I'm one of those in the 1/3rd, currently in the process of moving to the Denver/Boulder area.
I knew on paper the housing would be cheaper, but what's stood out to me is how much less crowded it is:
You can go to stores and find parking, and not wait 15 minutes at the cashier.
You can go to restaurants and actually get a table.
You can make unprotected left turns.
Things are busy during rush hour, but outside of that it's really not bad, and overall it doesn't perpetually feel like the infrastructure is about to collapse under the weight of being so far over-capacity.
There are some things I will miss, but I keep reminding myself that I can fly back to SF cheaply (or anywhere in the US from DEN, really) and hit all of my favorite spots. I am a little afraid I won't be able to find the same quality fruits and vegetables.
When I moved out to the bay area, I thought it would be great to have so many job opportunities and career flexibility. But now as I'm leaving I feel like that wasn't all it's built up to be. Having some options if your employment situation goes south is important, but I don't really need to change jobs every 18 months, or have 5 cold calls from recruiters in my inbox every week. I'd truly rather find a company where I am a good fit and just stay put for a few years.
I also think that is in some ways healthier too: having a bit higher switching cost forces you to learn how to work out some disagreements with your employer and boss, instead of just leaving at the drop of a hat.
Nimby or not it's quite a nice place. One of the fittest places in the nation, 300 plus sunny days a year. Hiking within a ten minute walk of downtown. I hated it till I moved here. Now I see the allure.
You're in for a treat: the Denver metro area is an _amazing_ place to live! You're right to fear the produce, because it isn't California; particularly a this time of year, it gets a bit bland. There's a few farmer's markets and Sprouts probably has the best produce of any of the big stores. You'll probably miss the ocean, too; I do.
More than anything, I suspect you'll really love the culture out here if you're starting to slow down and don't want to jump jobs all the time. It's a lot more laid back--this is a city that manages to be mostly wholesome without being boring. It is SLEEPY after 9-10pm, especially during the week, but the outdoorsiness and access to the mountains more than makes up for it.
If you want any tips or to meet new folks, give me a shout when you're a bit more moved in! My contact info's in my profile.
Are you sure about these things? I feel like this sentiment reflects the Denver/Boulder area 2-3 years ago, but the recent influx of so many people with the exact same thought process as you has significantly dampened the lower population density appeal. For example, I was in Denver in November and there were lines out the door for pretty much every trendy restaurant and dessert place downtown, and traffic was decidedly not pleasant.
Meh, I was raised in the Bay and Denver is no different anymore. Trying to get a table on Larimer Square or 16th is no different than SoMa now, 2+hour wait times if you can get that. The stores are just as crowded to me, but that may be my preference for shopping with the after church crowd (btw, Sunday drivers are so bad). On the left turns, I did live in LA for a bit, so yes, the drivers here are not as aggressive in taking turns, but that doesn't mean the Tech Center or 36 is not a parking lot most days. I don't know when it was when you came here, but the roads can get really bad outside of Denver proper, because: winter. 36 just got resurfaced (the rail-line debacle aside) so give it 2 more winters. Generally we have 2 seasons here: winter and road paving. If you think that going out of DIA is a nice time, the other post on the frontpage here about wait times in the hours specifically mentions the mess that is DIA. Oh, and DIA is about as close to the city as OAK is to the Outer Richmond.
My sour grapes aside, on you expectation to no-longer job-hop: Good luck. I too would love that, but it is becoming more clear that is not going to happen. Lockheed and Ball have huge divisions on the frontrange. Which they are all closing right now. After they closed out of the mid-atlantic (Valley Forge excepted) too. There are a lot of people here that are very smart and very experienced and still have mortgages and the network of folks here. Nothing is good right now.
I do agree that Colorado is healthier though. Not many fat people to look at here. The skiing helps. Also, there is a sizable big-ish dog culture here, retrievers are somewhat small.
Huh? Active Denver resident for the past 6 years and i have never waited more than 30 minutes at a restaurant here. I work on the mentioned intersection and dine daily for lunch, with no wait regardless of my choice.
I struggle to even fathom how a 2 hour wait is possible here. Are you walking into places on Valentine's Day without reservations?
You're right, it's the equivalent of a right handed turn in the UK.
Consider an intersection between two perpendicular streets that is controlled by traffic signals.
A protected turn is one in which the turn through the intersection and across the oncoming lane of traffic happens when the oncoming traffic (that is going straight) is stopped.
An unprotected turn is one in which the turn through the intersection and across the oncoming lane of traffic happens when the oncoming traffic does not stop.
In the unprotected turn's case, traffic going straight has the right of way, so cars wishing to turn must wait for a break in oncoming traffic, or for the signal to change. In either case, one car goes straight into the intersection and then stops and waits with its blinker on for a safe opportunity to finish its turn. If it is still there when the light changes, it completes the turn as oncoming traffic comes to a halt and before the sideways traffic begins to move.
Unprotected turns are usually done when both streets are not very busy or when one street is much busier than the other street. In that case the less busy street will have unprotected turns, because it means that there is one less signal during which the busier street is at a complete standstill (ie one signal for both traffic turning onto the busy road and traffic going straight across the busy road instead of one signal for traffic turning onto the busy road and another signal for traffic going straight across the busy road).
Unprotected turns can also work in on very busy streets (think traffic jams), because the streets are so filled that only one car would have space to complete a turn without remaining partially inside the intersection anyway. This allows the lights to cycle faster, since there are fewer signals per cycle.
The Los Angeles area is (semi-)famous for its many intersections with unprotected left-hand turns.
Where I'm from, that "green turn arrow" is called a "protected left". While I can't say I've ever heard unprotected left, the term makes sense as a logical extension of the lexicon. (And as a Bay Area resident… I chuckled at the remark about being able to make unprotected lefts.)
I will occasionally abuse the term with the term "protected right", to mean waiting at a red light where the cross traffic moving leftwards has a protected left. (because the cross traffic's left is protected, the only conflict with a right-turn-on-red is someone in the cross traffic U-turning.)
I'm sure the fact that there's an increasing trend of empty Chinese investment properties isn't helping. I grew up in Cupertino, and when I visit my parents there, I'm rather shocked at how downhill the neighborhood has gone in parts. It's crazy that these old 70's tract homes go for 1.5 million. Even more insane is that they're bought and then left empty to go downhill. Literally broken windows and paint falling off. I never used to see that.
Part of the problem with building more housing (outside of SF where transit is decent) is that it means even more people. Lack of effective mass transit means those additional people need to drive everywhere, and there's no space for more roads/freeways. So the roads will just get even more clogged.
Cupertino recently had a developer proposal for 4 large high-density housing developments (condos & some apartments), and of course they were to go into areas that already had ridiculous traffic, and there was no way to facilitate even more drivers.
Until the South Bay gets serious about mass transit, merely adding more housing is only going to make the traffic pain worse.
> "I'm sure the fact that there's an increasing trend of empty Chinese investment properties isn't helping."
This. This. This.
A couple of years ago, I found myself utterly shocked by the price of homes in San Francisco. In a fit of frustration, I fired off a few emails a few random real estate firms in SF, asking one simple question:
"Who the BLEEP can afford these homes?"
You see, I was frustrated. I have a great job, great pay, and yet I can't even come close to buying a home in the city I live in.
The responses I got were jaw dropping, if not infuriating. The #1 purchaser at 2 of the 3 firms I emailed, were foreign investments. Unused, speculative, investments.
I am shocked that land isn't more protected in this state. It seems strange to me, that someone living thousands of miles away, can buy a piece of land with a home on it, thereby shrinking the available market, and driving up the price of housing. This means people who live in, work in, and contribute to, their local community, can't even afford to buy a home there.
The fact that this isn't seen as a full on crisis, confuses and saddens me.
Alternatively, repealing Prop 13, so that property taxes rise with the value. Or increasing property taxes as you get more homes. Both of these would decrease housing prices significantly.
Taxing vacant real estate is another tool used in some countries and cities. One way of doing it is via an imputed rental income: if a property is not owner-occupied, then the owners are deemed to be earning a rental income (either market rate, or if rent-controlled, then whatever the set rate is), regardless of whether they actually bother to rent it out or not. That increases the cost of sitting on empty housing.
