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Topic: In other news (apolitical thread)...

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Cincydawg

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1932 on: July 31, 2025, 11:29:24 AM »
I've chatted with a few 30-something couples about why they rent around here for $3 K a month.  Two factors, no downpayment of note, and student and other loans (bad CR).  So, they rent.


FearlessF

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1933 on: July 31, 2025, 11:32:25 AM »
poor choice in my opinion
"Courage; Generosity; Fairness; Honor; In these are the true awards of manly sport."

betarhoalphadelta

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1934 on: July 31, 2025, 11:39:22 AM »
I honestly don’t understand how people can live there. What kind of professions and pay do the typical people that buy houses like that have ? 

I would say that in my neighborhood the average couple makes about $180-220k combined.
They don't just "buy" houses like that. They've been riding the equity wave from some previous property they owned to get into that one. That house would have been maybe $600K in 2016.

So maybe the buyer of a house like this was younger in the early 2010s, bought a condo for $350K, it's now selling for $750K, and they can roll that equity into a place like this. 

It's insane, unaffordable, and IMHO unsustainable. It has to crash. 

I'm seeing signs that the housing market is breaking. But I don't know if that's just my own wishful thinking. 

SFBadger96

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1935 on: July 31, 2025, 11:59:54 AM »
It varies from place to place, of course. People have talked about the overheated Bay Area housing market since I was really young. My parents were told they paid too much for their house in 1975. By far the best investment they ever made.

I, too, have paid exorbitant amounts for the two houses I've owned, but both have paid off, and then some. The market has been softer in the last few years, but I'm still looking at a house worth double what I and the bank paid for it 15 years ago. Pretty good investment of our down payment and mortgage payments. Used to feel bad for the guy who bought our first house--just as the 2008 recession was hitting full gear, but he's done quite well on it, too.

Good weather year round, a strong economy/strong local industries with a relatively low reliance on government spending, good education pipeline, easy access to other financial and business markets, strong cultural scene (for a lot of different affinity groups), access to all forms of entertainment/activities within relatively easy drives, and attractive scenery all appear to make up for a pretty high tax rate and a historically troublesome homelessness problem. People want to live here, businesses want to work here, and people keep paying for it. But we do lose people because of the cost. Portland, Seattle, Boise, and Austin all benefit/lose because of that. And that emigration has driven up the home costs in those places, too.

Gigem

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1936 on: July 31, 2025, 12:38:38 PM »
We play the roll-up game here too. A million dollars would buy you a 4,000 sq ft newer house on 20-30 acres. 

Gigem

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1937 on: July 31, 2025, 12:39:02 PM »
But the taxes would be horrendous. 

FearlessF

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1938 on: July 31, 2025, 12:41:40 PM »
with no state income tax.......... gotta get that $$$ somehow
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betarhoalphadelta

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1939 on: July 31, 2025, 01:00:58 PM »
It varies from place to place, of course. People have talked about the overheated Bay Area housing market since I was really young. My parents were told they paid too much for their house in 1975. By far the best investment they ever made.
IMHO a lot of it here is timing. In the long term, things just keep going up for the reasons you mentioned--this is a desirable place to live and they're not building enough new housing stock to keep prices reasonable. 

But it doesn't just "keep going up", as we saw in 2007--Bay Area dropped 27%... And down here in SoCal in the early 90s it got crushed (which looking at it hit the Bay Area, just less badly)... The surprising one was that it didn't get hit harder during the dot com bubble bursting... That seemed to be a short, small blip. 

https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/3-recessions-2-bubbles-and-a-baby

It seems the market right now is cracking. Inventory is rising but sales aren't; buyers are on the sidelines. But I think you need some external stimulus to push it over the tipping point. And we haven't had anything to start forcing people to drop prices to sell. 

SFBadger96

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1940 on: July 31, 2025, 01:54:05 PM »
There have definitely been periods of trouble, but the question is whether the local market will crater when other U.S. markets do not--that is an exceptionally rare occurrence. Yes, the drop in 2008 was brutal, but the values were still much higher than in most of the country.

I don't have any illusions that somehow Bay Area real estate is bullet proof, but I do think that it is better situated than other markets, and will stay that way, barring actual catastrophe. Curiously, that article you linked noted the '89 earthquake, which, for sure, made a dent in people's appreciation for the area, but it didn't mention the several military bases the feds closed (the Presidio (San Francisco), Alameda Naval Air Station, Moffett Field (Naval Air), Fort Ord (Monterey), among others, all within two years, I think, between 1991 and 1993 (?). That definitely worsened the recession for California (I think there were 13 base/fort closures statewide) and the Bay Area. In the long run it made the area less dependent on federal spending, which was probably good, but in the short term it was a lot of federal jobs that left in a hurry. 

847badgerfan

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1941 on: July 31, 2025, 01:56:16 PM »
with no state income tax.......... gotta get that $$$ somehow
Tourism takes care of that here.
U RAH RAH! WIS CON SIN!

betarhoalphadelta

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1942 on: July 31, 2025, 02:07:10 PM »
There have definitely been periods of trouble, but the question is whether the local market will crater when other U.S. markets do not--that is an exceptionally rare occurrence. Yes, the drop in 2008 was brutal, but the values were still much higher than in most of the country.

I don't have any illusions that somehow Bay Area real estate is bullet proof, but I do think that it is better situated than other markets, and will stay that way, barring actual catastrophe. Curiously, that article you linked noted the '89 earthquake, which, for sure, made a dent in people's appreciation for the area, but it didn't mention the several military bases the feds closed (the Presidio (San Francisco), Alameda Naval Air Station, Moffett Field (Naval Air), Fort Ord (Monterey), among others, all within two years, I think, between 1991 and 1993 (?). That definitely worsened the recession for California (I think there were 13 base/fort closures statewide) and the Bay Area. In the long run it made the area less dependent on federal spending, which was probably good, but in the short term it was a lot of federal jobs that left in a hurry.
Yeah. It's always going to be expensive, relative to just about anywhere else in the US. And no, I don't think it's going to specifically crater when everything is hunky-dory nationally.

My point about the market cracking is that it's cracking nationally. https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-housing-market-cracking-090000264.html

Of course, if the current national market hits a rough patch, the Bay Area would potentially have it's own life preserver with local AI-related growth that might offset some of the national pain. 

SFBadger96

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1943 on: July 31, 2025, 02:14:49 PM »
Re current market issues and AI-related Bay Area-specific growth: that's probably offset by the mass layoffs of software engineers in the Bay Area. It's pretty rough out there in tech right now.

847badgerfan

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1944 on: July 31, 2025, 03:01:28 PM »
The housing market has cooled here for sure, but it was flaming hot for 4 years, so a cooldown was to be expected.

We do have low property taxes, but high insurance costs (unless you are up to current hurricane code, as are).

Most buyers today are cash. We'd have more buyers if the Fed would do the right thing, but I don't want to get too far into that.
U RAH RAH! WIS CON SIN!

FearlessF

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Re: In other news (apolitical thread)...
« Reply #1945 on: July 31, 2025, 03:07:08 PM »
Tourism takes care of that here.
soak the blue hairs from NY & NJ
"Courage; Generosity; Fairness; Honor; In these are the true awards of manly sport."

 

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