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Where I am, my car commute is 30 minutes. If I moved closer, shaving it to 10 minutes, my housing costs double. If I get down to 5, housing costs are about 4x.
by nomel 3y ago
Where I am, my car commute is 30 minutes. If I moved closer, shaving it to 10 minutes, my housing costs double. If I get down to 5, housing costs are about 4x.
If I use public transport now, the travel time is 2 hours. To keep my public transport to 30 minutes, I have to ~2x my housing costs.
I think, realistically, people will just end up commuting further, to offset the cost, since that is the best financial, and time, choice.
- spankalee 3y agoWe should also build more housing!
- nomel 3y agoThat's another significant problem. Any dense housing built near the city is, necessarily, corporate built, due to initial costs. The ability to own these units is disappearing [1], with much more profit being found by renting. This means that moving near a city is, almost always, a 100% loss, where you burn your housing cost every month, rather than building equity with something you can own some commute away. This adds significantly more cost to the short commute, if you plan on living in the same place for a while. [1] https://www.ppic.org/blog/multi-unit-housing-is-becoming-more-common-but-has-low-homeownership-rates/ https://www.ppic.org/blog/multi-unit-housing-is-becoming-mor...
- pjc50 3y ago> where you burn your housing cost every month As opposed to travel cost? (yes, it's a really stupid situation that renting a house is far more expensive than renting some money for thirty years)
- nomel 3y agoMy cheap gas car gets 40mpg on the freeway. With our roughly $5.30/gallon cost here, a 40 mile one-way commute is around $300/month. That's < 1/10th the housing cost for living near work. If free electric charging is available where you work, you can save even more by buying a low range, used, electric that nobody wants. I picked one up for $8k. The savings will pay it off in a few more years.