(Though the real motivation for an imputed-rental-income law is usually to combat tax fraud: people who're renting out apartments under the table and not reporting the income. It just has the secondary effect of making it more expensive to sit on vacant real estate.)
Yeah, something like that might work too, although it can be kind of invasive in the sense that now you need to check if people are living in a place. In Italy, that meant that the police send someone around for a look inside the house where you say you recently moved to. In theory, at least - they don't always.
I guess it's easier in countries with some kind of address register. Denmark doesn't police it with physical police, just through the address register: you have an official principle residence, and can only list one. So by definition any other property you own is not owner-occupied. (At least in the cities, I think second homes outside the cities are handled differently.)
You can get away with some cheating there, e.g. a couple who live together can claim to be living separately and rent the second one out under the table, or someone who lives with their parents can be dabbling in under-the-table real estate with an investment property they don't really live in. But it at least keeps it to that kind of small-scale thing; the couple can pretend to owner-occupy two properties when they really live in one, but they can't do it with five.
> Alternatively, repealing Prop 13, so that property taxes rise with the value. Or increasing property taxes as you get more homes. Both of these would decrease housing prices significantly.
More significantly, they would mean that the increased demand for property driving prices would also result in increased public resources to deal with the issues produced.
Thanks to technology, the supply of land is not really the constraint on housing supply in most of San Francisco, and especially not in most of the Bay Area.
> At the extreme, these things can hold a lot of people without too much land:
They can hold a lot of people without too much land, but they don't reduce the land requirements for transporting goods and supplies to and waste products away from those people.
Sure, you can hold a lot more people in San Francisco if you fill the city with high-rises, but that's not going to, e.g., suddenly give the city a greater supply of water to support that population, or a greater ability to handle the solid waste produced by that population.
Cities are greener than suburbs by and large, so actually putting more people in cities that otherwise would have lived in a burb is a win for the environment.
Yes, it is, especially when you consider utilities. Average house in the burbs has some lawn or shrubs or something that uses water, and it's not like well water is ultimately 'free' - it comes from somewhere. Also, it means less land developed, less extensive electrical and water distribution systems, and so on.
They also do best in areas where there is a large amount of bedrock close to the surface. NYC is geologically blessed in this regard. The Bay Area has far less geologically stable ground to build on, and a lot of what there is makes up our gorgeous parks and nature preserves.
There is ample room to build in San Francisco - not much construction even needs to be skyscrapers. More 4/5/6 story construction would help a lot. The problem is entirely political.
It's about as expensive to live here as it is in many skyscrapers in Manhattan. NYC seems to have those other problems pretty well figured out. I've never heard a very convincing reason that SF can't be more like Manhattan in terms of density, except that the existing residents who've "got theirs" don't like the idea.
For some of them, the requirements (for the same number of people and the same overall outcomes) increase with density, so, in a sense, high-rises (or other arrangements which increase density) do require them.
I didn't state my point well enough; people are the driving factor here. The density is caused by people wanting to move to SF. High rises are a way to deal with the reality, not providing housing isn't going to solve the problem in any way people are going to be happy with.
> The density is caused by people wanting to move to SF. High rises are a way to deal with the reality, not providing housing isn't going to solve the problem in any way people are going to be happy with.
Quite likely, just as many (if not more, in both absolute and proportional terms) people in SF will be unhappy with adoption of high-rises as the solution; the lack of availability under the current regime constrains some of the problems because it limits the ability of people to move in regardless of their desire to do so; relieving that constraint -- especially if the problems besides finding places to store the bodies aren't addressed -- just makes all the other problems of density worse.
Higher taxes is not enough. Taxing property means you confiscate it piece by piece, the owner will have to pay or lose it, but given enough time the owner will pay more than the value of the property.
Why go that slow and not go for it, confiscate all properties and be happy with it? You can always follow examples from the likes of North Korea.
Just in case you don't get it: you can ask for taxes when you provide services, not when you vote to raise taxes. Not sure what are more expensive services the empty Chinese-owned houses require to tax for it.
And blaming Chinese investment is just a straw man: if all the houses would be occupied by pure-breed white Caucasian Americans (that's a joke) who would you blame, Martians?
Just wanted to compliment you on one of the most impressive substance-free arm-flailing retorts I have seen in recent memory. It takes skill to weave residents of both North Korea and the planet Mars into a discussion of Bay Area quality of life.
That depends on a lot of factors. Manhattan is an example of a building boom not necessarily increasing supply or lowering prices: a lot of the building boom involved demolition of older, cheaper apartment buildings that were subdivided into small units, to be replaced with newer, higher-end apartment units subdivided into larger units. Net square footage increased, but square footage isn't identical to number of housing units. Which is why over the past 100 years Manhattan has gone from having cheap housing and 2.3 million people, to having expensive housing and 1.6 million people.
Or we could tax foreign investment properties at a higher rate. "Remove barriers and let the market work" isn't the only solution to any given problem.
I'm definitely not a "markets fix all the world's problems" kind of guy. Far from it. But in this case I think it's a big part of the answer, and I'm not alone in that thinking either. This book was particularly good, although a bit high level: http://amzn.to/1rOgoq3 - and it's also noteworthy because the author, like myself, is somewhat left of center in terms of US politics.
As I understand it, it's not really speculative, but rather is a way around China's currency controls. It's allegedly quite difficult, if you're Chinese, to convert holdings into USD or other currencies and get that money out of the country, and investing in foreign real estate is apparently a popular way to work around that
We made a pact with the devil when as a society we decided to believe that our primary homes would also double as investment vehicles that will appreciate in value and help us fund our retirement.
Except no one decided that - it falls naturally out of the facts that homes are expensive (and therefore represent a large chunk of the wealth of most people) and that homes do not depreciate very much as a result of people living in them.
Except that voters in California effectively did decide that, with Prop 13. In other states, property tax is effectively a liability for the owner. Texans pay roughly 3% of the current value. That is a lot-- keep in mind that mortgage interest is only slightly higher than 3% (and loan is based on the initial purchase price, ie it doesn't go up like property tax). In California, Prop 13 is essentially an entitlement for the owner, who only pays roughly 1% of the value, and that value is not increased along with the market (only tiny increases are allowed).
> homes do not depreciate very much as a result of people living in them.
I get what you are saying, but this part above isn't a "natural order of things". For example, homes in Japan are expensive (perhaps representing an even larger fraction of lifetime earnings than in the Statse) yet they depreciate like they are cars.
My home is about 30 years old and honestly the only way you'd know that is by recognizing certain features and techniques that pin it to that general time period of construction and code requirements. It's not like everything shows "30 years of wear" on it. (Of course all the surfaces have been replaced at least once over time, but by mass of the house that's not that much; maintenance is maintenance.) So it seems sensible to me that it hasn't depreciated all that much, in the way that, say, a computer from the same time period is basically worth whichever is greater of "nostalgia" and "scrap metal" value.
I do think the psychology is similar to why a car suddenly drops 30% in value the moment you drive in out of the dealer's parking lot.
For what it's worth, the 30 year old house will show wear in places you can't see, like the plumbing or the electrical wiring or the roofing. My parents' place is about 30 years old now and there's a fairly constant stream of small repairs that have been necessary over the last few years.
I don't really know, but I read an article that said earthquakes contribute significantly to depreciation in Japan. If the structures just don't hold up as long due to the harsh conditions, it would make sense that old structures would be worth less.
It's true that there's no law of nature that dictates housing depreciation. However, I will say that all of America works this way, and has for at least as long as I have been alive - houses hold onto their value. That fact may be culturally bound, but the point still remains that no one decided that this should the case, nor is there some law or policy that keeps homes from depreciating.
They depreciate like they are cars because Japan focuses on the new. You don't buy a house, you buy the land, knock down the existing house, and build a new one. You don't buy a used car, you buy a new one unless you're broke. There's precious little used market for anything, which can be a boon to those of us who want to buy nice used film cameras from Japanese ebay sellers.
Absolutely. The same thing is happening here in Vancouver and it is eventually going to suck the life out of the city. Beautiful homes in formerly vibrant neighbourhoods are left empty...indefinitely...held as an investment by offshore owners. The governments (provincial, civil, and federal) have no intention of limiting foreign ownership so it will continue apace until nobody wants (or can afford) to live here. I rent a house that was bought in 2014 (when I moved in) for $800k and it's now worth $1.5M. Foreign investment is driving this.
