5 ms·

unpopular opinion: house prices are high because people can afford them. of my friend group who are all in the early thirties age range nearly everyone owns a

unpopular opinion: house prices are high because people can afford them. of my friend group who are all in the early thirties age range nearly everyone owns a home. pay has gotten so high that you can get a starter home for ~$1.5M and live comfortably. it’s just concentrated to specific jobs. i hire engineers straight out of school who are making 3x compared to me a little over a decade ago. the prices still have room to go up

scottcodie 5y ago
People with top paying jobs are still able to afford houses, thats nothing new. The problem is that there is a growing proportion of people that cannot.
- scruple 5y ago
  > The problem is that there is a growing proportion of people that cannot. As housing prices rise at a faster rate than their annual earnings they watch their ability to ever own a home get further and further away from them.
skybrian 5y ago
Because some people can afford them. We shouldn’t assume software engineers are typical.
silisili 5y ago
This comment is so out of touch with reality I felt compelled to reply, to paint a realistic picture. Pay has gotten so high for one tiny group of people in one or two areas they can afford high housing prices. The most common profession in the US is a truck driver. The largest employer, I believe, is Walmart. In a segregated bubble, this would work. Hell, it's worked for a few decades. The problem now are the people who relied on 'cost of living high wages (wink wink)' are flexing their money all over the US. And truck drivers and Walmart employees are priced out. No, house prices don't have room to grow. Unless we are trending towards a feudal state, which it increasingly feels like is happening.
- Ginden 5y ago
  > The most common profession in the US is a truck driver. The largest employer, I believe, is Walmart. I refer to this as "concentration fallacy". Mere pointing existence of "largest group" (or "largest legal entity") doesn't provide us with enough information to make trustworthy reasoning. If you want to prove your point, you should use income distribution curves and how they changed over time.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Fair point, but hopefully obvious I wasn't purposefully trying to mislead with statistics or anything. Providing a median works as well, yes? The fact is, a truck driver's wage is slightly above the median wage. So the largest group is also in the upper half of US incomes. And they are getting priced out of housing. That should paint a bleak enough picture.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  that’s really my point: not all pay is increasing at the same rate. and because the top end jobs are still going up so much, housing prices will continue to climb
  - silisili 5y ago
    We're playing a very dangerous game of poker. The SF engineers keep raising, and right now, everyone else is calling. Eventually everyone else is going to fold, and it's going to be ugly for both sides.

scottcodie 5y ago

People with top paying jobs are still able to afford houses, thats nothing new. The problem is that there is a growing proportion of people that cannot.

scruple 5y ago
> The problem is that there is a growing proportion of people that cannot. As housing prices rise at a faster rate than their annual earnings they watch their ability to ever own a home get further and further away from them.

skybrian 5y ago

Because some people can afford them. We shouldn’t assume software engineers are typical.

silisili 5y ago

This comment is so out of touch with reality I felt compelled to reply, to paint a realistic picture. Pay has gotten so high for one tiny group of people in one or two areas they can afford high housing prices. The most common profession in the US is a truck driver. The largest employer, I believe, is Walmart. In a segregated bubble, this would work. Hell, it's worked for a few decades. The problem now are the people who relied on 'cost of living high wages (wink wink)' are flexing their money all over the US. And truck drivers and Walmart employees are priced out. No, house prices don't have room to grow. Unless we are trending towards a feudal state, which it increasingly feels like is happening.

Ginden 5y ago
> The most common profession in the US is a truck driver. The largest employer, I believe, is Walmart. I refer to this as "concentration fallacy". Mere pointing existence of "largest group" (or "largest legal entity") doesn't provide us with enough information to make trustworthy reasoning. If you want to prove your point, you should use income distribution curves and how they changed over time.
- silisili 5y ago
  Fair point, but hopefully obvious I wasn't purposefully trying to mislead with statistics or anything. Providing a median works as well, yes? The fact is, a truck driver's wage is slightly above the median wage. So the largest group is also in the upper half of US incomes. And they are getting priced out of housing. That should paint a bleak enough picture.
foolfoolz 5y ago
that’s really my point: not all pay is increasing at the same rate. and because the top end jobs are still going up so much, housing prices will continue to climb
- silisili 5y ago
  We're playing a very dangerous game of poker. The SF engineers keep raising, and right now, everyone else is calling. Eventually everyone else is going to fold, and it's going to be ugly for both sides.