21 ms·

Affordable Housing Draws Middle Class to Inland Cities

104 points by jgunaratne 12y ago

autism_hurts 12y ago
A little reminder that we sometimes forget in the San Francisco Bay Area -- there are plenty of other, really wonderful places to live. People here will rattle off weather, jobs, activities (outdoors) -- but the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of incredible places to live in the US, where you can make within 10%-20% of your Bay Area wage with 30%-40% or more less housing costs. Even a place like LA or San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Chicago, etc -- you won't believe the homes, apartments, lofts, flats, condos you can get. Absolutely stunning places, with great activities and schooling. I don't see myself in the Bay Area in 15 years or so, unless there's a drastic change in the cost of housing. That goes without saying that I find people in the bay area generally rather unfriendly/unapproachable vs. other major metros.
- jgunaratne 12y ago
  Many of the best jobs in areas such as technology, design and finance are on the coasts. No doubt that costs are lower in the middle of the country, but pay is also substantially lower. I wonder why more top companies don't try to take advantage of the cost savings of setting up in middle America vs. outsourcing jobs abroad?
  - ojbyrne 12y ago
    There's lots of "near sourcing" too - outsourcing jobs to companies in parts of the country with lower cost of living.
    - _upvotes_ 12y ago
      Austin is big on that.
  - ktothemc 12y ago
    They do. http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/10/silicon-valleys-real-estate-crunch-is-a-golden-opportunity-for-other-american-cities/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/10/silicon-valleys-real-estate... From a broad climate change perspective, is it really so good that SF and New York are contributing to faster population growth in the South/Southwest, where water resources are more scarce? And cities are less dense, facilitating more driving and consumption of gas?
    - Thrymr 12y ago
      > in the South/Southwest, where water resources are more scarce? As opposed to the SF Bay area, which has convenient fresh water resources... dependent on dwindling snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas.
      - perrylaj 12y ago
        Just made the trek over 50 to NV last weekend and was shocked how little water was flowing in the 'rivers' in the Sierra Nevada. We (CA) are going to have to get serious about alternative water sources, as the groundwater is going to deplete just as fast as the snowpack at the rate farmers are drilling wells. If we were smart, we'd drop the delta tunnel idea and start investing in desalinization plants, at the very least investing in some test sites using some of the newer desal technologies which are showing promise. That said, the situation is far worse in the Southwest. They don't even have desalinization as a viable option. More on the original topic, I am sensing an increase in entrepreneurial/tech activity in the Sacramento area. No idea if any of it has come from the bay, or if it's all home grown. Haven't found anything stating one or the other, curious though, as startup and living expenses are about half of what they are in the valley.
        dubfan 12y ago
        > If we were smart, we'd drop the delta tunnel idea and start investing in desalinization plants, at the very least investing in some test sites using some of the newer desal technologies which are showing promise. The surfer lobby has made desalinization plants a political impossibility. I'm only half-joking.
  - jskonhovd 12y ago
    They do. For example, UBS is moving 1,000 jobs to Nashville. http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2013/08/ubs-to-bring-jobs-downtown.html http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2013/08/ubs-to-bri... However, These things take time. It's a big risk to move your company to a different place. It's a even bigger risk if you can't hire people in that new place.
  - fludlight 12y ago
    Eventually you will run out of available, qualified local talent and you will need to hire someone from a coastal tech hub. Only most Californians/New Yorkers don't want to move to Salt Lake City, or Oklahoma, or Houston, or anywhere else in the middle. The flag is the same but the culture is drastically different.
    - bjt 12y ago
      Doesn't this work just as well in reverse? > Eventually you will run out of available, qualified coastal talent and you will need to hire someone from a non-coastal area. I live in the bay area, but am from Utah originally. A couple examples from my home state: http://www.adobe.com/careers/locations.html#lehi http://www.adobe.com/careers/locations.html#lehi http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-expands-in-utah-with-the-opening-of-its-newest-facility-designed-to-leed-gold-standards/ http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-expands-in-utah-with-the-opening-o...
      - Domenic_S 12y ago
        > Doesn't this work just as well in reverse? . > I live in the bay area, but am from Utah originally You just answered your own question.
        seanflyon 12y ago
        So the answer is yes, the coasts will run out of tech talent and need to import it.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      You will never be so short of people that you will have to hire someone from SF or NY. Those places don't have an excess of programmers, they have a deficit, and it's one that is continually resupplied from middle America and overseas.
      - jimmaswell 12y ago
        I'm a countryside area of NY and I get a feeling I'd have to move closer to NYC or something to find programming opportunities
  - nthj 12y ago
    I know Google, Facebook, Apple, and others have been visibly increasing their presence in Austin. Apple was putting up offices across the street from my old apartment complex, and the scuttlebutt was they were adding 4,000-some-odd-employees here over the next few years.
    - andrewem 12y ago
      What parts of Austin are those big companies located in? (When I left Austin in 2007 Google had just announced an office, which they closed a couple years later.)
      - bsilvereagle 12y ago
        Typically Round Rock, or right between Austin and Round Rock on 35.
    - rglovejoy 12y ago
      Google has an office here in Austin, but it's mostly for sales and marketing. Apple's campus is going to be for sales and customer support, not product development.
      - bsilvereagle 12y ago
        I saw the complex right across the parking lot from a Qualcomm office and thought it was going to turn into a mobile headquarters, oh well.
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    I don't think pay is as much lower as you think it is. I keep in touch with a lot of people in tech from all around the country. Those in flyover country (Denver, OKC, Austin) make less money than those in comparable positions on the coast, but it might be 10% less. Meanwhile their housing costs are typically less than half. For comparison purposes: For the same price as this 800 square foot 1 bedroom condo in SF http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/452-Fell-St_San-Francisco_CA_94102_M22783-99663?row=104 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/452-Fell-St... ... you can get the most expensive home in my entire zip code. 2800 square feet, on a private lake: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4845-W-Warren-Ave_Denver_CO_80219_M19491-41245?row=2 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4845-W-Warr... The net result is that, on a developer salary in a place like Denver, KC, or Salt Lake, you can afford the same luxuries as on a developer salary in SF, and quite possibly more.