Ah! I was hoping someone from Vancouver might comment, as I have heard through the grapevine that there is HUGE foreign money (mainly from China) buying up land there, and driving prices sky high. Hadn't heard much else than rumor about it though. Hopefully Vancouver will figure something out, I hear it's a very nice place to live.
Same thing happening in South Florida only buyers are South American oligarchs/crooks. A good fix would be to charge much higher property tax rates for non-owner occupied single family residences.
It's like this all over North America. Not just the west coast.
I lived in a chinese-built condominium in Toronto a few years ago, and the rumor was that 50% or more of the building's units were owned by absentee landlords.
Which made sense, because almost the entire building was seemingly vacant.
Hardly any lights on at night. No furniture on most of the balconies. Never had to wait for an elevator (at 30+ floors, that is strange). Always ample visitor parking spots when there was only 15 of them shared between ~300 units. And I knew most of the neighbors on my floor, would see them come and go regularly, but there were always a few apartments that just never made any noise.
I suppose because there are security guards and cameras in these buildings and that nobody is able to knock on every door for months on end to determine which apartment is vacant and which one is not. Especially difficult for someone who fits the profile of needing a permanent residence.
Transit is abysmal in San Francisco. Muni is an utter disaster.
The fact that it exists doesn't make it "decent." Cities with decent public transportation include Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Moscow, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, Portland. Even New York is much better. SF is a far cry from any of those.
I live in Cupertino, near DeAnza college and the Garden Gate elementary school, and I see no sign of broken windows or peeling paint. The prices are crazy.
I'm not sure what developments you are referring to, but the Main Street and Hills developments are running shuttle buses to caltrain. The one by the Oaks shopping center certainly seemed ill-advised, but it got shut down by the city council.
The neighborhood around Kennedy Jr High School and Monta Vista High School. Many houses over the past decade became mini-mansions for awhile, but the recent trend seems to be ignoring basic house maintenance.
I didn't mean to imply there were lots of houses like this, but even two houses kept up poorly on a single street in this area is a relatively new thing.
Two doors from my house is a deluxe 3 unit condo building that has been uninhabited for years. Not once have I seen any evidence of anyone living there. The units went for little under $2 million apiece. It makes me wonder what will happen if/when China has a financial crisis and people start trying to liquidate their offshore piggy banks.
Exactly! If this is indeed a major factor, could we see the SF housing market nose-dive if/when the Chinese market does at the same time? Or if/when better investment vehicles become available to them domestically?
Why aren't the investment property homes being rented out? Seems like an entrepreneur could pitch a service to the overseas owners to rent out the house, do all maintenance and insurance, pay the property tax from the rental income, and get a slice of the remaining profit.
There are plenty of property management & other real estate firms in Vancouver which cater to foreign owners. But the math on renting isn't actually so straight forward.
A 10-20 year old building in Vancouver will have many units with kitchens that have literally never been used. There's wear and tear and a lot of extra work and risk that comes from renting a place. And as odd as it may sound, the resale value can take a hit when a property is "used".
Unlike San Francisco, rents in Vancouver have not gone through the roof. Recently AirBNB seems to have put some upward pressure on rents, but rents still remain fairly detached from capital costs.
Frankly, the rental income is almost a rounding error. Vancouver real estate is about capital, not cash flow. It's a place to store capital (which in and of itself is quite valuable for many foreign owners), and current supply/demand trends also lead to price appreciation.
Traditional views of real estate market fundamentals are nearly irrelevant to the observed behaviour of the Vancouver real estate market.
So, if I may summarize, you're saying that there's a lot of demand for safe-haven assets by investors whose priority is capital preservation?
I don't see the math on this working out. Have you been in a house that hasn't been occupied? Things depreciate: roofs leak, water pipes break, floors rot, bugs get in, etc.
Given a sane property rights regime (something notably absent from San Francisco), I would vastly prefer real estate I own for investment purposes to be occupied. Tenants make sure the place is at least habitable, pay rent, and you can feel good as an owner about giving someone a place to live. I get that the market may not view it that way, but I think the market is wrong, and maybe that's an opportunity in and of itself.
Honest question: do Chinese people understand capitalism? Even poor people in the US have some inkling of understanding about the stock market -- it's on TV, in the newspaper, the presidential primaries, etc. I get that the main motivation might be just getting capital out of China and into the US, but I really don't understand the investment thesis of holding empty real estate, at all.
For condo towers, things are mostly going to be OK even if no one is living in the unit. You pay your strata fees & the strata takes care of most of the things which become a problem simply due to the passage of time.
For single family detached, the value of the building is not a big deal. It's the dirt the building sits on that people are buying. Prices went up ~30% over the last year in Vancouver.
There are also buyers who think nothing of tearing down a relatively new building because it's not quite what they want.
As long as the city remains a place people wish to live, the dirt will retain value. Perhaps it goes down 50-80% - you can live on your land or you can use its cash flows to help cover your living expenses. As a safe-haven, it's not a bad option.
The price in CAD/USD/EUR/CNY/XBT is almost irrelevant to these owners.
The problematic purchasers in my view are the locals. Many are buying because the market is going up - "I'd better buy now or I'll never be able to afford it". In a falling market, that demand many not exist.
Though I also remain unconvinced that the foreign demand will remain strong in a falling market.
What's going on in Vancouver isn't sustainable in any traditional sense. But the market can also remain irrational longer than many can remain solvent.
I agree that the phenomenon of properties remaining vacant represents a failure. I'm curious what opportunities you think there are. I suspect that many of the opportunities would require regulatory changes to be viable, but I'm open to a different perspective.
Regarding Chinese people understanding capitalism, I suspect there's a very different view culturally. I'm told that the advertising for financial products is quite different - in North America we tend to expect a convervative branding. In China you'll see investments with more of a WeChat approach (including being actually promoted on WeChat). Property rights were recently codified in China - i.e. 2007 or 2008. Real estate is mostly only available as leasehold in China. There's a lot of people who recently became quite wealthy quite quickly. I think it's very likely that they have very different understandings of capitalism than North Americans, who also have a different understanding than Europeans.
I'm not at all a Marxist (pretty pro-capitalism in general) but this does strike me as a case of over-financialization. Wasn't there some Marxist/socialist line of thinking that in late capitalism, so much gets accumulated that the economy shifts from one oriented around socially useful production of goods ("socially useful" is the broad sense, anything people want), to a purely financialized system driven more strongly by investment returns vs. profits from production?
I recognize there's always an element of balance between starting a company to satisfy the demand for goods vs. the demand for return, but cases like this make me think the investors are more in the driver's seat than marketers/product people thinking about what we should make.
Sort of like there's this giant mass of passive capital chasing yield and there isn't enough to go around. And I think this view is consistent with the idea that asset ownership isn't backed by a legally sound property rights regime in China. It seems a lot of this would be fixed if they could channel more accumulated domestic capital (profits) into housing, business equity formation, or even consumption.
It's funny to think that "make something people want" (YC truism) might be good investments, rather than products. But maybe true here?
I have to question the moral scruples of many of the real estate brokers who are selling these inflated properties to Chinese investors as if they are can't miss, can't fall, foolproof investments.
A real estate friend has actually refused to represent clients on the buy side for a couple of years now since he cannot in good conscience facilitate a transaction that he seems as questionable in judgment.
> I grew up in Cupertino, and when I visit my parents there, I'm rather shocked at how downhill the neighborhood has gone in parts. It's crazy that these old 70's tract homes go for 1.5 million. Even more insane is that they're bought and then left empty to go downhill. Literally broken windows and paint falling off. I never used to see that.
I'm inclined to believe many are empty investment properties. A documentary about the housing costs showed a Chinese investment tour of Cupertino for such purpose:
The other issue is that the high school I went to there, Monta Vista High School, is extremely well-ranked. As such some investors buy houses, then rent them to a single custodian who boards as many students as possible so they can attend the schools. These custodians don't seem to have a high priority on keeping the house in great shape.
