5 ms·

I mean FWIW I’m American and your explanation sounds very foreign to me. I’m a millennial though, so owning a house at all is quite obstacle. Scrounging up a do

• matchbok 6y ago
  In the same spot. Home ownership is so out of reach for the vast majority of the people my age. Even with good salaries and savings! Most people my age who have purchased a home got significant help from their parents.
  • kevinherron 6y ago
    Or we just don't live in the Bay Area...
  • caymanjim 6y ago
    It's really not out of reach unless you insist on living in a major metropolis. A young couple earning under $100k combined can afford a comfortable 3-bedroom home in all 50 states, just not in a large city. Mortgage rates are near all-time lows and the 20% "required downpayment" has been a myth since before you were born. You don't even need great credit to buy a home with a mortgage under $1500/mo all-in with taxes and insurance. Now that remote work is increasingly accepted there's never been a better time to buy in the suburbs.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      After all this, for many people I suspect that living in the core area of an "elite" city is going to become a luxury lifestyle decision rather than at least a perceived cost that is part and parcel of desirable jobs. Some will still choose to do so, but it will be the same sort of expensive optional choice that living in a trendy beach or mountain town will be.
    • nicoburns 6y ago
      $100k? A quick google shows me that median household income in the US is closer to $60k. And that's the median, so half of households will be lower than that.
      • GordonS 6y ago
        I presume the OP's comment was in the context of the typical HN crowd, which I would imagine has a higher than average income.
        • taken_username 6y ago
          Assumptions, not data. Even if you assume the reader of HN is in tech firm, you can assume the "household" income average
          • GordonS 6y ago
            It seems a reasonable enough assumption to me, that tech workers make more than average - so much so that I didn't feel the need to trawl for a peer reviewed data source.
        • jbay808 6y ago
          I would guess the ones earning that much are probably in metro areas like the bay area and Seattle.
          • GordonS 6y ago
            I imagine those in the Bay area are making a lot more than 50k/year, or at least there are always SV devs chiming in saying they are making 300-600k/year (the OP said 100k for a couple). I make the equivalent of 100k USD in a tier 2 city in Scotland (a single income that is, not a couple combined). It's not outlandish for senior roles across much of the UK (with "normal" companies, not FAANG).
            • VRay 6y ago
    • kyllo 6y ago
      People go where the jobs are. They are going to live wherever employers "insist on" locating their offices. 20% down payment isn't a myth; if you don't put 20% down (and don't have some special situation like a VA loan) you have to pay for private mortgage insurance which can be hundreds per month, as you're buying the lender insurance against the possibility of you defaulting on your loan.
      • SamuelAdams 6y ago
        Depending on your situation, PMI may be worth it. For example I was paying 1200 a month for a 1 br apartment. They wanted to up it to 1500 a month. Instead I bought a house with 5% down. The total monthly payment for a 200k house, including PMI, is 1,100 a month. Even with PMI I am still paying less than living in the same apartment year over year.
      • asdff 6y ago
        5% down is typical in high cost cities
      • lallysingh 6y ago
        PMI is reasonable. I put down 5% on my first home, (<$20k) and commuted via train. Just get a cell modem and do your morning work rituals (email, news, etc) on the train. I sold that house 3 years later at 13.5% appreciation, with good equity on top. I used all of that towards the down payment on house #2. Commute in from a small investment home/condo to let equity + appreciation get you into the home you want a few years down the road. Even in my starter, I got twice the sqft for the same monthly as my not-very-close apt.
    • matchbok 6y ago
      I agree, but the jobs are only in the cities, unfortunately. Remote work is a thing, but it seems that isn't quite as easy to find as HN would think.
• jdhn 6y ago
  >Scrounging up a down payment when even a 2 bedroom apartment is $1-$1.5 million is not the easiest task. This is why I don't live in the Bay Area, and have no plans to. I was casually surfing Trulia, and found new construction in my area starting at $170k for a 3 bed/2 bathroom. The idea of paying that much for an apartment(!) is simply foreign to me.
  • ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    My generation (millennials) really do think life only exists on a handful of very expensive urban centers. Most of the country is very affordable, but I guess they don’t have advertising tech companies saving the world so it’s not as desirable.
    • mrep 6y ago
      That's not the case at all for me and my millennial friends who have spread out to over a dozen different cities. Even my CS friends didn't move out of the midwest and are still in Chicago, Fort Wayne, and Indianapolis.
