You need an astronomical salary of $221K/yr top afford Median house in San Jose, $181 in Frisco

NY Flop wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

San Fran is quite a bit more expensive than San Jose and you don't need that much for the average person to be comfortable. There are some areas of San Jose where you can get a decent 24K sq ft home for around $500K. Where as $500K is a condo fixer upper in the worst part of town in SF.

I assume you didn't mean a 24,000 sq ft house.

But there are zero places in San Jose where you can buy a decent $500k house.

Perhaps I should have said $550K. My brother brought 2 flips for around $400K and resold for around $550K. That was several years ago. The neighborhood was Everton.

Mooiiiisssttt wrote:

Late 80s into the mid 90s. The first boom was raging by the mid 90s, when you could drive down the 101 and see full-sized billboards advertising for employees at the large tech firms.

You're right that it was expensive but middle class workers lived all along the Peninsula and could get into the housing stock. I was one of them. I was a young middle class guy with a few years of work out of college and lived in Burlingame.

The nature of the entire Bay area has changed since then, for the worse IMO.

Traveler wrote:

When would you say was "the first boom"? I've lived in the Frisco Bay Area since 1983 and it's always been tough to get into decent housing (though not nearly like it is now).

Get off my lawn!!!!!!

TrackCoach wrote:

NY Flop wrote:

I assume you didn't mean a 24,000 sq ft house.

But there are zero places in San Jose where you can buy a decent $500k house.

Perhaps I should have said $550K. My brother brought 2 flips for around $400K and resold for around $550K. That was several years ago. The neighborhood was Everton.

There is no Everton neighborhood I'm aware of. Edenvale?

That hardly qualifies as decent and is barely San Jose. And prices "several years ago" don't apply now.

Only the old farts that will be aged out of the Bay Area soon care about Median housing prices. Everyone else prefers renting. In 15 years 80% of Bay Area homes will be rentals.

old farts wrote:

Only the old farts that will be aged out of the Bay Area soon care about Median housing prices. Everyone else prefers renting. In 15 years 80% of Bay Area homes will be rentals.

With any luck they will stop voting in elections and we can actually get decent zoning and development policy in the area.

The largest hypocrisy on the left is this:

1) I support immigration and open my arms to people making a new life in America.

2) I aggressively back zoning and development restrictions that skyrocket my property value and prevent anyone out of my tax bracket from moving near me.

It's a classic case of do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do. SF is sadly the poster child -- thankfully people are waking up. Far too late to fix the issue in a reasonable time, though.

old farts wrote:

Only the old farts that will be aged out of the Bay Area soon care about Median housing prices. Everyone else prefers renting. In 15 years 80% of Bay Area homes will be rentals.

Why would people prefer renting?

Seems like most people would want to get to a place in life where they could own their own home instead of just giving someone else rent money.

old farts wrote:

Only the old farts that will be aged out of the Bay Area soon care about Median housing prices. Everyone else prefers renting. In 15 years 80% of Bay Area homes will be rentals.

Well, young fart, who is buying homes to rent out? If everyone is a renter who are the landlords?

WhitePony wrote:

old farts wrote:

Only the old farts that will be aged out of the Bay Area soon care about Median housing prices. Everyone else prefers renting. In 15 years 80% of Bay Area homes will be rentals.

Why would people prefer renting?

Seems like most people would want to get to a place in life where they could own their own home instead of just giving someone else rent money.

Yes, this is wrong. Nobody wants to rent. Homeowners have conspired for decades to restrict supply and make it impossible to buy.

WhitePony wrote:

old farts wrote:

Only the old farts that will be aged out of the Bay Area soon care about Median housing prices. Everyone else prefers renting. In 15 years 80% of Bay Area homes will be rentals.

Why would people prefer renting?

Seems like most people would want to get to a place in life where they could own their own home instead of just giving someone else rent money.

Why do you want to be tied down by an expensive house instead of having the freedom to move when you want? Because you have been brainwashed by real estate marketing?

Neither one is better or worse than the other. You pick the one that meets you needs the best.

runningapp wrote:

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

And the average tech worker still cannot possibly afford the mortgage.

Assuming what you are saying is true, then the average tech worker should not be buying a house. Juse rent or get roommates.

Wait... I thought these were "good middle class jobs"?

Share cropping is the new middle class.

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

runningapp wrote:

Assuming what you are saying is true, then the average tech worker should not be buying a house. Juse rent or get roommates.

