[ds968]

not a car. but apartments or offices in san francisco . and the joy belongs solely to the landlord, that is.

san francisco had already surpassed manhattan in terms of office space leasing costs last year, but now it has just passed it in apartment rentals as well. seems almost insane that in addition to the city actually most of the west and south bay area ( aka silicon valley ) apartments and homes are more expensive to rent , on the average, than they do in manhattan. i think manhattan still holds the record in terms of price ( sales cost ) of apartments, but this is nuts. the average 1 bedroom apt in the city goes for $ 3,100 /mo. the average house to rent in the silicon valley area is over $ 4,500 / mo.



house prices are also going bonkers almost as much as they did during the dot.com bubble era,.. sheesh, deja vu. lucky we own the house...and bought when we did , 32 years ago ..

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[Chris Vais]

I'm happy to say that my house is no longer under water, at least no until the next earthquake.

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[Rap]

Yes depending where you live generally homes appreciate over time. Don't think that true where I live but I'm content and don't really view my home as an asset. How does the average Joe or Susie afford those prices?

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[flash]

we bought in just before the peak in late 2006. then everything tanked. luckily the real estate market has almost recovered. we have now crested over our just over $1M purchase price. still haven't made up the $400k+ remodel expenses though. another couple of years.



then we get to start all over and build.



been toying with renting this place out. we could actually make more than we spend at this point.

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[ds968]

[quote name='Rap' timestamp='1410005039' post='161926']. How does the average Joe or Susie afford those prices?[/quote]



I've often wondered that myself, and I can't speak for other parts of the country but the average Joe and Suzy in this area either : 1) works in high tech which not only pays remarkable salaries but affords them stock and stock options which, at successful companies, are worth hundreds of thousands $$ or millions $$ , and that's for just the rank and file employees ...or 2) they're the average Ivan and Su-Ming, who move to the Bay Area from Russia or China bringing with them millions of $$ made there in the last half decade. And it's not just a handful of tne super rich that buy here, real estate agents report foreigners who buy properties are in the thousand + numbers every year. You have to feel for the " real average " young couple , working in retail or other non-high tech industries trying to establish themselves here ; no way, no how of buying a starter home unless you're an hour or more drive away from the 50 mile circle home to Apple, Google, Facebook, etc..etc..and San Francisco . Ugh. It's really disconcerning when you see real estate ads which read : charming, cozy starter home, real potential, and handyman's dream , 2 BR , 1 bath, 800 sq ft, close to good schools, now offered at $ 1,200,000. And then you find out they invariably sell above asking price because there is a bidding frenzy on it. The interesting thing though is that while you can't find much of anything in perfect move-in condition for less than that $ 1 mil. mark ( in half way decent neighborhoods ), if you look above the $ 1. 5 mil range , in the same neighborhood you can get some pretty nice homes, and at $ 2 mil you're looking at 4 BR, 3000 Sq ft, completely refurbished with all the modern conveniences , or even newly built homes. So if you can afford to buy a fixer-upper for $ 1 mil, why bother with that ? - you can't buy a $ 1.75 mil bigger, newer, all around nicer house ?

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[lbpesq]

We moved a month ago because our former landlord had to sell the house for financial reasons. (I don't believe in buying in the Bay Area at these prices - I'd rather rent and live where I want to live, than buy and live where I don't want to live - we'll look into buying in about 5 years if and when we make our anticipated move to the Florida Keys). Since our son is now off to college, I started out thinking we'd get something smaller for less money. Boy, was I in for a surprise! Rents have gone sky high in the East Bay. It would have actually been cheaper to rent in Marin County than in Oakland! Basically, you can't touch a 3 bedroom house in decent condition in a decent neighborhood for under $4k. We wound up with something smaller and more expensive! At least we lucked out and found a great place at the top of the East Bay Hills. Technically it's in Orinda, but it's really in Tilden Park. We have 1.5 acres, deer, turkeys, coyotes, lizards and snakes and, though I don't expect to see one, mountain lions. Completely private and almost off the grid - well water and septic system. I feel sorry for young people just starting out. How can they afford it?

