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If you are making somewhere around $75K per year (roughly where the top 15% places you for individual incomes), are you really in the position to be bidding up

If you are making somewhere around $75K per year (roughly where the top 15% places you for individual incomes), are you really in the position to be bidding up housing prices in SF (assuming you don't have a wealthy partner to help fund your ventures, won the lottery, or something to that effect)? The rule of thumb for buying a home is three times income, which means you can realistically only afford a $225K home. However, the US national average seems to be closer to five times income, so if we allow you that, you still can realistically only afford a $375K home. I've never tried buying a house in San Francisco, but by all accounts, you're not even close to being in the market, let alone bidding the prices up. I also wonder how you would not notice food prices triple with that kind of income, but perhaps you grow everything you consume and thus would not feel the fluctuations the same? With that said, one thing I notice regularly is that people seem to grossly overestimate how much other people make, so perhaps you actually are closer to the top 1% than you realize?

tsunamifury 13y ago
Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. But I think his sentiment was more that he would bid up home prices if had the money, even as a relatively 'normal-income' individual and that most higher paid individuals spend only 5-10% of their income on necessary non-housing items.
- randomdata 13y ago
  > Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. The parent was specific about a top 15% income on the national scale. However, for interest's sake, if you want to talk about local incomes, $75K puts you in the top 3% in the rural area I come from. I should hope you'd be able to buy a house and still have some money left over being such a high earner, relatively speaking. In my experience, incomes do not migrate well though. If you're making $75K in a rural area, you're probably not going to make $500K, or whatever top 3% is in the cities you mention, just by moving. More realistically, you might move up to $100K or so to account for some rise in cost of living, but not much more. Generally speaking, of course. There are always outliers.

tsunamifury 13y ago

Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. But I think his sentiment was more that he would bid up home prices if had the money, even as a relatively 'normal-income' individual and that most higher paid individuals spend only 5-10% of their income on necessary non-housing items.

randomdata 13y ago
> Top 15% in SF,LA,NYC areas would put you around 180-225K combined, making his statements true. 75k in a rural small town x2 with a wife would be more than enough to buy a house, have kids and have 1k in spare change every month. The parent was specific about a top 15% income on the national scale. However, for interest's sake, if you want to talk about local incomes, $75K puts you in the top 3% in the rural area I come from. I should hope you'd be able to buy a house and still have some money left over being such a high earner, relatively speaking. In my experience, incomes do not migrate well though. If you're making $75K in a rural area, you're probably not going to make $500K, or whatever top 3% is in the cities you mention, just by moving. More realistically, you might move up to $100K or so to account for some rise in cost of living, but not much more. Generally speaking, of course. There are always outliers.