Wait... I thought these were "good middle class jobs"?

Share cropping is the new middle class.

Tech workers have no problem. 125k for someone with 10 years experience is low. That is a 250k family income.

asdfasdfa wrote:

pop_pop!_v2.2.1 wrote:

Wait... I thought these were "good middle class jobs"?

Share cropping is the new middle class.

Tech workers have no problem. 125k for someone with 10 years experience is low. That is a 250k family income.

But where do they live? The displace others and move into below average homes. Developers want to build and because of the demand, but they cannot. So housing only goes to the well off. Values rise. etc

TrackCoach wrote:

NY Flop wrote:

I assume you didn't mean a 24,000 sq ft house.

But there are zero places in San Jose where you can buy a decent $500k house.

Perhaps I should have said $550K. My brother brought 2 flips for around $400K and resold for around $550K. That was several years ago. The neighborhood was Everton.

Perhaps you should have said 1.0 - 1.3 million for for a decent/average 2000 square foot house.

Josefino wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

Perhaps I should have said $550K. My brother brought 2 flips for around $400K and resold for around $550K. That was several years ago. The neighborhood was Everton.

Perhaps you should have said 1.0 - 1.3 million for for a decent/average 2000 square foot house.

That's in Oriental/White dumps like Silver Creek NE SJ, Willow Glen. PA/LG/MV is 2.7M-3.0M for a regular cleaned up 1950's shack.

asdfasdfa wrote:

No you don't need a 221k salary. You need a family income of 221k.

Maybe not even. That stat is for a FIRST home; it doesn't take into account home equity from elsewhere.

I'm pretty confident I could sell my metro home for, if not a straight-up trade, a fairly sizable down payment on some nice SF property.

Why does the OP assume that everyone is young, ignorant and poor?

[

[/quote]

I assume you didn't mean a 24,000 sq ft house.

But there are zero places in San Jose where you can buy a decent $500k house.[/quote]

Perhaps I should have said $550K. My brother brought 2 flips for around $400K and resold for around $550K. That was several years ago. The neighborhood was Everton.[/quote]

I think you mean Evergreen. $550K in Evergreen != decent house. $550K in Evergreen = rental & repo city. $550K in Evergreen = War Zone! $1M in Evergreen = decent neighborhood but you have to drive through War Zone to get to the Freeway. Live in Evergreen, good luck.

Houses in the South Bay go up in value. People buy a condo wait a few years then move up to a starter home and finally buy a nice home. Family income needs to be 2 - 2.5x the national average.

San Jose is for Cheap Trash wrote:

Josefino wrote:

Perhaps you should have said 1.0 - 1.3 million for for a decent/average 2000 square foot house.

That's in Oriental/White dumps like Silver Creek NE SJ, Willow Glen. PA/LG/MV is 2.7M-3.0M for a regular cleaned up 1950's shack.

Those darn ornamentals ruin everything don't they?!

I lived on the Peninsula in the early days of the first boom, and it was heaven on earth. Housing available for all classes, plentiful employment across the board, the city itself was grainier and edgier but also much more open and welcoming.

The current-outrageously-expensive cities on the Peninsula were filled with normal, middle class people. Middle-class Joe and Molly could afford to live anywhere from city neighborhoods to San Bruno, to San Mateo, Millbrae, Burlingame. The entire Avenues was middle-to-lower middle class and affordable as hell if you could handle the fog and chill. The entire venture capital, tech bro, "disruptive" bullssshit thing hadn't gained traction yet, and it was just a wonderful place to live, recreate and work.

I hate to even visit the Bay area anymore. Overstuffed, overpuffed, filled with ][/quote]

SF was on the skids way before that. The 60's hippies etc. started the rot. Listening to really old timers, the 50's were how you describe above, by the late 70's both the overall quality of people was going down and prices were inflating compared to other places.

NY Flop wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

Perhaps I should have said $550K. My brother brought 2 flips for around $400K and resold for around $550K. That was several years ago. The neighborhood was Everton.

There is no Everton neighborhood I'm aware of. Edenvale?

That hardly qualifies as decent and is barely San Jose. And prices "several years ago" don't apply now.

I recall seeing more Asians and Hispanics than Black/White. The area was "Ever" something, close to the main highway to Monterey. It wasn't a great area, decent and livable. My brother use to have several investment properties in that area. I guess I should have added this was about 7 years ago.