4 ms·
Title is misrepresents what the report says. The report says that 15% can afford the *median* priced home, not "afford a home". 15% isn't good, not is bad as th
by WillPostForFood 3y ago
Title is misrepresents what the report says. The report says that 15% can afford the *median* priced home, not "afford a home". 15% isn't good, not is bad as the article suggests.
- pixl97 3y agoSo, a better dataset would be breaking housing prices down into availability brackets with matched with earnings. What does the data look like then?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoIt’s even more deceptive as it’s quoting for a single family detached home. Condos are nearly twice that affordability metric. Again, the median, meaning half the condos available are more affordable than that median. I think when most people, especially urban dwellers, think of as a “home” as a primary residence, and don’t constrain it to single family detached housing.
- za3faran 3y agoDon't condos usually have HOA fees in the hundreds of dollars per month?
- schmookeeg 3y agoAs do most tract homes built sometime after the 1980s.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoIt depends on the condo how much. But usually millage and values for tax purposes are often less than houses. I’ve not done the fully loaded math, but I would expect including maintenance and other expenses condos are less per month than an equivalent priced house.
- oceanplexian 3y agoI don’t think it’s unfair to expect that a person making the median income can afford a Single Family detached home. This is the definition of the American Dream. The USA has an abundance of space and natural resources. California is a big place. There’s no technical reason homeownership should be out of reach. If you want to live and die in an apartment, that’s great, but it should be a choice.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoA dream and fairness don’t have a lot to do with each other? Maybe a noble goal, but the goal may not be attainable. You can buy land for cheap in rural areas of California and build a house there for less than this quoted median (substantially so). But where will you work? Your kids, where do they go to school? Want a latte? Learn to make your own I guess, and appreciate the hour drive to the store. California has many reasons not market related for its situation. But people want to live in the cities because they offer services hard to literally impossible to get in the rural areas (like high speed internet?). If population keeps growing the American dream will be a memory. That’s sad, I admit. I don’t like this. But it’s the reality of limited space proximate to desired services.
- michaelmrose 3y agoOk lets pretend we run the universe instead of having to deal with inconveinient things like organic choice. Can't we take some pressure off cities by requiring jobs that can be done remotely to be able to be done remotely and requiring employers to equally consider remote workers located anywhere? Furthermore lets imagine we are looking at 10% more people is it absolutely necessary that they be distributed the same way they are now? Wouldn't it make sense for some smaller cities to expand and become worthwhile competition to our present largest cities?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoDoesn’t solve the other issues. Where do your kids go to school? Latte?
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIt definitely is a clickbait headline.