    - deleted 12y ago
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    - VLM 12y ago
      "and quite possibly more." There's an understatement. This is a problem with recruitment to the coasts. I can't tolerate the hit in the quality of life that moving to Mountain View would require. They offered me like $50K more than I am currently getting, which sounds nice, but to live the same lifestyle with respect to house and school district would have taken at least $100K more per year probably more like $150K more as per my calculations. I just couldn't do that to my wife and kids and they aren't willing to pay enough and they responded with some ridiculous BS about the nobility of poverty which I wasn't buying. There's also the cultural hit. Living where I am, I can afford to travel to and attend any cultural activity I want, even if the locals at my travel destination can't afford it. I went to Ireland a decade ago this year purely for the heck of it, because I can afford it, not living on the coasts. I can take a 90 minute train to downtown Chicago and afford anything there, especially stuff the locals can't afford. That really burns up an old school friend of mine who lives near-ish the stadium but can't ever afford to go given his mortgage payment vs mine. I'm not a big cultural activities guy I only go to symphony and museums like once a year, if that. But it would totally burn me up to move to a coast and be right next to something cool I'd never be able to afford to experience. All I want is an acre of suburban land, a modest size house (not a mcmansion but not a shack), in a mostly crime free neighborhood, in a school district that regularly places highly at the nationals in the academic decathlon (I was on the team in '92 in the same district, and maybe my stupidity is why we only made 4th at state during my year LOL). And the city has 1080 acres of free city parks across about 6 square miles of city (mostly unbuildable river land, but still I googled to make sure). Then there are the county and state parks too. And the lakes with public access. What would a house like that cost in SV, maybe $5M or so? More? It cost me an eighth of a mil here before the housing bubble took off, and a paltry $50K/yr isn't going to make up the balance. I don't think my kids would be able to afford music lessons and tutoring in CA, thats for sure, we'd be lucky to afford a 2 bedroom rental at the income I was offered, despite it being about a 50% raise. (edited to add, if it helps in comparison, my mortgage including prop tax and services is $1100/mo, so offering me an extra pre-tax $1K/week means it would be quite realistic for me to spend $2100/month in CA if I moved there.... I checked this padmapper site and that gets me a 1 bedroom apartment near Stanford? That's the best I can hope for? My whole family living in one bedroom and one bathroom? No thanks guys, I'm staying here on my "landed estate") Jobs are hard to get around here, I admit. Most CS grads probably are pulling cable or at call centers. Pretty much everyone in WI is underemployed except the usual peter principle victims like politicians. But if you make it, you can do incredibly well, better than on the coasts.
- rayiner 12y ago
  The wonderful thing about these other cities is that for the same price, you can live in the city for what it'd cost you to live in a far-flung suburb of San Francisco or D.C. The 1,200 square foot house where I grew up, in the D.C. suburbs, is almost $600k now. Why should I spend that money to be in an area that might as well be Oklahoma, when that'll buy me a bigger condo in Chicago with a lake view?
  - deleted 12y ago
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- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Even a place like LA or San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Chicago, etc -- you won't believe the homes, apartments, lofts, flats, condos you can get. Absolutely stunning places, with great activities and schooling. Agree. What prevents people from moving to those places is the scarcity of jobs out there. There are good jobs in the Midwest, but not enough per unit area to generate the competition (except, perhaps, in Chicago for finance professionals) that you need, as a worker, to get a fair shake. Despite the perception on Hacker News that small businesses are the way forward, the data actually support conglomeration and a death of entrepreneurship. See here: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/07/aging-america-increasing-dominance-older-firms-litan http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/07/aging-ameri... . Also here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-american-entrepreneurship/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-americ... . Venture capital is a feudal, connections-based oligarchy that no one should rely on, while bank loans now require personal liability and are therefore a non-starter for anything that might actually fail. Then, there's the general depletion of capital in the middle classes due to the collapse of unions, healthcare malfeasance, and the escalating costs of housing and tuition. So where are the new companies forming? The only place (or few) where they still can. The Bay Area isn't some utopia at the vanguard. San Francisco is OK; the Valley is properly horrible. It's, for many people, the only option left in non-financial technology. It's the place least destroyed by the meltdown of corporate capitalism in the US.
- Balgair 12y ago
  Not just in the US, either. I just spent 3 weeks in Europe, and man, there are some very affordable and nice places to live there. If you have the 'passive' income, consider the Italian Lake district. That said, we are leaving LA for Denver. West LA is 'gentrifying' pretty bad right now. We spec'd housing prices in Denver, and a 3 story house's mortgage can come in under our rent in LA. Yeah, there is give and take there, but the diff between LA and Denver housing is amazing. Denver, yes, does not have oceans, but otherwise is very similar to the Bay culturally. Also, don't forget the reason that prices for homes in California are so distorted: Prop 13. The legislature needs to amend it. The longer we wait, the worse it gets.
- pchristensen 12y ago
  FWIW, I moved from Chicago to the Bay Area two years ago. In the Bay Area: - salaries seem to be 40-80+% higher, as well as significantly more chances to trade salary for equity (if that's your thing) - there are probably 50-100x more senior developer jobs in SF than Chicago, and at least that many more in the Valley - there are more specialized jobs available (by market, technology, growth stage, company size, etc) - housing prices for a family of 5, good schools, safe neighborhoods, fairly long commute, are probably 75% higher to buy, 50% higher to rent. - the SF tech jobs are better located for transit than the good Chicago ones (River North, Ravenswood, etc are miserable if you ride Metra) Whenever I looked outside of tech hubs (Tampa, Atlanta, SLC, Research Triangle), I found housing prices within 10-20%, salaries lower by 25% or more, and much narrower job selection than Chicago. Austin was the only place that had more jobs, but salaries and housing prices were in line with those other cities. My conclusion is that there are many cities where you can create a good job+housing situation, but once you make it work your options are very, very limited. The biggest benefit I feel from living in the Bay Area is the immense career flexibility and potential over the next 20+ years.