Actually, I stumbled upon a Deleon (a major realtor in the South Bay) brochure yesterday, and due to the prices, they're willing to pay for a lot of complementary services to get your house sold (not surprising, since a $2 million sale will give the selling agent $60k, by the customary 3% fee, and they can make even more money if the buying agent is also employed by them). One of the services they advertise is ads on Chinese radio and newspapers.
> As such some investors buy houses, then rent them to a single custodian who boards as many students as possible so they can attend the schools. These custodians don't seem to have a high priority on keeping the house in great shape.
This sounds like student housing in any major city.
Yup, it can just become 50% empty investment properties, and folks can scrounge for what's left. Some solution is going to be needed to prevent that situation, though maybe with all those empty houses, there'll be less people to make traffic so bad.
They can report it all they like. The city (or HOA) will send a letter to the homeowner demanding that they fix it. If the don't fix it in a few years then they'll send a second letter or may go as far as to take a lien out on the property. What doesn't happen is that the window gets fixed.
No, it's not "a few years". Cities act very quickly on this since broken windows make the dwelling open to all sorts of problems like animals coming in, people coming in (trespass, drug den, etc).
It was 3 years in my case, and they were only fixed because the house was finally foreclosed and sold to someone else. Critters had definitely moved in, and there was lots of water damage too. It was a real problem for me because it was a townhouse attached to mine. That was the last time I ever owned an attached dwelling.
> Until the South Bay gets serious about mass transit, merely adding more housing is only going to make the traffic pain worse.
This seems very chicken-and-egg. SF has a million dollars in its annual budget tied up in maintaining the status quo for homelessness -- if those people had homes, that money could get redirected into mass transit.
Makes sense. I wrote a piece called "Do millennials have a future in Seattle? Do millennials have a future in any superstar cities?" (http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu...) that focuses on Seattle, but the problems in SF are even worse.
We're seeing decades of parochial land use policies turn into affordability crises in SF and similar cities. Which is why so many people are moving to Texas: http://time.com/80005/why-texas-is-our-future, despite some of Texas's other challenges (like travel and inadequate mass transit).
Well there's definitely an inverse correlation between housing costs and convenience of travel. Apartments near Caltrain stations or in SF being more expensive than those that are farther away, etc.
It's also important to understand the reason you can't have both, in the US, is political. Infrastructure spending in the US is currently below depreciation (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/03/10/spending-on-our-cru...) so we aren't building mass transit at a rate that meets growing demand. Rich, mobile people buy up property in cities and along transit lines. If we invested in transit we could make a lot of underused housing useful.
It is worth noting that Chicago Public Schools is functionally insolvent and the City of Chicago has a $20B pension liability (relative to a $7.8B annual budget). Pension payments have been routinely deferred ("pension holidays") to balance the budget. Bankruptcy is inevitable at this point.
It's a scale issue. There are plenty of small metro areas (600K-1.2MM pop) with affordable housing, plenty of jobs, and absolutely zero useful mass transit. Traffic is bad for about one hour in the morning and two hours in the evening, at most, and usually just in one direction with plenty of side streets.
You double that and the infrastructure collapses. The tax base doesn't support large investments in transit to get a system built from nothing, and the roads and bridges aren't equipped to handle 2x the volume.
Italy has double the unemployment rate and double the poverty rate of the US. It would be pretty shocking if they didn't have reasonable housing prices relative to the US.
For comparison, Seattle is denser than Rome. I'm pretty sure housing is still cheaper in Rome than Seattle.
Housing in Italy is not actually cheap. It's just not batshit crazy expensive like the California bay area.
Rome is pretty spread out in terms of a city.
Most of Europe has good public transportation and reasonable housing prices, although of course there are tons of local variations (London is super expensive).
I just don't see any reason why you can't have both decent transportation and reasonable housing prices.
I walked across most of Rome with my second-trimester wife many times on our vacation there a couple of years ago. It's really not that spread out. What cities in Italy are less spread out? Naples, I guess. Any others?
I agree that Rome is not really cheap. But I don't think it's fair to point to Italy as an example of affordable housing driven by higher density when it's not more dense. Especially since density actually seems to correlate well with price. San Francisco is way denser than Rome or Seattle.
I don't really agree that most of Europe has reasonable housing prices. For the most part, in urban areas homes seem to be quite expensive and quite small. I wouldn't call that reasonable in comparison to, say, Austin or even Seattle. Just about anywhere is reasonable compare to San Francisco of course.
I'm not decided on whether it's possible to have good transportation and reasonable housing prices. You have to have a pretty dense population to make public transit cost effective, and to pay for the up-front costs. And density does tend to imply very expensive housing.
I've completely lost sight of your point. You said Italy has good transit and affordable housing because it's dense. Now Italy only has "fairly dense" cities. Of those, the densest are on par with Seattle.
I'm going to re-assert that Italy has affordable housing because they are in an economic slump. I was frankly not that impressed with their public transit, either, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it.
If Italy had the same kind of NIMBY laws that the US does in many places, half the country would have to get up and leave, or they would have to pave over everything between towns, leaving no agriculture, parks, forests or much of anything.
The public transportation in Italy varies a lot, from North (pretty good) to South (awful in many places). The thing they tend to do well is that it's fairly frequent, so you usually don't have to stress about missing one particular bus or tram.
"Fairly dense" is all you need to vastly improve things in many places. Look at vast swaths of the bay area that are single story detached houses. Mix in some 2/3 story buildings in there, and you'd add a lot of supply without going 'full Hong Kong'.
> "Fairly dense" is all you need to vastly improve things in many places. Look at vast swaths of the bay area that are single story detached houses. Mix in some 2/3 story buildings in there, and you'd add a lot of supply without going 'full Hong Kong'.
Ok, but I still don't buy your argument. Seattle has a density similar to Rome. San Francisco has a density similar to Milan. Why is Italy cheaper with good public transit? It's clearly not the density, and I don't buy that it's just NIMBY-ism either (though even if so, it's still not density.).
> Also, Milan is about twice as dense as Seattle.
I was looking at the broader urban area. You're right that it is considerably denser if you only look at the 70 square mile administrative area (roughly San Francisco density).
Sure, in part Italy is cheaper due to the economy, but it's also because you can build outside of the historic areas to meet demand.
And there's decent public transportation.
I just don't see any relationship between decent public transportation and things being affordable or not. It's much more closely tied to density: without density, public transportation doesn't work as well.
I think I've just been misunderstanding your point. From your original comment, I thought you were saying that density was responsible for both good transit and affordable housing in Italy. I totally agree that you need density for decent public transit.
The density needed for effective mass transit means that what many people seem to see as affordable housing ("a house with a white picket fence") isn't going to work especially well.
But wealthier people are less likely to want mass transit, since they can afford private transportation. That's basically the fundamental issue to providing good mass transit in the US: anybody who can afford to, avoids it.
With self-driving cars on the horizon [hopefully!?], this will hopefully become false. [ie everywhere that currently has shitty mass transit will get a system with no single point of failure which is hopefully cheap]
After living in the SF Bay Area for 5 years, (1 in a crappy apt in Belmont, 4 in a modest home in Hayward), I have very mixed views of the place. I love the progressive politics, diversity, high concentration of smart and interesting people. I hate the traffic, over-crowded trains and the vast wealth inequality--especially since I feel that a large portion of the wealth has been retained due to tax loop holes and that if it were taxed fairly, we could solve a lot of the referenced infrastructure problems.
Do you also feel that you should decide how wealth should be retained? If people work for something (income) what makes you feel you are entitled to decide what to do with their work's result?
I love socialists, they care more about other people's money than their own lives. They fight for equal poverty for all, too, but they never mind their own business.
Actually the term "loophole" refers not to a dispute over how wealth should be redistributed, but to a discrepancy between the expected amount and the measured amount.
I wonder what the percentage is in other areas around the country. It would be nice to know to have a better sense of how much is a reasonable baseline and how much is Bay Area specific.
The high cost of housing here is often presented as Bay Area specific phenomena whereas it's phenomena that's appeared many urban areas, especially the most desirable ones that Bay Area residents might consider moving to.
Increasing urban unaffordability is a theme throughout the US, yes, but let's not pretend that the Bay Area has experienced this to a degree not seen anywhere else - even in New York.
