, renovations, etc. all cost tons of money. I’d be surprised if for a house > 50 years old, you’re paying less than a few hundred a month on maintenance on average.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  The rule of thumb for home maintenance is 1% of purchase price per year. Which isn't $800/month for most people, but is around the few hundred per month you mentioned.
- antisthenes 7y ago
  I actually have already (replaced the AC compressor, which cost ~$1600). Landscaping was about $500 for the whole year. Either way, that's only $2100, compared to something like $10,000 I would have paid in HOA fees in an older condo around the same area. Renovations are not-at-all comparable, as they are strictly an improvement. I don't know of a single HOA that came in and renovated someone's condo for free. 1% of house/land value is still cheaper than HOA fees in 90% of cases.
cardiffspaceman 7y ago
I lived in a condo which was 2/3 owned by one corporation. The high-cost maintenance that only happens every 20-50 years was NOT amortized into the HOA fee. It was expected that special assessments would pay for such things. And the corporation for its part was happy with that arrangement. In the short term the regular HOA fee was lower.

burlesona 7y ago

I’d love to see a study more controlled for cost of living. > In the early 2010s, after the financial crisis walloped the housing market, average growth rates in cities with populations greater than 250,000 outpaced the suburbs. But over the past five years, the average annual growth in America’s big cities has slowed by 40%, to 0.69%, according to census estimates. I think it’s no coincidence that when prices dropped significantly, Millennials flocked to cities. That’s where the jobs are, and they could afford it. Since most cities are not really accommodating growth, prices have ballooned, and people are being priced out. I used to live in Raleigh and I knew a few people who moved to Apex. It was always the same story: “I’d rather stay in Raleigh but we can afford Apex.” That’s not to knock on Apex, it is a cute town, but the migration was driven much more by the simple price tag than anything else. Meanwhile what’s happening in Apex now is pretty much the definition of the Growth Ponzi Scheme (ref: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme). The thing that blows my mind the most is how easy it is to accommodate massive growth by simply requiring a connected street grid — what almost every American town and city did before WW2 and the suburban design social engineering projects of the FDR and Eisenhower eras. A grid can scale. The stupid cul-de-sac design is literally engineered to create traffic congestion. How much more land are we going to inflict that abomination on? Really that’s what this all comes down to: there are straightforward, known solutions to scale urban populations well beyond the relatively modest growth that we have in the US, but as long as we refuse to pull our heads out of the sand and grow intentionally we will continue to have this phenomenon where growth ruins places - first in quality of life, and fiscally in a generation when Apex is not the hot new suburb any more but is saddled with the maintenance cost for hundreds of miles of unproductive infrastructure.

r00fus 7y ago
> The thing that blows my mind the most is how easy it is to accommodate massive growth by simply requiring a connected street grid — what almost every American town and city did before WW2 and the suburban design social engineering projects of the FDR and Eisenhower eras. A grid can scale. The stupid cul-de-sac design is literally engineered to create traffic congestion. How much more land are we going to inflict that abomination on? Cul-de-sac design (and the related 3-leaf clover design where you have multiple cul-de-sacs all emptying into a single artery, allow for more private front porch experiences and kid-play areas. It was a reaction to the inability of most residential towns to keep out the gangs, racers and high-speed commuters (ie, bad combo with pedestrians, kids playing in the street). How do cul-de-sac designs cause congestion?

OrwellianChild 7y ago

This article blows my mind due to this single sentence: The couple found a sprawling five-bedroom house next to a horse farm for $782,000, half the cost they would have paid in the Seattle suburb they left behind. This implies that the family in the article was shopping for a $1.5M home in a "Seattle suburb" that is most likely in the Bellevue/Redmond area in the year 2015. In that year, the average sale price in the region was between $855K (Bellevue, WA) and $598K (Redmond, WA), implying that they were aspiring to live well above the median lifestyle in two of the richer suburbs in the Seattle area. [1] I don't know how to square this family's story with the surrounding narrative in the article. This family could afford to live almost anywhere. They could afford to pay taxes to fund schools and other municipal services. They could choose to live somewhere that has none of the problems the article decries, simply by buying in. Methinks this is a story about false advertising on the part of "Millennial Mayberry", rather than suburban flight. [1] https://public.tableau.com/shared/9P33834MX?:display_count=yes&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/shared/9P33834MX?:display_count=y...

noobermin 7y ago
Are you surprised really that it's native content?
mruts 7y ago
That's not what it implies. The article is just talking about the price of housing in Seattle. The journalist was comparing the cost of the home the family bought, with a theoretical similar house in the city. Moreover, almost everyone is highly leveraged when "buying" a home. Hell, I my wife and I could swing a 1.5m mortgage if we really wanted to. According to mortgage calculator, a 1.5m house would take 60k down-payment and 1.5k/month[1]. That's very reasonable for a large portion of the population. I've paid triple that amount in rent for apartments. [1]: 30-year, 60k realtor cut, 4.2% fixed rate, $2400 property taxes/year, average credit Edit: Yeah I think the calculator is giving wrong results. There's no way that's possible.
- apohn 7y ago
  >According to mortgage calculator, a 1.5m house would take 60k down-payment and 1.5k/month[1]. Did you miss a zero somewhere or did the calculator have a bug? There's no way 60K down and 1.5k/month is correct. It's much higher than that for a $1.5M home.

lanrh1836 7y ago

I think the decision to move to the burbs is almost entirely out of the question as an LGBT. Urban centers are the only places with thriving LGBT communities, and I think I would feel very alone if I moved away from one.