- perrylaj 12y ago
  I wonder if I am a minority that puts a high value on the California climate? All of the cities listed are great. I lived in Portland for 3 years and loved the city, Seattle was great too. Spent time in TX and Chicago, though not years. Great towns, but I feel like I'll keep coming back to CA for the weather. Portland was far too dark and dreary for 9 months of the year. TX was too humid, and Chicago too cold/windy in the winter. Sure, each of those areas has a 'great ______ season', but coastal California weather is nice for 9 months of the year (give or take ) whereas the others are nice 3. Not to say I won't leave again (Denver seems like some place I'd like to pitch a tent for a while), but I always miss the weather when I leave.
  - bkjelden 12y ago
    Some people really value the variety in weather that the interior of the country provides. I live in the midwest right now, and whenever I contemplate moving to the west coast, one of the things I would dislike the most is giving up having 4 distinct seasons. The first warm days of spring, crisp fall mornings, "its so hot out we have to go swimming at the lake" days in summer, and the first snow of the year - these are just a few things that, in moderation, are really enjoyable to me (and many others).
    - perrylaj 12y ago
      I love the idea of that, just suppose it didn't feel that way in practice. Tad jealous to be honest!
      - bkjelden 12y ago
        I think a lot of it depends on what you grew up with. I grew up with 4 seasons and gently rolling hils, others grew up with mountains, and others grew up with the beach and pleasant weather year round.
thetrumanshow 12y ago
Man, I feel like I'm going to be really negative, I hope not, but here goes: OKC is undergoing an oil boom, the secondary effects of which are being reported in this article (IMO). My advice: come live in Oklahoma or Kansas if you actually like it here and want to be here for a long time, because when the boom dies, you'll find it harder to leave. Opportunities abound on the coasts. Texas, well, Texas is always a great place to live and work... they are almost always the exception.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  Agreed this was super OKC focused (almost felt like OKC planted story if it wasn't the NY Times!) but the data supports the fact this is a broader trend.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Could be OKC is just good at PR. The mayor is an ex-TV celebrity and a perfectly reasonable person who makes a good interview. They interviewed him on NPR recently and his side was, in summary, they needed to spend money so they raised a tax and spent the money. http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145437581/oklahoma-city-avoids-economic-pitfalls http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145437581/oklahoma-city-avoids... It's a pretty good example of why Republicans make good mayors, even when state and national level Republican politicians are insane.
- chiph 12y ago
  Even in Texas, you have to be careful when the boom ends. I was in Midland/Odessa about 10-12 years ago (before the current oil boom) and it was a tough place to live - lots of closed businesses. The drilling firms had stacks of pipe in their yards, instead of out in the oil fields being put to use. The folks who lived there were really down on their city, something you don't see all that often in Texas (how do you know someone's a Texan? Don't worry, they'll tell you). That was hard to deal with in conversation with them - they still had lots of advantages, but they wouldn't see them.
  - mcdougle 12y ago
jusben1369 12y ago
It's interesting that there's no mention of the role of the Internet and telecommuting in this trend. The housing market's changes are certainly dramatic. But it's also worth noting that there's been a substantial cultural and technology change each year making working remotely more achievable for a growing % of people. And many of those are higher paying jobs. And remote work isn't just johnny developer in his home office. Constant improvements in technology make it more and more viable to start your financial services company in a smaller location vs the North East. Of your health care focused company. Or of course your high tech startup. All this needs to do is account for an incremental 1% of the working jobs in your city each year and you can see what happens after 5 or 10 years. That's the tipping point of disposable income for your kayaking instructor to make a business out of.
micro_cam 12y ago
Any one have an interactive heatmap of the same data on a county or census block level? That visualization makes it hard to explore finer grained trends. Googeling around for one I found this article which picks out the inland west as the fastest growing region in the nation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map-of-americas-future-where-growth-will-be-over-the-next-decade/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map-of-a... But one of the job hubs they mention, Boise, didn't make the NY times vis. My own experience is that, when considering cost of living and quality of life, it is hard to beat the northern rockies.
vlucas 12y ago
This is awesome news for me. I currently live in the Oklahoma City area, and have for the past 11 years after moving here from the Bay Area, and am heavily invested in the local tech community (I founded http://okcjs.com http://okcjs.com and organize http://thunderplainsconf.com http://thunderplainsconf.com among other things). The tech community here is better than it has EVER been and awesome things are happening here, but of course it's all relative - it's still a small community if you're coming from the coasts. While I can say with absolute certainty that the weather is not nearly as nice (nor the scenery as beautiful) here in OKC as it was in the Bay Area, the people here are awesome, and the opportunities abound. It's hard to put into words the forward momentum that exists here, but everyone here in the local community feels it. Regarding salary, you may make slightly less here - depending on the job you take - but your living costs are going to be so low, you will end up having a much better, less stressful life. To give you an idea, I work remotely (telecommute) on a very well paying full-time contract, and my mortgage on a 3bd/1.5ba. 1100 sq.ft. house is $640/mth with insurance and taxes included - far below even 10% of what I make. I could easily buy a much larger brand new house, but choose not to for now in order to maximize my savings. I have more freedom in this situation than I would making even 50% more on the coasts. Also, while I am sure there are other low-cost places to live in the U.S., I don't feel like there are many other places positioned like OKC is right now. The people of Oklahoma City have made significant public investments in the area that have attracted significantly MORE private investment. The [MAPS Projects](http://www.okc.gov/maps/ http://www.okc.gov/maps/) - and the [MAPS3 Project](http://www.okc.gov/maps3/ http://www.okc.gov/maps3/) that is currently underway have completely transformed downtown OKC and are having ripple effects all throughout the greater metro area. These public projects have paid off for OKC in spades, and will continue to pay dividends for decades to come. In the relatively short time I have lived in the OKC area, I have seen a complete turn-around and transformation of an entire metro area unlike any other I have ever seen or heard of in my life. It makes me excited for the future, and glad that I am playing a part in it, however small.