While unaffordability and its many causes needs to be addressed everywhere, SF does seem like the odd one out of the bunch.
Well, the increase in cost of housing has been very patchy - each instance it is very mediated by local conditions but still not simply a local phenomena.
As a Bay Area resident, I'm eager to escape to places like the Bay but with a lower cost of living and scanning craigslist for such places, I have consistently found the differences less than I'd imagine.
A variety of things seem to have come together.
On the demand side, the job market today seems to favor certain of the young and the educated. The social consensus has become that no one, especially not the young and educated, wants to live in America's vast expanse of suburban developments - and investors are equally shy about investing her.
But also on the supply side, investment in any and all stores of value has gone up all along with the process of the Fed printing money aggressively with investment rental property going with that; the Blackstone group is now one of the nations' largest landlords. And of course a array of Home-value protectors in the form of Nimbyists, prevents construction and a lack of land central cities naturally restricts supply as well.
But still, I think it's reasonably to say you have a national phenomena which simply manifests locally in different ways.
It's also particularly interesting to compare this growth now with city desirability immediately post-recession: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2009/01/29/for-nearly-half-of... . I can't say with any certainty that the desirability has gone up or down for people living outside the Bay Area, but this may be another "cycle" that San Francisco goes through.
I remember on the defunct 43 Things (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43_Things), you could sort by geographical area. For NYC and LA, top 5 had "Get the hell out of [city]."
Please don't come to Austin. I moved from SF to Austin a little over two years ago, and I want to make it clear that it's terrible. The food is bad, the people are lame, and all the musicians are out of tune. I hear Chicago is where it's at, so please go there. Or New York. Or anywhere else, really. Just don't come to Austin.
I'm going to clarify that I'm not picking on you, but I loathe this attitude. I see it in Denver constantly. I moved here, but now we're full up. Ironically, it mostly comes from people that are transplants themselves. It's rather elitist to tell people where they can and can't live especially with the "forget you, I got mine" dynamic going on from the transplants themselves.
I think that the OP's intent at humor just wooshed right by you. The OP author was poking fun at the situation, by making up things about Austin so that people don't rush there like they did San Francisco.
Denver has so many wonderful things, but this undercurrent of "I hate all the new people" is so gross. I've encountered it in situations where I'm literally handing money over to someone who is bitching about people moving here.
Let me guess; you are one of those new people and are resentful that people you are freeloading and mooching off of are resentful that you are destroying the community and society they built over time.
Its the same thing in Austin, even though Austin has really be fully deconstructed at this point and it is nothing like the nice place it once was. It's become ever more exclusive, ever more restricted, ever more douchy and pretentious, ever more expensive, ever more packed with people that are trampling everything.
What's actually disgusting is people like you who are incapable of understanding why people would rightfully be resentful about freeloaders and moochers trampling and disrespecting things they created and have a bond to. It's easy being a freeloader and moocher, but it really does undercut any incentive to create anything.
I suspect that in the future we will see examples of restrictive legislation or policies that will rightfully penalize newcomers and mooching types that started swarming to the next version of Austin due to the internet brigading effect.
I can't follow any of this. I'm not sure how moving some place, getting an apartment, getting a job, paying taxes, etc. (aka "living") constitutes "mooching and freeloading". I think you need to take Rhetoric 101 again.
Let me explain what you don't understand and can't follow. The massive influx of people into Austin has degraded what Austin was because it has exceeded any capacity to fully absorb them without a degradation. When you arrive at something that others built and paid for and yet still have full access to as if you had paid for it, that's when you are mooching and freeloading specifically. That's the whole definition of freeloading, not paying for something that you are using or taking advantage of.
Now that you are provided with the information to understand what you could previously not, let me further help by illustrating the only way in which it could not be freeloading and mooching. If new comers had to pay exponentially higher tax rates, essentially as a kind of compensation and even a rate of return, which in turn then lowered the taxes of locals that would be the only way to not be freeloading and mooching, especially in a system like Austin that is in no way capable of sustaining the influx of people without significant impact and degradation of the very thing that attracted the freeloading and mooching types.
You seem to be under the impression that somehow paying the cost of operation is sufficient to compensate for prior investments, let alone rates of return. It's quite ironic that such an erroneous mindset would exist in this forum. Then again, it is a tech startup forum, so it really isn't all that surprising.
Think of it this way. If you take n amount of money and invest it in starting a company by buying facilities, equipment, various other capital goods, and hire people; how long to you think you would last by selling your product or goods at the cost of variable inputs alone? ... not even to mention the return on capital or investment. And that still doesn't even get close to capturing the human factor of community and society and culture that is lost through such a destructive locust like swarming of places.
I get that most people in here can't think past their own selfish wants and desires, but what do you think makes a place, any place, so attractive so that you want to go there, it's not your contribution that you made to that place. You are a textbook freeloader at that point, especially in smaller places like Austin used to be where all the things that attracted people to Austin like community and culture existed before they smothered it.
We are going to see ever more of these kinds of things happen as the internet causes human swarming behaviors. Maybe one day people will start realizing it and its absolutely detrimental impact on society and humanity. It is in effect a great leveling and averaging of humanity, a regression to mediocre mean that destroys uniqueness, actual diversity, and civilization, and incentive for community and creation. What are we when there is nothing unique anymore because the second something becomes great and a community comes together, an influx of freeloaders that want to mooch off of it start pulling it down? We are facing a future of the commoditization of humanity, accelerated by the internet and the exponential pace at which anything good or unique is discovered and immediately smothered and trampled.
Did you build Austin? What constitutes a "local"? No one anywhere in America (or anywhere on Earth that I'm aware of) is required to pay a "foreigner tax" for moving into another city within the same country, which they are already a citizen of. Everything is supply and demand, everything is a push and pull. If Austin is bursting at the seams, it will take a few years for investment and policies to relax it. If Austin starts to empty out, slowly the city will shrink. The ebbs and flows of change are always happening, nothing is constant, everything is in motion. Austin is better served by attracting people than it is by pushing people away.
I was born in Austin, and I've lived here for about eight years. This city and it's people have taught me so much, and I really don't know who I'd be if I never came here. I want to share this place with as many people who want it. If you like what you've heard, come join us. We have a bit of a housing shortage that's driving up the cost of housing, but that's okay. We'll just build more homes.
Freeloaders are driving up costs, due to the oversupply of people and unmet demand for housing and finite goods and services. The pretentiousness it simply a cultural function of the types of people that are being attracted to Austin; a mixture of internet douchbags that have ever increasingly proliferated adn infested SXSW, which are largely made up of the west coast and big city self-righteously self-absorbed.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, one of two things is true, either you're naive about this matter, or you are precisely the type I just referred to and, as expected, fully lack self-awareness. I realize that hearing something like that will not necessarily be well received here, but it's really a pestilent type of cultural phenomenon which is a pernicious type of cancer that is constantly eating away at any progress that can be made.
I guess you and I don't agree on the definition of freeloading. If these people are coming in and driving up the price of housing with their six-figure incomes, then I can understand your argument (and do a degree empathize with your sentiment). But to call those same people freeloaders is either mendacious on your part or ignorance on mine.
Freeloading is taking advantage of goodwill without returning the favor. I don't see how driving up the market price of housing is freeloading.
Please do come to Bend (although not all at once - at 80K, it's not big enough to absorb that many people at one time). But bring your anti-NIMBY hat!
It's time the US grew up a little bit and realized that moving to "the next place" and repeating the same patterns that made the first place too expensive isn't going to work.
To add to your list: the bigotry of the Texan people seeps into Austin, the job market is tiny compared to the Bay, it is in a state where Republicans call the shots regarding social issues, their tech job market is dominated by contracted talent firms, and it gets hot as hell.
I seriously question the validity of that study. Racism has many forms and targets. You can't capture an objective measure of racism by looking purely at trends for the "n-word". You're capturing the researchers' bias as much as the subjects' racism. A foreign exchange student from Germany once remarked to me how she found it so odd that white and black students largely segregated themselves in the cafeteria (this was high school in rural Tennessee) and that she couldn't understand the racist tendencies that lead to this. Then I studied in Germany and realized that 1) there are very few black people there [1], and 2) plenty of Germans are racist against other populations, especially Muslims.
