
Financial pressure from rent is moving up the income ladder - rhinoh
https://www.routefifty.com/management/2020/02/rent-burden-high-middle-income-households/162855/
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helen___keller
> She noted that many of the higher-earning renter households are college-
> educated, young married couples who look a lot like the first-time
> homebuyers of years gone by.

> There are different theories as to why more households like this are
> choosing to rent rather than buy—for example, maybe it’s a matter of
> preference, or maybe the costs of buying a home are too high. Homeownership
> growth since 2010 mostly occurred for households who earn at least $150,000
> per year, with much of the growth happening for those earning $200,000 or
> more.

As someone who would be in the market for a starter home, there are basically
two kinds of neighborhoods in our metro region:

(a) Neighborhoods that have decent commutes to some but not all job clusters.
These neighborhoods have starter homes, but are risky to buy into for a young
married couple who will likely have new jobs in the next 2 years.

(b) Neighborhoods that have decent commutes to ALL job clusters. These
neighborhoods exploded in price over the past decade and have no starter
homes.

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qserasera
I completely agree with both points. I think that people are also terrified of
spending that much money on a house after 2008 and having student debt.

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mikeyouse
I've been trying to buy a house for a few years now in the Bay Area as a non-
developer (read: Not seeing $100k bonuses or RSU grants) and the prices just
keep running away from me. I've saved up enough now to buy a house 3 years
ago, but prices have increased by $300k-$400k since then which means I need
another ~$75k for a down payment.

At what point to I just give up and move somewhere else? It's honestly just
exhausting.

~~~
helen___keller
> At what point to I just give up and move somewhere else? It's honestly just
> exhausting.

I feel a lot of the same exhaustion (despite not being in the bay area), but
it comes down to what you want in life and what your options are.

If my wife and I both want to continue our careers, there are scant few metros
available in her specialized field. We can afford the rent, and we're happy in
the Boston area, so we're not planning to move right now.

But I also want to raise kids in a city where they could one day return from
college and make a living without being forced into software or investment
banking or medicine. This is the biggest thing on my mind personally. The kind
of city you get when cost of living is absurdly high, is not the kind of city
I want to live in. Right now I've put off that decision, but it's something I
plan to revisit within the next 5 years.

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mikeyouse
Yep - that feels very similar to our thought process. Unfortunately, we're in
our mid-30s now so that kid discussion / location decision can't be deferred
for too much longer. We were really hoping for another real estate reset, we
could afford a million dollar house if it was in the right place (e.g. that we
wouldn't also need to pay for day care / private schools for the next two
decades) but it's just hard to stomach how much everything here costs.

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ohiovr
Side effects of a housing bubble. Low interest rates spur purchases,
increasing demand and prices. Landlords have to pass this along to renters.

~~~
tartoran
And renters have no choice but cough up the money because.. sleeping in parks,
streets and under bridges ain't pleasant at all. It's a growing problem that
slowly is becoming something impossible to fix. I personally don't see this
getting fixed but getting worse over time.

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Hfrt6
My solution is to leave the country and watch the socio economic collapse from
the sidelines

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ohiovr
Wouldn't that entail moving to a place that has already collapsed or is in a
state of perpetual poverty?

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maest
I'm not sure I follow - are you suggesting all countries but the US are in a
state of perpetual poverty?

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ohiovr
I was and obviously I'm wrong (sorry). However I would think that bad times in
the USA would quickly translate to bad times nearly everywhere..

~~~
tartoran
That's right. But other places are less polarized (maybe by a little bit) and
maybe more peaceful.