• flattone 6y ago
  You can take 600k 30 minutes out of seattle and love your 2800sqft modern home (approx/just now starting to look for myself) Update: (Not modern but im a fan anyway. https://www.redfin.com/WA/Bothell/15601-Cascadian-Way-98012/home/2716447?utm_source=ios_share&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy_link&utm_nooverride=1&utm_content=link https://www.redfin.com/WA/Bothell/15601-Cascadian-Way-98012/...
  • ejvincent 6y ago
    600k is too low for any home in the area that isn’t in bad shape at that size (and your example shows this). Also, that 30min can become 1h+ with traffic, with almost no public transit alternatives.
    • flattone 6y ago
      Everett is a solid 600k contender if closer to 2000sqft
  • jupiter90000 6y ago
    I used to live in that area and it would regularly take 45+ minutes to get to/from Bellevue and could take over an hour to Seattle. Edit: also a home like that would probably have been like 450k just 4yrs ago. Prices have skyrocketed around here
    • Izkata 6y ago
      > 450k just 4yrs ago > > 600k Speaking of skyrocketing, GP's link says 700k for me.
• alistairSH 6y ago
  I get it. That's part of the reason we live AND work in the 'burbs (out near IAD, instead of inside 495). We were very purposeful about where we bought - balance of cost, location, etc. It's doable in most regions (SF/SV and NYC being notable exceptions). And it's why I asked. At least my mental picture of Japan has most people living in very small (by American standards) apartments. That might not be accurate, based on other comments - with many people commuting 2+ hours each direction (which seems completely bonkers to me). Either way, the average size of a home in Japan is smaller than the US (though I have no idea how it compares to Europe).
  • cthalupa 6y ago
    2+ hours sounds like they want to live pretty far outside of the city. You can get a reasonably priced and sized place in Chiba and be in the heart of Tokyo in an hourish.
    • alistairSH 6y ago
      Yeah, it does. I got that from kubatyszko's response to my OP.
• dfxm12 6y ago
  Scrounging up a down payment when even a 2 bedroom apartment is $1-$1.5 million is not the easiest task America is a big country and is not specific enough when describing these prices.
• hibikir 6y ago
  The US has very localized housing problems. Many tech giants are realizing that they have to either diversify their locations or enter into a housing spiral, as there just aren't enough houses for how many people they'd like to hire. Once you step out of a small number of markets, the price problem goes away. I live in a well sized metro in the midwest, and I've worked, from here, for companies you've heard about. 4 bedrooms in my street, sitting on half an acre and a decent school district, are $250k. A 1 bedroom apartment would be under a thousand a month to rent, and that's a modern building with good appliances, a gym, a pool and gigabit internet. A single person in tech, right out of school, can easily save enough to get a mortgage in their first year working. So yes, your situation is very real, but if there was less pressure to be in Seattle, NY or SF, the housing problems would melt.
  • nostrademons 6y ago
    It's more that the price problem follows the workers. A decade ago, Seattle was cheap. You could get 4/5 BR homes in Kirkland for $400K. I just checked, and those homes are going for $1.2M now. Similarly, one of my former Google coworkers moved out to the Boulder office. When I'd checked on Boulder in the late 00s, you could get nice homes for $250-300K. He paid about $850K. Wherever you have highly paid tech workers, you will have highly paid tech workers bidding up houses. You just have to get ahead of them, and buy where the FAANG offices are just being constructed rather than wait until you work there. True remote work (where you could dial in from anywhere, not just a city near an office) would fix this, but that's not really what's being offered these days, and when it is the salaries are more inline with what people make in the Midwest than what they make in Silicon Valley.
  • asdff 6y ago
    Pretty much any growing metro is experiencing a housing crisis because no where is building enough housing.
• pottertheotter 6y ago
  I grew up in Silicon Valley and worked there until a few years ago when I moved to the Midwest to do a PhD. My wife and I are millenials and she is also from a big city area. The plan was to move back to Silicon Valley, where I can easily get a lucrative job in my field. But when we did the math, it was an easy decision to stay in the Midwest. I miss the weather, but we're so much better off financially. Plus we bought a 2,400 sqft home with 3/4 acre in an amazing area for $300k. I have a huge home office, and two extra bedrooms. I don't need this much land, but to be anywhere near this comfortable in Silicon Valley would be years off and would require several things to work out perfectly.