- yardie 12y ago
  I'm actually impressed. Most of the news I hear out of the midwest is how the libertarian movement has stripped most municipalities of money to make any improvements.
eastbayjake 12y ago
After living in the Bay Area for a year, I find myself frequently opening my laptop for "real estate porn": going to Realtor.com and looking at listings in the cities mentioned in this article, just sitting there and oogling the home prices outside of California. For the price of a crappy 1BR condo in SF you can buy a 6BR Tudor mansion in Detroit: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1002-Seminole-St_Detroit_MI_48214_M39379-58802?ex=MI567065809 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1002-Semino...
- leonroy 12y ago
  I do the same but looking at homes in the Bay Area. Cannot believe that mansion in Detroit. That would be $6m or more in SF. It's interesting seeing old films or pictures from San Francisco. The city has clearly had its ups and downs. If the 1906 earthquake had not happened I wonder how different it would be compared to today.
sixbit 12y ago
I just did the SF --> DFW move this week. Housing is 10x cheaper so that tipped the pluses ahead of the minuses for me, and it's still a big city so you can find decent things to do outside of work. Have my own b2b company that I'm bootstrapping, so I realized I wasn't tied to SF anymore for any particular reason. Will be interesting to see how the next year goes!
- bryanbuckley 12y ago
  Nice! I did the opposite about 2 years ago. Really wish I had bought some real estate in certain parts of Dallas but I was just starting out and didn't have the capital/guts. There are parts of Dallas that I love (lower greenville, deep ellum, oak cliff) that have really boomed these last two years. The move to SF has been worth it, though, for my career/finances. Net was a little bit lower than what I could have been making in Dallas, but my bonus actually, fully paid out and I've gotten actually significant raises. Also, since housing costs were so high I decided to experiment with alternative living styles and I'm now actually spending less money in SF than I was in Dallas.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    >alternative living styles Do you want to expand on this? Are you just living in a van now?
- eastbayjake 12y ago
  Can I ask if you're married or have kids? And if so, how did that affect your decision?
  - sixbit 12y ago
    Married, no kids. My wife is also my co-founder so it made employment logistics easy.
- masonhensley 12y ago
  Welcome to DFW!
xvedejas 12y ago
I moved from the suburbs of OKC to California three years ago. I personally am extremely happy with this change, but I won't go into details here. What I do wonder: OKC has lots of issues with sprawl. How will this influx change things? Is it possible that the city will become more compact and urban, or will it continue the current trend of expanding the city so that every house is on at least a half-acre of land? I have no point of reference for which is more likely.
- mkr-hn 12y ago
  See: Metro Atlanta
- clarkmoody 12y ago
  If OKC follows the pattern of Houston, then some high-density housing will go in closer to downtown and other job centers, but for the most part, the sprawl will continue. Developers in NW Houston are putting 3500 sq ft homes on 0.25 acre lots, and the sprawl shows no signs of stopping. (low interest rates, cheap land, willing commuters)
  - perrylaj 12y ago
    Sprawl seems to be the norm everywhere outside of the east coast. Portland OR, Sacramento, Dallas.... The peninsula can't sprawl much, but the east bay is puking the same hideous boxy track houses on tiny lots all over the hillsides of Fremont, Hayward, Dublin and far beyond.
    - thrownaway2424 12y ago
      The puking has, for the most part, already occurred. Bay Area cities are now constrained by urban growth boundaries and required to provide jobs and housing in proportion, not just one or the other. Unfortunately if you take the entire Bay Area as a whole, proper urban structure with walkable mixed use takes up perhaps 1% or less of the developed area. Everything else is sprawl. Even in the city of SF itself less than 1/3rd of the built area (not counting parks and lakes and whatnot) is decent walk/bike territory with amenities nearby. And you only have to go as far as Concord or Antioch to find the real deal: all-out suburban sprawl with neighborhood streets wider than I-5 and nary a pedestrian in sight. Now when you compare to Oklahoma City, the Antioch brand of sprawl looks like it might be Hong Kong compared to some of the developments that are within the OKC's limits. For example here is a typical scene where someone took a quarter section of some field or farm and said fuck it, let's put a subdivision here. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+OK/@35.6276847,-97.7234619,1486m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x87ad8a547ef8d281:0x33a21274d14f3a9d https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+OK/@35.6276... Now that's just a shame. This article isn't talking about the far-flung farms that happen to be inside OKC's city limits, though. They're talking about areas like Heritage Hills where the original housing stock wasn't bulldozed to build freeways (yet). I remember before I bought my house in Oakland I looked at what I could get for the same price in that neighborhood. As I recall there was a huge-ass mansion with a separate building constituting servants' quarters.
jarjoura 12y ago
San Francisco became my home in my heart almost immediately. I have fallen in love with this city. When I leave, I miss it and where-ever I go I can't stop talking about it. Yes it's not perfect, far from it, but it's perfect for me. Anyway, my point is, where-ever you move to, make sure you find that place that is home. That place you can truly say you love too. Don't just live somewhere to save some bucks for the sake of saving some bucks. Life is too short and you can't take your cash with you anyway.
bryanwb 12y ago
doesn't this article fly in the face of an hn-posted article last week that asserted the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme? One could reason that that these inland cities are growing because they are still in the early stages of the Ponzi scheme. I live in Europe and I feel pretty confident that American cities will become more like Paris, Rome, London and not less. That means the poor live on the periphery and the middle and upper class live close to the center.