I wonder what this study would find if it expanded the "racist term" set. Maybe Texans are very racist against Mexicans. Maybe Washingtonians are especially racist against Asians. [2]
[1] It's not hard to overlook racism directed at a tiny fraction of the population because you just don't see it much. I didn't think there were really people in the US racist against Jews until I was an adult and encountered people who grew up around sizeable Jewish populations.
> plenty of Germans are racist against other populations, especially Muslims
I don't mean to pick on you in particular, but your comment is an example of a pattern I've noticed over the last few years that results in confusion more than clarity -- using the term 'racism' outside of the context of 'race'.
In most cases, I think 'prejudiced' or 'bigoted' is probably a more accurate label when you are talking about irrationally negative attitudes towards religious, political, cultural or national groups.
Not all negative attitudes are necessarily prejudiced or bigoted. Religion and politics exist in the realm of ideas -- one person's 'bigotry' can be another person's rationality and of course reasonable people can agree to disagree without there being any prejudice or bigotry involved.
To be clear, I'm aware that "Muslim" is not a race. I believe it's still valid to refer to racism against Muslims in this scenario. I don't believe that the German prejudice was motivated primarily by religious differences. I don't believe that an ethnically-German Muslim would face the same prejudice as, say, an ethnically-Moroccan or Syrian immigrant. I think this comes down to racism more than anything. Xenophobia might be another accurate label. It's not just religious disagreement, though.
I think most of the anti-Muslim rhetoric in the US these days fits into the same bucket. I don't believe most of it is really religious. You've got Donald Trump claiming he loves Israel and Jews and then claiming that Muslims are ruining/attacking America. That's not a case where the issue is religious disagreement or Jews would be as much a target as Muslims.
Again, you could certainly call this xenophobia. I think racism is still pretty accurate, though.
Not sure if Portland stole Austin's drawbridge syndrome like Keep Portland Weird, but I see the same attitude here.
Portland is great, but it is changing. Housing is growing fast, transportation is not keeping up with the growth and the city is not doing enough to solve the homeless problem. Conversely, amazing food, everything you want in a metro but not the size of NY, excellent outdoor options and a growing tech scene.
There's a lot of "up and coming" cities in the U.S., I'm guessing there must be a massive exodus from all of the traditoinal "big" cities like Chicago and Boston. Add to the list:
* Nashville
* Pittsburg
* Charlotte
* Orlando
* San Jose (at least in terms of population, not sure about industry)
It's an interesting phenomenon given how in the developing world there are more super large cities, are we going the opposite direction?
I don't understand the comment about Orlando. The metro area is the same size as Pittsburgh's, and it's a 90 minute drive from an even larger metro, Tampa.
(I don't work for T-Sheets but have friends that do.)
We have a great high tech community that is searching hard for more engineers. Great outdoor activities for those few minutes you want to spend away from your keyboard. Low traffic, good wages, great biking environment, decent weather.
"We have a great high tech community" I've been seriously considering moving back to Boise (lived their 05-09). Can you name a few companies or startups that are part of the scene?
T-Sheets. Clearwater Analytics. Whitecloud. Cradlepoint (my current employer). MetaGeek. HP and Micron are the giant tech employers here. Microsoft has a small office here (purchased a local start-up a few years ago). Healthwise.
Even after factoring in for cost of living adjustments Cleveland isn't worth it for me. It's still a huge pay cut and while there are a few interesting start-ups, big businesses still dominate (Progressive, GE, Philips, Key Bank, The Fed, IBM, etc) and don't have the standard developer-friendly attitude of a lot of west coast tech companies do.
I say this as someone that graduated from CWRU. Cleveland doesn't want developers badly enough to increase wages and benefits. This is all super unfortunate since I still fly out to Ohio several times a year to visit family and it would have been nice to stay in the region.
My nana tells me Cleveland is up and coming and that I should move back home. But Cleveland is a city that will always be "up and coming". Perpetually fighting the reality that they are one of the most average cities of all time. I love Cleveland and I am glad I was raised there, but I can't come up with a convincing reason to go back.
It has a weird gravity that tends to bring people back, but I agree there isn't a ton of incentive to come back or anchor here unless a great job opens up (which did so for me but ymmv).
To be fair, I think that all of the rust belt cities sit on an economic spectrum that runs from Flint/Youngstown all the way to Pittsburg/Chicago. Cleveland has teetered towards both sides at different times. It's trending towards a more healthy post-industrial identity now, but could really use a shake-up in the city leadership.
Ohio as a whole is boring. Hardly any outdoor activities and the only scenery is corn. I guess if you like amusement parks, but besides that, it has to be one of the most generic/bland populated states.
Come to Chattanooga. We have municipal fiber, cheap housing and no income tax. Our state government is so conservative businesses can get away with pretty much anything, and our city government is so liberal there are funds and grants for just about everything. As long as you can get over the occasional rebel flag bumper sticker, it's the promise land.
It's not actually that bad. But we probably make more of an effort to be aware of our surroundings. I've never been robbed, but I've known from a young age that you never leave anything valuable visible in your car.
I know you were being sarcastic, but Austin is very overrated. Low VC funding, small city, surrounded by Texas. Ironically, in another related study, the #1 place people want to move to from Bay Area turned out to be NYC - an even more expensive place. I guess the thought there was might as well stay in a big city if we are paying that much money
There's a) affordable (even wildly affordable) housing in NYC, though the commute can be around an hour into the city but then there's b) decent public transport and c) a good deal of jobs if you're in tech.
Agreed. But you can find work doing C# .net contracting via recruiters. I've got a friend who's been doing it for 10 years and is never out of work very long and bills at good rates for the area. He was telling me a funny story: he interviewed for a spot in an IT department of averaged sized non-tech company and they said he had to wear slacks, collared long sleeve blouse, and name tag to work every day. lol. He said no thanks.
Landlocked? There is water EVERYWHERE in Austin. There are 7 miles worth of Greenbelts that cut through the entire downtown/urban area. We have Lake Travis and Lake Austin. The Colorado river (Town Lake) is right beside 1st street. We have Barton Springs just south of 1st street.
We're also getting a surf park (Nland) this year and have a ton of wake-boarding/cable parks.
An hour south we have Dripping Springs and Wimberley with Jacobs Well, Blue Hole, Hamilton Pool, Krausse Springs, etc. If you think Austin looks like the rest of Texas, here are some examples;
I'm breaking Austin rules by talking about these, but hey, I already own a house, so move on in and make my little house even more ridiculously valuable!
There is a difference between having water near you, and being trapped inside the Republic of Texas. I've spent time there, it wasn't for me.. thats all I'm saying :)
Only if you insist on having lawns of non-native grasses like Los Angeles. Texas from the Ft.Worth/Austin line east is naturally green and grassy, as is the Hill Country just west of Austin.
Stated intent is different than actual intent. I think it's interesting to note that employment is going up, while people state that they will leave in a few years. What does a few years mean - 2 years? 5 years? Wouldn't ones actual move correlate more with economic outlook than stated intent to move?
Is the Bay Area no longer a good place to start a career? I'm close to finishing up my PhD, and my original plan was to apply to work at the tech companies that I find most interesting. For the most part, these are located in the Bay Area — although some are in New York, Austin, Boston, Seattle, Raleigh, and Atlanta.
I figured I would stay there 2-4 years tops though, since my family and girlfriend live in the southeast. I don't mind living in a box-sized apartment for a while, but if there's no longer a career benefit to doing this, then perhaps I should focus my job search efforts on other cities?
I'm slightly older than you (my college friends finished their PhDs 2 years ago), grew up in SV and still work here.
With respect to cost of living, I think it is fine to start a career here. A PhD starting salary at most (big) places will cover a 1 bed room in a good area with decent transit options like San Mateo just fine. You won't live like a king but you won't like like a miser either. That being said looking for places while still being Tennessee will be hard, so you might get a sublet for 2 months and look for a more permanent place after you arrive.
Where it gets really hard is when you start looking for homes to buy when you start a family, and care about school districts. If you're open to moving out to the South East after getting established in your field (not sure if you want to stay in chemistry/pharma or head towards purely data oriented roles), you would be able to mitigate this [1] One thing I'd consider is how feasible moving across the country will actually be.