Xcelerate 7y ago

I grew up in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, and last year I moved from rural East Tennessee to the Bay Area. Having lived in all three (rural, suburban, and city), the suburbs are definitely my least favorite. Suburbs sort of combine the worst aspects of city and rural life; too many people around that you don't really get space, privacy, or scenery, yet not enough people for there to be any interesting restaurants, farmer's markets, museums, coffee shops, or really just anything to do. I love the Bay Area because it offers all the amenities of a big city, yet all sorts of natural beauty is within an hour's drive away. One of my relatives visited recently and was shocked at how you can be in downtown SF one minute and then standing in an old-growth forest of redwood trees twenty minutes later. Unfortunately, I imagine once my wife and I have children, expenses will become rather difficult. I'm not sure how well a tiny apartment will accommodate a growing family, especially if we have two or three kids. So... I'll probably end up back in the suburbs eventually, but I'm not in a hurry, and it certainly isn't my preference to be there.

freetime2 7y ago
> Unfortunately, I imagine once my wife and I have children, expenses will become rather difficult. I'm not sure how well a tiny apartment will accommodate a growing family, especially if we have two or three kids. So... I'll probably end up back in the suburbs eventually, but I'm not in a hurry, and it certainly isn't my preference to be there. You may find that your preferences change as a result of having children. Also - there are a lot of different living options falling somewhere between San Francisco and Atlanta suburbs with regards to population density. E.g. a small city with a walkable downtown, restaurants, etc., but affordable enough to own a decent-size house and a car.
- mruts 7y ago
  Suburbs are way worse for children than cities are. As a teen/pre-teen in a city you have independence, you can go to places with your friends and hangout. Suburbs make your children dependent on you for rides and consequently stunts their emotional maturity.
  - 7y ago

didibus 7y ago

Nothing sucks the soul and joy of life out of me more than a suburb, yet cost of cities and the space needed to raise kids mean they're not all negatives. I just wish we could do better, because no one should be forced to live in such soulless place,yet no one should have to pay so much to afford an extra bedroom.

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helen___keller 7y ago

There are so many confounding factors in any discussion about this, it's almost meaningless to try and draw generalizations across an age cohort without first stratifying by city. The urban design of a region dictates what "suburb" means. A New England suburb is vastly different from a Florida suburb. The zoning laws and building regulations of the past few generations dictate what older housing stock is available. In most cities this means the housing stock is overwhelmingly suburban thanks to the sprawling postwar housing policy. Today's zoning laws and regulations decide the same but for the newer and nicer end of the housing stock. Some cities have moved to more density-friendly policy for new construction, some cities are still sprawling, and California is largely frozen in amber. The composition of the housing stock as discussed above play a large part in the pricing of suburban vs urban living. Another confounding factor is what the commute looks like, which again is dictated by the past century+ of public policy. A driving commute in greater Boston is generally worse than in your average midsized American city. But rail commutes are viable in many greater Boston towns, and demand trends upwards near rail lines. Finally, as always, education is a big factor in housing for anyone with children. If all the urban schools suck I expect that pushes some families out of the city.

sethammons 7y ago

For half a million bucks, down near my SoCal office, you can get one of the two or so available listings with about 1k sqft and maybe two bedrooms. You probably have to be a dual professional income household to live down there. Want a couple of kids to have their own rooms? Tack on another 50-100% of that price. I don't even get how folks in San Fransisco do it. Go inland an hour or two, hundreds (thousands?) of listings with 3, 4, or 5 bedrooms and 2.5k+ sqft at the same or more affordable prices. You are literally going to double or more your housing costs by being in the city close to work. I decided to go full remote and moved to the middle of beautiful nowhere. I'm closer to the grocery and restaurants (limited as they are) than before. My commute is going across the hallway to my own office space. My three kids all have their own rooms. Unfortunately, they will probably have to move closer to some city when they look for careers.

elindbe2 7y ago

It wouldn't be an "escape" for me, it's just if I want a decent amount of space and good schools and a subjectively "nice" neighborhood then I have to look at more suburban areas. I would like to be able to afford a reasonably big place in a nice green, walkable neighborhood in the city but I don't want to spend 10-20 extra years of my life working to afford it.