104 points by jgunaratne 12y ago

A little reminder that we sometimes forget in the San Francisco Bay Area -- there are plenty of other, really wonderful places to live. People here will rattle off weather, jobs, activities (outdoors) -- but the reality of the situation is that there are plenty of incredible places to live in the US, where you can make within 10%-20% of your Bay Area wage with 30%-40% or more less housing costs. Even a place like LA or San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Chicago, etc -- you won't believe the homes, apartments, lofts, flats, condos you can get. Absolutely stunning places, with great activities and schooling. I don't see myself in the Bay Area in 15 years or so, unless there's a drastic change in the cost of housing. That goes without saying that I find people in the bay area generally rather unfriendly/unapproachable vs. other major metros.

jgunaratne 12y ago
Many of the best jobs in areas such as technology, design and finance are on the coasts. No doubt that costs are lower in the middle of the country, but pay is also substantially lower. I wonder why more top companies don't try to take advantage of the cost savings of setting up in middle America vs. outsourcing jobs abroad?
- ojbyrne 12y ago
  There's lots of "near sourcing" too - outsourcing jobs to companies in parts of the country with lower cost of living.
  - _upvotes_ 12y ago
    Austin is big on that.
- ktothemc 12y ago
  They do. http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/10/silicon-valleys-real-estate-crunch-is-a-golden-opportunity-for-other-american-cities/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/10/silicon-valleys-real-estate... From a broad climate change perspective, is it really so good that SF and New York are contributing to faster population growth in the South/Southwest, where water resources are more scarce? And cities are less dense, facilitating more driving and consumption of gas?
  - Thrymr 12y ago
    > in the South/Southwest, where water resources are more scarce? As opposed to the SF Bay area, which has convenient fresh water resources... dependent on dwindling snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas.
    - perrylaj 12y ago
      Just made the trek over 50 to NV last weekend and was shocked how little water was flowing in the 'rivers' in the Sierra Nevada. We (CA) are going to have to get serious about alternative water sources, as the groundwater is going to deplete just as fast as the snowpack at the rate farmers are drilling wells. If we were smart, we'd drop the delta tunnel idea and start investing in desalinization plants, at the very least investing in some test sites using some of the newer desal technologies which are showing promise. That said, the situation is far worse in the Southwest. They don't even have desalinization as a viable option. More on the original topic, I am sensing an increase in entrepreneurial/tech activity in the Sacramento area. No idea if any of it has come from the bay, or if it's all home grown. Haven't found anything stating one or the other, curious though, as startup and living expenses are about half of what they are in the valley.
      - dubfan 12y ago
        > If we were smart, we'd drop the delta tunnel idea and start investing in desalinization plants, at the very least investing in some test sites using some of the newer desal technologies which are showing promise. The surfer lobby has made desalinization plants a political impossibility. I'm only half-joking.
- jskonhovd 12y ago
  They do. For example, UBS is moving 1,000 jobs to Nashville. http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2013/08/ubs-to-bring-jobs-downtown.html http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2013/08/ubs-to-bri... However, These things take time. It's a big risk to move your company to a different place. It's a even bigger risk if you can't hire people in that new place.
- fludlight 12y ago
  Eventually you will run out of available, qualified local talent and you will need to hire someone from a coastal tech hub. Only most Californians/New Yorkers don't want to move to Salt Lake City, or Oklahoma, or Houston, or anywhere else in the middle. The flag is the same but the culture is drastically different.
  - bjt 12y ago
    Doesn't this work just as well in reverse? > Eventually you will run out of available, qualified coastal talent and you will need to hire someone from a non-coastal area. I live in the bay area, but am from Utah originally. A couple examples from my home state: http://www.adobe.com/careers/locations.html#lehi http://www.adobe.com/careers/locations.html#lehi http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-expands-in-utah-with-the-opening-of-its-newest-facility-designed-to-leed-gold-standards/ http://blog.ebay.com/ebay-expands-in-utah-with-the-opening-o...
    - Domenic_S 12y ago
      > Doesn't this work just as well in reverse? . > I live in the bay area, but am from Utah originally You just answered your own question.
      - seanflyon 12y ago
        So the answer is yes, the coasts will run out of tech talent and need to import it.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    You will never be so short of people that you will have to hire someone from SF or NY. Those places don't have an excess of programmers, they have a deficit, and it's one that is continually resupplied from middle America and overseas.
    - jimmaswell 12y ago
      I'm a countryside area of NY and I get a feeling I'd have to move closer to NYC or something to find programming opportunities
- nthj 12y ago
  I know Google, Facebook, Apple, and others have been visibly increasing their presence in Austin. Apple was putting up offices across the street from my old apartment complex, and the scuttlebutt was they were adding 4,000-some-odd-employees here over the next few years.
  - andrewem 12y ago
    What parts of Austin are those big companies located in? (When I left Austin in 2007 Google had just announced an office, which they closed a couple years later.)
    - bsilvereagle 12y ago
      Typically Round Rock, or right between Austin and Round Rock on 35.
  - rglovejoy 12y ago
    Google has an office here in Austin, but it's mostly for sales and marketing. Apple's campus is going to be for sales and customer support, not product development.
    - bsilvereagle 12y ago
      I saw the complex right across the parking lot from a Qualcomm office and thought it was going to turn into a mobile headquarters, oh well.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  I don't think pay is as much lower as you think it is. I keep in touch with a lot of people in tech from all around the country. Those in flyover country (Denver, OKC, Austin) make less money than those in comparable positions on the coast, but it might be 10% less. Meanwhile their housing costs are typically less than half. For comparison purposes: For the same price as this 800 square foot 1 bedroom condo in SF http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/452-Fell-St_San-Francisco_CA_94102_M22783-99663?row=104 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/452-Fell-St... ... you can get the most expensive home in my entire zip code. 2800 square feet, on a private lake: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4845-W-Warren-Ave_Denver_CO_80219_M19491-41245?row=2 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4845-W-Warr... The net result is that, on a developer salary in a place like Denver, KC, or Salt Lake, you can afford the same luxuries as on a developer salary in SF, and quite possibly more.
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - VLM 12y ago