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[type968]

I have been toying moving back to the West coast, high prices in the Boston area are not unheard of around here, not as high as NY or Bay Area. I am in hi-tech, not a developer though, so while I am paid decent, I am not paid ridiculous.



If you had a job where you could telecommute, where would you pick in California? Money is an object for me. So is a good school system. But location next to major tech is not. When I considered moving to Cupurtino for an Apple job, the school system there was worse than my current town in Metro Boston and we are ranked 30s out of our 500+ school systems. If I bought a similar house in Cupertino as I have now it would only be 150k or so more. (yeah I have a small house)



I do tire of the weather here, some love it but it is not for me.



If I sold everything I could afford a decent down payment. I like the outdoors, warm weather, sunny clear skies, etc. Everything just about everyone is in California for I suppose (well southern anyways) I currently have 6 acres were I live, so while I realize that is unusual, a few acres would be nice.

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[Rap]

For those of us not in tech these prices are out of reach. Unless of course you want to be house rich and cash poor. I remember years ago when I was in the insurance biz and visited folks in homes out of their reach with minimal furniture and who lived paycheck to paycheck. But they did live in a nice large house! To each his own!

Now that said, I've so overdeveloped my property beyond the original purchase price that it would be difficult to earn much of an appreciation on sale. If you liked cars and wanted two homes connected to each other you would dig my place. But who would that be? Lol

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[ds968]

type968 : if you had a job which allows you to telecommute much of the time, there are still many ( relatively ) reasonable areas in California where you could live and still be close to civilization, but with the luxury of a couple or more acres around your house. And with few exceptions , as in way up north, or way east and south-east of the state, the climate is just about perfect year-round for most people. Close to the Bay Area, Morgan Hill is still reasonable ( again, relatively speaking ) further down the state there is Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo , and numerous cities in Southern California, but we have members here far more knowledgeable than I am about that region who can chime in. If money was no object I'd chose Santa Barbara over any place in the entire U.S. not just the Sate , but regretfully in Santa Barbara, money is very much tne object, lol.

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[ds968]

And things only get crazier : http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_2...ing-prices

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[kzem1]

CA is fast becomming a state that predominately has 2 classes of people. The poor and the rich. The middle class is dwindling in that state. Why is that. Policies that increase taxes on the wealthy and those who pay taxes while increasing the free stuff to the people on the bottom squeeze out the middle class eventually leaving only 2 classes of people. That is why so many people, businesses, and jobs have left CA over the past decade to more tax friendly states. You see that in Communist/Socialist countries too.

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[flash]

no idea where you are getting that information, but it is not what i see here, and i've lived here my whole life.

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[ds968]

This is a unique phenomenon limited to Silicon Valley and the surrounding Bay Area, not California at large ..90% of that is the result of the high tech boom where millionaires are minted weekly , and maybe the other 10% as a result of a tremendous influx of very wealthy foreigners ( billionaires and multi- millionaires from China, Russia , ) moving here as their choice spot vs any other places in the entire world . I can't explain that, the Bay Area is indeed beautiful, the climate is near perfect, and offers just about everything one would want, but there are multiple spots like that around the US and the world, so not sure why everyone seems to flock here. Anyway, back to my first point ; nowhere else in California will you find a 995 sq ft house in a severe state of disrepair ( they labeled it merely as a fixer upper but that's a stretch , it's beyond any reasonable fixing ) sitting on a tiny lot of land which is less than 2500 sq ft itself , that sells for $ 3,000,000 !! Nowhere .

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[flash]

that is crazy. the lot we are looking at is only 8800 sq ft. it's just a lot. $1.8m



i lived in the bay area for the first half of my life. when i left, the town i was in was predominantly white middle class. it was your basic burb. when i went back to visit just 5 years later the makeup had entirely changed, and was mostly immigrants.



what i see are more rich people. what i don't see is a dwindling middle class. in fact, it is swelling. the problem is that properties have gone up so high that middle class people can't afford them, making them seem poorer.

