patrick.net

Sacramento seems ok-it is livable-unlike Fresno and Bakersfield. At least when I live din the bay area.

At this point they should just make everybody paying rent in SF to wear a helmet and ride the short bus because you have to be dumb as a fucking brick to spend your money like that.

epitaph says

At this point they should just make everybody paying rent in SF to wear a helmet and ride the short bus because you have to be dumb as a fucking brick to spend your money like that.

I've never understood the lure of high COLA areas. I get there are a lot of well paying tech jobs, but if you have pay exorbitant prices or rents, you may end off worse then if you lived in another region. I get the weather and tons of outdoor activities not too far outside the Bay Area, but not sure it would be worth it, for me at least.

IL has it's issues, but they've been hunting the tech sector pretty hard. You can get brand new (or relatively new) $600-$700k (3,200 Sq. Ft.) houses all day in Chicago and likely be within 10% of your pay in the Bay Area (just a guess). And you of course have the option of living even cheaper and still in a good neighborhood. Income taxes will be cheaper (for while) so that's another factor. Property taxes suck, but Chicago proper if you still want that urban vibe is still not as high as the surrounding suburbs.

Then you start looking at places like Atlanta, Phoenix, Indianapolis, etc and the costs can be even cheaper. My guess is since some of these place are not known for tech jobs, the businesses that do need these services might have to pay a premium to attract talent. Where in the Bay Area you may just be considered average or even below average. It's okay to be a big fish in a small pond. This of course is just a opinion on my end, might be a different reality for those that actually do make the move out of the BA.

epitaph says

At this point they should just make everybody paying rent in SF to wear a helmet and ride the short bus because you have to be dumb as a fucking brick to spend your money like that.

lol

Looks like a lot of people overpaying. I'm getting 1,000 sqft for $1,595 in San Diego

epitaph says

At this point they should just make everybody paying rent in SF to wear a helmet and ride the short bus because you have to be dumb as a fucking brick to spend your money like that.

If you need to be in SF, then it does actually make sense to rent, just because it's usually cheaper in the long run.

Rents are very high, but prices are even higher. Look at it this way: there are no landlords buying property to rent out in SF, because they cannot collect enough rent to pay the mortgage at prices that high.

You can easily confirm this for yourself with the NY Times rent vs buy calculator:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html