    "and quite possibly more." There's an understatement. This is a problem with recruitment to the coasts. I can't tolerate the hit in the quality of life that moving to Mountain View would require. They offered me like $50K more than I am currently getting, which sounds nice, but to live the same lifestyle with respect to house and school district would have taken at least $100K more per year probably more like $150K more as per my calculations. I just couldn't do that to my wife and kids and they aren't willing to pay enough and they responded with some ridiculous BS about the nobility of poverty which I wasn't buying. There's also the cultural hit. Living where I am, I can afford to travel to and attend any cultural activity I want, even if the locals at my travel destination can't afford it. I went to Ireland a decade ago this year purely for the heck of it, because I can afford it, not living on the coasts. I can take a 90 minute train to downtown Chicago and afford anything there, especially stuff the locals can't afford. That really burns up an old school friend of mine who lives near-ish the stadium but can't ever afford to go given his mortgage payment vs mine. I'm not a big cultural activities guy I only go to symphony and museums like once a year, if that. But it would totally burn me up to move to a coast and be right next to something cool I'd never be able to afford to experience. All I want is an acre of suburban land, a modest size house (not a mcmansion but not a shack), in a mostly crime free neighborhood, in a school district that regularly places highly at the nationals in the academic decathlon (I was on the team in '92 in the same district, and maybe my stupidity is why we only made 4th at state during my year LOL). And the city has 1080 acres of free city parks across about 6 square miles of city (mostly unbuildable river land, but still I googled to make sure). Then there are the county and state parks too. And the lakes with public access. What would a house like that cost in SV, maybe $5M or so? More? It cost me an eighth of a mil here before the housing bubble took off, and a paltry $50K/yr isn't going to make up the balance. I don't think my kids would be able to afford music lessons and tutoring in CA, thats for sure, we'd be lucky to afford a 2 bedroom rental at the income I was offered, despite it being about a 50% raise. (edited to add, if it helps in comparison, my mortgage including prop tax and services is $1100/mo, so offering me an extra pre-tax $1K/week means it would be quite realistic for me to spend $2100/month in CA if I moved there.... I checked this padmapper site and that gets me a 1 bedroom apartment near Stanford? That's the best I can hope for? My whole family living in one bedroom and one bathroom? No thanks guys, I'm staying here on my "landed estate") Jobs are hard to get around here, I admit. Most CS grads probably are pulling cable or at call centers. Pretty much everyone in WI is underemployed except the usual peter principle victims like politicians. But if you make it, you can do incredibly well, better than on the coasts.
rayiner 12y ago
The wonderful thing about these other cities is that for the same price, you can live in the city for what it'd cost you to live in a far-flung suburb of San Francisco or D.C. The 1,200 square foot house where I grew up, in the D.C. suburbs, is almost $600k now. Why should I spend that money to be in an area that might as well be Oklahoma, when that'll buy me a bigger condo in Chicago with a lake view?
- deleted 12y ago
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michaelochurch 12y ago
Even a place like LA or San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Austin, Chicago, etc -- you won't believe the homes, apartments, lofts, flats, condos you can get. Absolutely stunning places, with great activities and schooling. Agree. What prevents people from moving to those places is the scarcity of jobs out there. There are good jobs in the Midwest, but not enough per unit area to generate the competition (except, perhaps, in Chicago for finance professionals) that you need, as a worker, to get a fair shake. Despite the perception on Hacker News that small businesses are the way forward, the data actually support conglomeration and a death of entrepreneurship. See here: http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/07/aging-america-increasing-dominance-older-firms-litan http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/07/aging-ameri... . Also here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-american-entrepreneurship/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-slow-death-of-americ... . Venture capital is a feudal, connections-based oligarchy that no one should rely on, while bank loans now require personal liability and are therefore a non-starter for anything that might actually fail. Then, there's the general depletion of capital in the middle classes due to the collapse of unions, healthcare malfeasance, and the escalating costs of housing and tuition. So where are the new companies forming? The only place (or few) where they still can. The Bay Area isn't some utopia at the vanguard. San Francisco is OK; the Valley is properly horrible. It's, for many people, the only option left in non-financial technology. It's the place least destroyed by the meltdown of corporate capitalism in the US.
Balgair 12y ago
Not just in the US, either. I just spent 3 weeks in Europe, and man, there are some very affordable and nice places to live there. If you have the 'passive' income, consider the Italian Lake district. That said, we are leaving LA for Denver. West LA is 'gentrifying' pretty bad right now. We spec'd housing prices in Denver, and a 3 story house's mortgage can come in under our rent in LA. Yeah, there is give and take there, but the diff between LA and Denver housing is amazing. Denver, yes, does not have oceans, but otherwise is very similar to the Bay culturally. Also, don't forget the reason that prices for homes in California are so distorted: Prop 13. The legislature needs to amend it. The longer we wait, the worse it gets.
pchristensen 12y ago
FWIW, I moved from Chicago to the Bay Area two years ago. In the Bay Area: - salaries seem to be 40-80+% higher, as well as significantly more chances to trade salary for equity (if that's your thing) - there are probably 50-100x more senior developer jobs in SF than Chicago, and at least that many more in the Valley - there are more specialized jobs available (by market, technology, growth stage, company size, etc) - housing prices for a family of 5, good schools, safe neighborhoods, fairly long commute, are probably 75% higher to buy, 50% higher to rent. - the SF tech jobs are better located for transit than the good Chicago ones (River North, Ravenswood, etc are miserable if you ride Metra) Whenever I looked outside of tech hubs (Tampa, Atlanta, SLC, Research Triangle), I found housing prices within 10-20%, salaries lower by 25% or more, and much narrower job selection than Chicago. Austin was the only place that had more jobs, but salaries and housing prices were in line with those other cities. My conclusion is that there are many cities where you can create a good job+housing situation, but once you make it work your options are very, very limited. The biggest benefit I feel from living in the Bay Area is the immense career flexibility and potential over the next 20+ years.
perrylaj 12y ago
I wonder if I am a minority that puts a high value on the California climate? All of the cities listed are great. I lived in Portland for 3 years and loved the city, Seattle was great too. Spent time in TX and Chicago, though not years. Great towns, but I feel like I'll keep coming back to CA for the weather. Portland was far too dark and dreary for 9 months of the year. TX was too humid, and Chicago too cold/windy in the winter. Sure, each of those areas has a 'great ______ season', but coastal California weather is nice for 9 months of the year (give or take ) whereas the others are nice 3. Not to say I won't leave again (Denver seems like some place I'd like to pitch a tent for a while), but I always miss the weather when I leave.
- bkjelden 12y ago
  Some people really value the variety in weather that the interior of the country provides. I live in the midwest right now, and whenever I contemplate moving to the west coast, one of the things I would dislike the most is giving up having 4 distinct seasons. The first warm days of spring, crisp fall mornings, "its so hot out we have to go swimming at the lake" days in summer, and the first snow of the year - these are just a few things that, in moderation, are really enjoyable to me (and many others).
  - perrylaj 12y ago
    I love the idea of that, just suppose it didn't feel that way in practice. Tad jealous to be honest!
    - bkjelden 12y ago
      I think a lot of it depends on what you grew up with. I grew up with 4 seasons and gently rolling hils, others grew up with mountains, and others grew up with the beach and pleasant weather year round.