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[ds968]

[quote name='flash' timestamp='1417532945' post='164169']

what i see are more rich people. what i don't see is a dwindling middle class. in fact, it is swelling. the problem is that properties have gone up so high that middle class people can't afford them, making them seem poorer.[/quote]



Absolutely correct . The middle class demographic is swelling and although the choice locations ( within a small radius of the tech hubs like Apple, or Facebook, or Google , etc ) are becoming unaffordable , much of the middle class is spreading out a bit further and simply increasing their commute times, as a compromise. A 60-90 min. each way commute in the Bay Area now is the norm. But if it means being able to buy a nice house for $ 750 k , as opposed to a shack for $ 3 Mil , I think most people would chose to spend that discretionary $ 5000 a month left over from the mortgage difference for a good stereo system in their car, and just enjoy the ride :-) :-)

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[MCL968]

You might take a look at the greater Reno area. Lots of tech expansion here, some even from the Bay Area. Tesla is coming, Amazon is expanding, lots of growth and opportunity. Pockets of quality schools, an R-1 top tier university, and at least three 968's. Otherwise, check out the east county of San Diego. Alpine and Pine Valley are beautiful, affordable, and a reasonable commute into downtown.

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[flash]

it's amazing at what we come to think of as "reasonable commute". growing up, 15 minutes was the "norm". typically you would put 10k miles on a car per year. by the time i was in the workforce, it had become 30 minutes, but 45 minutes was not unheard of. here in socal, a LOT of people commute an hour or more, and the average miles on a car per year is 15k.

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[kzem1]

Maybe not were you live but there are plenty of reports showing those financial statistics. I think I read somewhere a while back where 150,000 households in CA fund most of the state income taxes. Remember Flash that you are rich. Compared to the rest of the country you are very rich just based on the value of your house. I applaud you for that as I am sure you more than earned it. Don't think for a second I am against rich. I have never worked for a poor person. Where I live you can get by pretty well on $50k a year but in CA $100k a year is considered lower middle class and you can't afford to find a decent house because the avg home is on the $500+ range unless you want to live in slum. Heck CA welfare pays close to $50k a year in CA so you would need a job paying $60k est to make it worth actually working. In PA a single mom with 2 kids gets $70k worth of welfare benefits a year. That is why so many Americans don't bother. That is just sad to me. Maybe I am wrong about some of this but I read a lot of stuff and some of it comes direction from the Government web sites that report this information.

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[flash]

me? rich? hardly. my house is very average, and so is the price. this is a very middle class neighborhood. my next door neighbors are school teachers, dance instructors, hospital doctors, contractors, yada yada. nothing spectacular. it's a lot like where i grew up. this is very much the norm. sure, there are areas where things aren't so great, but there are just as many areas that i can't afford too. this is just the middle.



california has the 8th largest economy in the world. that may be why it seems out of whack compared to the rest of the country. we could easily secede from the country and be fine on our own. but, then the rest of the country would go bankrupt. it's further proof though that we are doing it right, and the rest of the country is doing it wrong, no matter what fox news wants you to believe.

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[kzem1]

$1m house is not middle class. Not in a just about every state in the country. Like I said. I applaud you for working hard, being successful, and earning it. I think living in CA may be altering your view of what rich really is. As me not living there shapes my views. I have lived in many different states and countries. A million dollar home, outside of CA, is a very wealthy person. I think we have had the discussion on the fiscal situation in CA a few times so I won't bother rehashing that. I would be all for CA leaving the country. The second those federal welfare dollars stopped coming there would be riots and CA would be bankrupt in a decade. No more fed money to prop of the green energy companies in CA etc. Unless of course you started tapping the many resources CA refuses to take advantage of. . Although CA represents 12% of the population is represents 34% of the welfare paid in America. You are 3rd with NY being #1 on welfare spending per capita. CA is becoming a welfare state where the very few pay for the many. Of course that is the basis for Socialism so you are probably fine with it.

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