Anyways, happy to answer questions over email. Contact is in profile.
[1] you should definitely look at Cambridge/Boston if you want to stay in pharma/chem.
Nothing wrong with that. The costs only start to bother you as you get older and have been there a while and want to plan your next 10 years. Especially nice if you know you want to settle in the SE eventually (although your prferecnes may change...).
There's still opportunity here (in terms of good experience and good salary) but it's not guaranteed. There are also plenty of startups will try to convince you work for $100k/year plus a lottery ticket (equivalent to $54k in Austin, $57k in Georgia). That would give me pause.
While a lot of companies will try to lowball you, others will pay well if you apply some pressure. There was recently a post here by a guy who learned to programming at a coding bootcamp and soon after got an offer for $210k+ total compensation. At that level (depending on how liquid that offer is) you won't really be suffering nor living lavishly.
As someone without a degree working in tech, I would argue The Bay Area is the best place to grow a career, maybe rather than start (didn't start out looking in SF for tech jobs. Most places want someone mid-senior level). You having a PhD probably opens the door for a ton of good companies though depending on what your field of study is in, which I assume is CS, and if you can pass the interviews. As long as you don't mind living in a box-sized apartment with other roommates despite having that or a studio in one of the more stab-y parts of town the opportunities for career growth are incredible.
Oddly enough, my degree is in chemical engineering, however all of my work is entirely computational (molecular dynamics, high performance computing, machine learning, data analysis). In fact, my research for the last year has been on a large-scale nonconvex optimization problem — hopefully employers read further than my resume title...
But yeah, I don't really mind where I live as long as it's not in too dangerous of a location. Once I have children I'll want something more comfortable though.
I'm thinking about moving to either Bay Area or Los Angeles with a family, from Prague. I have a 7 years old kid. I am not sure if that's the right thing. We're doing it for the climate. It's really difficult to find a warm English-speaking country where you won't be culturally isolated from the rest of the world. I can work pretty much from anywhere, however I am not a magnate. Things definitely to be missed:
- Prague's ultra-affordability (avg. salary is about $1,000/mo, so if you're selling to global market you can live with luxury)
- travel opportunities--I'm in the middle of everything
- proximity to relatives
- great British school--very liberal, easy international atmosphere, we're lucky
- overall "easygoingness"
- full decriminalization (no problem in CA)
- economically uniform society, although sometimes it's a double-edged sword
- no requirement for pretending being a patriot
Things I will not miss:
- very short summer, always feeling cold, gloomy skies
- crappy food, although it's improving fast lately.
Am I crazy? Where would you move if you'd want a good weather? I enjoy Berlin immensely, but it's too cold. I'd move to London, but it's cold. I hate being cold.
There are some other American cities with "good enough" climates and tech hubs if you're not looking to be in the Valley specifically. Austin and Atlanta are two that would be southern enough that it probably meet the rest of your criteria. It may not be as nice as the Valley per se, but still perhaps nicer than what you're used to. If you're not particularly worried about being in a tech hub because you work remotely and intend to continue to do so, a whole lot of other areas of interest open up too, both in and out of the US.
I'm an American who grew up on the East Coast, went to USC (Los Angeles) for university (left in 1990), later worked for a San Fran company and have been living in Prague for 15 years so I may have some perspective for you. Long story short, LA and San Fran are fantastic for single people or married working couples w/out kids. Once kids enter the equation, your perspective changes. You are not going to find cheap, good schools in those cities. And unlike Prague, will not want your 7 year old to ride the buses/metro alone. LA weather is fantastic, no doubt. Its the thing I miss most. The thing I don't miss is the traffic. Literally bumper to bumper crawling along at a snail's pace will drive you crazy after a while. Farther south in Orange County is an option, but housing is pretty expensive and the traffic is not a whole lot better. San Fran is even more expensive to live plus the weather is not as good as LA. I understand opinions will vary, but as someone with direct experience with all 3 cities you mentioned, there is a reason that I'm still in Prague :)
Glad to see fellow Prague expat here! Thanks a lot for the insight. What made you to move to Prague? We go to PBS here, and I've found private schools in LA to be less expensive. So, I guess, this part of the equation is solved, assuming I maintain the income (argh!) although I expect my overall expenses to double in LA with all the taxes, etc. I visited both LA and SF once and found traffic to be manageable in both (stayed in WeHo). We avoided peak hours, though, however, yes, I hear people complain on traffic when they have to drive to work. I've looked at Orange but couldn't find a walkable place. I'd really want to live without a car, so it's all down to walkable parts of LA + relying on Uber (Los Feliz, Venice, etc) or SF/Oakland for us. How is Oakland weather compared to Prague? I'm comparing numerically but always end up with different conclusions depending on what mood I am in.
My kids to go Meridian, which so far has been a fantastic school and is about 1/3 the price of a private school in the U.S. (I see that PBS is almost as expensive as ISP, which is very high). What is your citizenship? Any issues with moving to the U.S.? My advice would be to go for 3 months and try it out (maybe in the summer when the kids are out of school). All I can say is that I loved living in LA, but I would never do it with a family (unless I was a lot more wealthy than I am now). Good luck!
Thanks. We're Ukrainians. Getting a long-term U.S. visa is a complete quantum chromodynamics for us, a once in a lifetime decision, perhaps. We're going to go for 3 weeks, probably this summer, to try it out (planning 2 weeks in Oakland, then 1 week in Ocean Park/Venice area.)
Wouldn't you be able to maintain a home in Prague PLUS another home in southern Europe somewhere for less money than it would take to maintain one home in the Bay Area? Of course, that depends on you being able to work in a location-independent way...
everyone wants to be in california because the climate is never brutal on either ends. although it has gotten hotter and hotter in most recent years.
but if you are considering living anywhere in california, and want nice warm weather, you should also consider orange county (~30-40 minute drive from LA depending), san diego (~3 hours south of LA) and santa barbara (~2 hours? west of LA, nice but maybe a little more expensive and also prob fewer tech jobs). the sf bay area gets colder than southern california but nothing extreme, it doesn't really snow and rain is infrequent (both a good/bad thing for california).
I'd look into San Diego if you're doing it for the climate. It has by far the best climate in the United States, and is a beautiful, manageable city right on the ocean.
I am yet to visit SD. I forgot some additional components in my "best place to live" formula. The place has to offer freedom and opportunities for artists. I am not sure if you can call it liberal or bohemian atmosphere, or that's too cliche. A person should be able to afford to live and be free to pursue "artistic exploration" in his life, or whatever it can be called. Prague and Berlin must be good in this regard, although I've heard Berlin is getting more expensive lately. SF has a good element of what I'm looking for, but I hear housing prices are driving people away. Is SD as active as SF or LA in terms of art exhibitions, museums, clubs, people gatherings?
The schools in Los Angeles are terrible unless you live in an insanely expensive part of town or send your kids to an insanely expensive private school.
Never been there, but photographs of Sydney and Melbourne I see are absolutely incredible. I wish it wasn't that far away though. It's funny to see a list of destinations and all the familiar places are ~ 20 hours flight.
Among the people who voted, this is the number for Taxable household income for 2016
More than $150,000 16%
Prefer not to respond 11%
Rest of the % are all under $150,000.
Good senior engineer/product people make way more than that. I don't think any of those people are leaving. They are the critical-mass who will make/break good technical companies and power the innovation cycle. SV is in no trouble. There is no real scare of brain-drain.
I admit this comment might be insensitive and will probably ruffle the feathers of many but I was purely thinking from the point of view of economic impact and who drive(s) the innovation engine here. VCs, People who made it in tech, hungry (for success) people who want to make it in tech, and senior product and engineering people who can build solid products (not charlatans or imposters) have no reason to leave SV. They are all doing well money wise except probably hungry ones who are motivated to make a lot of impact or money or both.
I am interested to hear what other people have to say about this.
Zoom out - you're missing the huge demographic risk. The next generation of people who will become top engineers, founders, etc. are facing tougher tradeoffs between standard of living and access to SV's social and business networks. It's not only the risk that the current drivers will leave but that the new drivers will just go elsewhere.
For 2015/16, new college grads at good companies total comp is in the range $120-180K, and they definitely have access to good social networks within the company and outside. Is there a large group of next generation people I am missing?