thetrumanshow 12y ago

Man, I feel like I'm going to be really negative, I hope not, but here goes: OKC is undergoing an oil boom, the secondary effects of which are being reported in this article (IMO). My advice: come live in Oklahoma or Kansas if you actually like it here and want to be here for a long time, because when the boom dies, you'll find it harder to leave. Opportunities abound on the coasts. Texas, well, Texas is always a great place to live and work... they are almost always the exception.

jusben1369 12y ago
Agreed this was super OKC focused (almost felt like OKC planted story if it wasn't the NY Times!) but the data supports the fact this is a broader trend.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Could be OKC is just good at PR. The mayor is an ex-TV celebrity and a perfectly reasonable person who makes a good interview. They interviewed him on NPR recently and his side was, in summary, they needed to spend money so they raised a tax and spent the money. http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145437581/oklahoma-city-avoids-economic-pitfalls http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145437581/oklahoma-city-avoids... It's a pretty good example of why Republicans make good mayors, even when state and national level Republican politicians are insane.
chiph 12y ago
Even in Texas, you have to be careful when the boom ends. I was in Midland/Odessa about 10-12 years ago (before the current oil boom) and it was a tough place to live - lots of closed businesses. The drilling firms had stacks of pipe in their yards, instead of out in the oil fields being put to use. The folks who lived there were really down on their city, something you don't see all that often in Texas (how do you know someone's a Texan? Don't worry, they'll tell you). That was hard to deal with in conversation with them - they still had lots of advantages, but they wouldn't see them.
- mcdougle 12y ago

jusben1369 12y ago

It's interesting that there's no mention of the role of the Internet and telecommuting in this trend. The housing market's changes are certainly dramatic. But it's also worth noting that there's been a substantial cultural and technology change each year making working remotely more achievable for a growing % of people. And many of those are higher paying jobs. And remote work isn't just johnny developer in his home office. Constant improvements in technology make it more and more viable to start your financial services company in a smaller location vs the North East. Of your health care focused company. Or of course your high tech startup. All this needs to do is account for an incremental 1% of the working jobs in your city each year and you can see what happens after 5 or 10 years. That's the tipping point of disposable income for your kayaking instructor to make a business out of.

micro_cam 12y ago

Any one have an interactive heatmap of the same data on a county or census block level? That visualization makes it hard to explore finer grained trends. Googeling around for one I found this article which picks out the inland west as the fastest growing region in the nation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map-of-americas-future-where-growth-will-be-over-the-next-decade/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/09/04/a-map-of-a... But one of the job hubs they mention, Boise, didn't make the NY times vis. My own experience is that, when considering cost of living and quality of life, it is hard to beat the northern rockies.

vlucas 12y ago

This is awesome news for me. I currently live in the Oklahoma City area, and have for the past 11 years after moving here from the Bay Area, and am heavily invested in the local tech community (I founded http://okcjs.com http://okcjs.com and organize http://thunderplainsconf.com http://thunderplainsconf.com among other things). The tech community here is better than it has EVER been and awesome things are happening here, but of course it's all relative - it's still a small community if you're coming from the coasts. While I can say with absolute certainty that the weather is not nearly as nice (nor the scenery as beautiful) here in OKC as it was in the Bay Area, the people here are awesome, and the opportunities abound. It's hard to put into words the forward momentum that exists here, but everyone here in the local community feels it. Regarding salary, you may make slightly less here - depending on the job you take - but your living costs are going to be so low, you will end up having a much better, less stressful life. To give you an idea, I work remotely (telecommute) on a very well paying full-time contract, and my mortgage on a 3bd/1.5ba. 1100 sq.ft. house is $640/mth with insurance and taxes included - far below even 10% of what I make. I could easily buy a much larger brand new house, but choose not to for now in order to maximize my savings. I have more freedom in this situation than I would making even 50% more on the coasts. Also, while I am sure there are other low-cost places to live in the U.S., I don't feel like there are many other places positioned like OKC is right now. The people of Oklahoma City have made significant public investments in the area that have attracted significantly MORE private investment. The [MAPS Projects](http://www.okc.gov/maps/ http://www.okc.gov/maps/) - and the [MAPS3 Project](http://www.okc.gov/maps3/ http://www.okc.gov/maps3/) that is currently underway have completely transformed downtown OKC and are having ripple effects all throughout the greater metro area. These public projects have paid off for OKC in spades, and will continue to pay dividends for decades to come. In the relatively short time I have lived in the OKC area, I have seen a complete turn-around and transformation of an entire metro area unlike any other I have ever seen or heard of in my life. It makes me excited for the future, and glad that I am playing a part in it, however small.