Considering how few 2015/2016 college grads will actually get one of those jobs at good companies, I think your large group is, well, any graduating class. If the Bay Area becomes unattractive for the kids who can't score $120k+, or for seniors like me who can't score the $200k+ jobs, it won't survive at the level it has been going on for.
In that sense, the distribution of salaries attached to the answers is telling. How do the startups and non-elite companies survive if nobody they can actually afford wants to come or stay? The area can't just be a playground for the elite megacompanies that can pay the salaries you state.
Actually, maybe it can? If we can ignore the somewhat tasteless aspect of this, what if the Bay Area was just a playground for kids who get 6-figure salaries at graduation, and then stay at high-paying jobs there?
It becomes extremely elitist, with all the costs and benefits of that. The benefit is that everyone who can afford to live there is implicitly vetted by a rich employer or investor, so there could be extremely high serendipity. The costs are massive insularity, risk of the next big thing coming from elsewhere, and hugely inflated costs for basic service labor.
But, if the vetting is good enough, maybe those costs are worth it?
I don't disagree that there exist a good number of people making $WAY_MORE, but it certainly seems like that number of people is greatly overstated - as in, for every such senior engineer I personally know, I know probably 10-20x making (much) less than that. In fact, I know senior engineers who aren't pulling that much; granted they aren't at Google/FB/Apple/Amazon.
Even the senior folks making bank aren't necessarily all willing to plunk down $2m for a crappy house in Cupertino. Simple economics will disperse at least some of this talent pool.
I may be missing some nuance here, but wouldn't increasing sales tax (as the Silicon Valley Leadership Group is advocating) further disproportionately punish lower-income residents? The article doesn't make clear whether moving towards a "Manhattan-like megalopolis" would be a positive or negative trend, but this would push it further down that road.
From my limited understanding of economics: yes. The reason is that lower income people spend more of their money on necessities, whereas richer people spend more money on luxury goods (things they don't need), and they could hence respond more to an increase in sales tax (that is, spend less as a fraction of their income). To reiterate, the lower income people can't spend less (they're buying necessities), so the increase will cause them to spend a greater total fraction of their wages. So, when compared to an increase in income tax, an increase in sales tax is theoretically far more regressive.
The "hope" part discourages me. It means that despite the wishes to leave, the jobs elsewhere (or telecommuting opportunities) may simply not be there.
I moved to the area a few months ago for my career, and while I wouldn't say I hope to leave soon, I don't plan on putting down roots. My hope is to save up some money and buy a cheap house in cash where the cost of real estate and living is cheap, then move there. I suspect that there are a lot of other people that are looking to do the same.
The link seems to advocate/facilitate increasing occupancy, which is indeed one solution. With 12k people and 4k homes, that's a ratio of 3 which is very close to the average occupancy of around 2.5 that most cities have.
Except that looking at a single year doesn't tell you much about why even a ratio of 3 isn't good in SF. After a quick google search I came across this set of charts that do a pretty good job of covering the history of population and housing in SF.[0] For the period 2010-2013, population rose 32,500 and housing expanded 7,500 - a sustained ratio of 4.33. The decade prior to that saw a much gentler ratio just a little over 1, but that may have been catching up to the booming growth of the '90s and the dotcom bubble. The thing that really caught my eye though was the tidbit of information in the first chart - nearly half of the existing housing in SF was built prior to 1940. The original report (linked in the article) provides a much more grim outlook for 2010-2015 predicting a total population growth of 60,000 with a housing increase of 12,000 - a ratio of 5.[1]
I visited recently and enjoyed it. I live west of you a few hours. Somewhat recently came back home to upstate NY after getting tired of the cost of living in Silicon Valley.
Is there really a lot to offer there? I currently live farther upstate (north of the Adirondacks) and have been considering moving down to the capital region.
yeah its a really fun time. Along with all of the shops, microbreweries and bars that opened up within the last four years, there is a makerspace called the center of gravity which opened fairly recently [1]. It's got 3D printers and all that jazz. The city has done a nice job reinventing itself.
I never thought I would say that LA is cheaper than San Francisco. The average one bedroom apartment is around $3k. I'm not sure how people can afford to live here anymore. I live in Marin and commute to Silicon Valley...
I already left! In Boston currently, but looking to go back to SoCal soon! (Really wonder why there isn't a bigger startup scene in LA/SD than in the Bay Area, it's such a sweet location..)
I'm pretty sure that the tech kids didn't plan to stay there for more than a few years anyway. They're making big salaries, but the rent is so high that they can't save any money. What they can do is drag that fancy resume back to the Indiana suburb they came from, and buy a nice house with a 20 minute commute to the industrial park that they work in. Or a nice condo in downtown Boise, a five-minute bike ride from their CTO job at some newspaper, or the gas company.
I've been saying that for about 15 years now, yet I'm still here. I've certainly looked around, visited a few places, went on some job interviews out of the area, but haven't been able to find anyplace that I felt I could call "home".
What is the telos of man? (ultimate goal, end)
The best thing for you is impossible, and that's for you to have never been (here)
The next best thing is to die soon (or leave)
The wisdom of Silenus applies to life in the San Francisco
My advice: find a nice town with really good Internet and lots of people you think you would enjoy being around. Programmers can work from anywhere. Take advantage of that fact (if you are a programmer).
Has this number gone up or down compared to other years ? It is completely conceivable though that people would want to move, given the difficulty in procuring homes.
The question is will people use this signal to change course (better transit, sane housing density, walkability, etc) or to perpetuate the wrong course (more tract housing in Antioch, wider freeways, etc).
Please don't come to New York. I moved from Amherst to New York a little over four years ago, and I want to make it clear that it's terrible. The food is bad, the people are lame, and all the musicians are out of tune. I hear Chicago is where it's at, so please go there. Or Seattle. Or anywhere else, really. Just don't come to New York.
Haven't tried myself, yet huge crowds of incoming people can't be that wrong :)
In particular i think only CA has non-recognition of non-competes (and moonlighting protection too if i remember right) while the rest of US - doesn't.
Yeah because the herd mentality has shown to be correct so often.
C'mon you know what you are saying is wrong. I worked in SV/SF and now live in NYC and I much prefer the tech scene here. In fact there's a massive shortage of programmers so you could actually make more money in NYC.
But you don't even need to live there. You can work remote. Programming is one of the only jobs you can do literally from anywhere.
>Programming is one of the only jobs you can do literally from anywhere
you're putting theory ahead of practice. We're talking right now inside of one more thread where programmers discuss how hard it is to live in BA - don't you feel any contradiction between that fact and your statement?
You with your theory reminded me about that joke yesterday in Prairie Home Companion : "People of Galveston can look in the eye of reality and dismiss it" :)
You are clearly a troll, albeit a funny one as I've never seen someone refer to PHC on HN before.
Go the Who's Hiring thread today and there's plenty of remote options. I worked remote for a few years. I also worked in gasp the flyover states for a bit too. You really can program anywhere.
Or you can keep drinking the BA kool aid. I spent some time there, not for me, pretty awful place really. But apparently the programming job I work at now outside of the BA doesn't exist according to you?
I knew on paper the housing would be cheaper, but what's stood out to me is how much less crowded it is:
You can go to stores and find parking, and not wait 15 minutes at the cashier.
You can go to restaurants and actually get a table.
You can make unprotected left turns.
Things are busy during rush hour, but outside of that it's really not bad, and overall it doesn't perpetually feel like the infrastructure is about to collapse under the weight of being so far over-capacity.
There are some things I will miss, but I keep reminding myself that I can fly back to SF cheaply (or anywhere in the US from DEN, really) and hit all of my favorite spots. I am a little afraid I won't be able to find the same quality fruits and vegetables.
When I moved out to the bay area, I thought it would be great to have so many job opportunities and career flexibility. But now as I'm leaving I feel like that wasn't all it's built up to be. Having some options if your employment situation goes south is important, but I don't really need to change jobs every 18 months, or have 5 cold calls from recruiters in my inbox every week. I'd truly rather find a company where I am a good fit and just stay put for a few years.
I also think that is in some ways healthier too: having a bit higher switching cost forces you to learn how to work out some disagreements with your employer and boss, instead of just leaving at the drop of a hat.