yardie 12y ago
I'm actually impressed. Most of the news I hear out of the midwest is how the libertarian movement has stripped most municipalities of money to make any improvements.

eastbayjake 12y ago

After living in the Bay Area for a year, I find myself frequently opening my laptop for "real estate porn": going to Realtor.com and looking at listings in the cities mentioned in this article, just sitting there and oogling the home prices outside of California. For the price of a crappy 1BR condo in SF you can buy a 6BR Tudor mansion in Detroit: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1002-Seminole-St_Detroit_MI_48214_M39379-58802?ex=MI567065809 http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1002-Semino...

leonroy 12y ago
I do the same but looking at homes in the Bay Area. Cannot believe that mansion in Detroit. That would be $6m or more in SF. It's interesting seeing old films or pictures from San Francisco. The city has clearly had its ups and downs. If the 1906 earthquake had not happened I wonder how different it would be compared to today.

sixbit 12y ago

I just did the SF --> DFW move this week. Housing is 10x cheaper so that tipped the pluses ahead of the minuses for me, and it's still a big city so you can find decent things to do outside of work. Have my own b2b company that I'm bootstrapping, so I realized I wasn't tied to SF anymore for any particular reason. Will be interesting to see how the next year goes!

bryanbuckley 12y ago
Nice! I did the opposite about 2 years ago. Really wish I had bought some real estate in certain parts of Dallas but I was just starting out and didn't have the capital/guts. There are parts of Dallas that I love (lower greenville, deep ellum, oak cliff) that have really boomed these last two years. The move to SF has been worth it, though, for my career/finances. Net was a little bit lower than what I could have been making in Dallas, but my bonus actually, fully paid out and I've gotten actually significant raises. Also, since housing costs were so high I decided to experiment with alternative living styles and I'm now actually spending less money in SF than I was in Dallas.
- dublinben 12y ago
  >alternative living styles Do you want to expand on this? Are you just living in a van now?
eastbayjake 12y ago
Can I ask if you're married or have kids? And if so, how did that affect your decision?
- sixbit 12y ago
  Married, no kids. My wife is also my co-founder so it made employment logistics easy.
masonhensley 12y ago
Welcome to DFW!

xvedejas 12y ago

I moved from the suburbs of OKC to California three years ago. I personally am extremely happy with this change, but I won't go into details here. What I do wonder: OKC has lots of issues with sprawl. How will this influx change things? Is it possible that the city will become more compact and urban, or will it continue the current trend of expanding the city so that every house is on at least a half-acre of land? I have no point of reference for which is more likely.

mkr-hn 12y ago
See: Metro Atlanta
clarkmoody 12y ago
If OKC follows the pattern of Houston, then some high-density housing will go in closer to downtown and other job centers, but for the most part, the sprawl will continue. Developers in NW Houston are putting 3500 sq ft homes on 0.25 acre lots, and the sprawl shows no signs of stopping. (low interest rates, cheap land, willing commuters)
- perrylaj 12y ago
  Sprawl seems to be the norm everywhere outside of the east coast. Portland OR, Sacramento, Dallas.... The peninsula can't sprawl much, but the east bay is puking the same hideous boxy track houses on tiny lots all over the hillsides of Fremont, Hayward, Dublin and far beyond.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    The puking has, for the most part, already occurred. Bay Area cities are now constrained by urban growth boundaries and required to provide jobs and housing in proportion, not just one or the other. Unfortunately if you take the entire Bay Area as a whole, proper urban structure with walkable mixed use takes up perhaps 1% or less of the developed area. Everything else is sprawl. Even in the city of SF itself less than 1/3rd of the built area (not counting parks and lakes and whatnot) is decent walk/bike territory with amenities nearby. And you only have to go as far as Concord or Antioch to find the real deal: all-out suburban sprawl with neighborhood streets wider than I-5 and nary a pedestrian in sight. Now when you compare to Oklahoma City, the Antioch brand of sprawl looks like it might be Hong Kong compared to some of the developments that are within the OKC's limits. For example here is a typical scene where someone took a quarter section of some field or farm and said fuck it, let's put a subdivision here. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+OK/@35.6276847,-97.7234619,1486m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x87ad8a547ef8d281:0x33a21274d14f3a9d https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oklahoma+City,+OK/@35.6276... Now that's just a shame. This article isn't talking about the far-flung farms that happen to be inside OKC's city limits, though. They're talking about areas like Heritage Hills where the original housing stock wasn't bulldozed to build freeways (yet). I remember before I bought my house in Oakland I looked at what I could get for the same price in that neighborhood. As I recall there was a huge-ass mansion with a separate building constituting servants' quarters.

jarjoura 12y ago

San Francisco became my home in my heart almost immediately. I have fallen in love with this city. When I leave, I miss it and where-ever I go I can't stop talking about it. Yes it's not perfect, far from it, but it's perfect for me. Anyway, my point is, where-ever you move to, make sure you find that place that is home. That place you can truly say you love too. Don't just live somewhere to save some bucks for the sake of saving some bucks. Life is too short and you can't take your cash with you anyway.

bryanwb 12y ago

doesn't this article fly in the face of an hn-posted article last week that asserted the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme? One could reason that that these inland cities are growing because they are still in the early stages of the Ponzi scheme. I live in Europe and I feel pretty confident that American cities will become more like Paris, Rome, London and not less. That means the poor live on the periphery and the middle and upper class live close to the center.