> Uber is located in 1455 Market St., which also is home to Square. Asking prices for one bedroom apartments nearby are currently at $3,421. That is actually below the citywide San Francisco 1-BR median, which currently hovers close to $3,500. Interestingly enough, it’s also less than what potential employees of Uber can expect to pay to live nearby the company’s new Stanford research outpost ($3,595/Month). Apartment finding in the Palo Alto area is pretty brutal as well!
The advice I would give to me 2 years ago: do not attempt to live in Palo Alto; same horrid cost of living as SF with the cultural/social opportunities of a Midwest suburb. Except with worse street traffic.
For some added context, the apartment complex being described (next to Uber/Square/Twitter) is likely the NEMA (http://www.rentnema.com), which has received a bit of infamy not because of the prices, but the explicit targeting of techies.
1455 Market is basically next door to the Civic Center/Tenderloin area. I'm guessing this would explain below-average rent, but employees certainly aren't living there.
You can't reasonably claim that an engineer paying 50% of their income after tax for rent is similar to someone making minimum wage and paying 50% of their income to rent.
It's not the same, but fiscally they're not really in that much of a better place. Too much going to rent, and not enough towards other living expenses, savings, and entertainment.
In either case, when the job is lost, they are both going to run out of money at about the same time.
Our local HRDC will flat out decline any form of housing assistance to anyone attempting to rent an apartment for over 30% their income.
While this threat is specific to the renting market, I digress to the general housing market,as renting has steadily turned into a very expensive option for most households in the bay.
We were in the market to buy a small home in the bay and were totally out priced from the market despite being a 2 income high tech couple. While most people talk about the hip SF and downtown areas, desirable homes in even more middle of the road places like Fremont and South Bay(Milpitas, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara) are over inflated. In one instance our offer was declined in East Palo Alto / East MPark area even after being over 22% of list price.
While I am not for protectionist ideas, It might be worth considering a cap on the number of foreign 'investors' in residential real estate -unless- they actually live in the home or area. I have seen that a huge section of the current price inflation is driven by overseas investors putting together a safe home for future generations without actually living in the place. This ensures that sufficient stock is available in the real east market.
Also all overseas cash home sales in the bay area above $'X' should be subject to an IRS audit to prevent overseas ill-gotten gains, corruption money or worse drug money being re-invested in US real estate.
Pittsburg, CA seems to be a 57 minute train ride to Uber HQ and has houses rent for $1800. That kind of commute isn't shocking for any global city. You could save a lot of money living there and nabbing one of these big salaries, and ideally you'd only come into the office 3x a week.
I'm not from the Bay but seems you could hack together a much better situation if your office is in SF vs Valley, due to BART and more land east of the Bay.
Your forgetting last mile times in that calculation. If you lived in pittsburgh it's unlikely you'll be living by the BART station, which means an extra 10-20m on your commute.
I agree you can hack together a better take-home pay situation, but Pittsburg, CA isn't exactly a quiet, pleasant suburb... it's more like shooting-and-stabs-ville. There are, of course, safer suburbs - with commensurately higher prices.
You can generally assume that if a property near San Francisco is affordable, there's something wrong with it: usually something like 'not actually being near San Francisco' or 'crime'.
That is true but also does not account for BART delays. A friend commutes that way and it is usually more of a 1.5 hour commute.
Having grown up around that area, and now living in Redwood City, that $1800/month house is surrounded by bad neighborhoods and a broken school district.
Concord and Martinez would be a much better and slightly closer option. I found 3bed 2bath rental Concord for $2300 last year for example.
Did someone really just reference /r/personalfinance as though it is fact?
I've always heard 30% of gross income. but whatever, it loses meaning when you can spend 50% on rent and still walk away with thousands of dollars a month.
> one of Google’s software engineers is living in a van!
by choice.
> Last year we noted that technology workers looking for savings may want to consider heading south to Silicon Beach
Oh but who would I work for down south? Oh your company.
Gee, I wonder why they wrote this.
> the $995 rental price nearby its office means SpaceX employees have the largest percentage of take home income in their pockets after paying rent each month
True, but the difference after tax and everything else is a few hundred dollars a month.
Wait, a tech company in a residential area (RadPad, Venice Beach) has relatively cheaper housing within a 0.5 mile radius than tech companies in an urban area? Stop the presses!
(granted, it's impressive that this holds true even so close to the beach)
Can people who live/work in San Francisco chime in on how you deal with these prices? Do you live farther away and commute, if so where do you live? Given the high concentration of tech companies in SF (and California in general) I feel sometimes the itch to move over there but with a baby on the way these prices give me a serious pause every time I consider it. I'd be interested in hearing about developers and people in general that have families who live and work in the area.
Spending 50% of your income on rent is only a big deal if the other 50% isn't significant. Someone who makes 20k a month but spends 10k on rent still has 10k a month for other expenses.
That said, I am a developer and live with my family about 45min public transit-only commute away. I've done the driving thing, I love reading too much to give that time away. My kids and my wife much prefer not living in the city and I get a 3+br for less than the 1br listed here.
It depends on what you value. For instance, I used to have a 1200 sq. ft. 2 bed, 2 bath apartment for $1200 in Pennsylvania. I moved to SF and I have less than 1000 sq. ft. and I pay twice as much in rent.
But, my wife and I enjoy going to concerts. In PA, this meant we had to drive an 1.5 hours to Philly, pay gas, tolls, deal with Philly traffic, pay for parking, then drive 1.5 hours back, and try to stay awake for the ride home. Also meant I couldn't really drink at concerts.
By contrast, I went to a concert at the Fillmore yesterday. 5 minute Uber to get there, dropped off and picked up in front of the venue. Home by 11. Yeah, we're paying $2500 in rent, but we are paying for intangibles like not having to drive home through sketchy areas of Philly in the middle of the night.
At the end of the day we just ask ourselves "are we happier here?". If the answer is "yes" then the rent is what it is, and we just live with it.
I work in south bay but my wife studies in SF. We live in an east bay city roughly half way between SF and San Jose. Quiet neighbourhood, close to BART, pretty quiet and the rent, while horrible still, is much more reasonable (we pay $1600/month for a ~650sqft 1br).
The downside is that you'll deal with a ~1hr commute to SF depending on how far you are from BART and if you're a young single engineer who loves to party, there's not much to do.
I have rent control, so no worries except these golden handcuffs.
People I know who have young families bought their houses a long time ago or have so much money from when their startups IPOd or got acquired that the high housing cost is still small compared to their investment returns.
I'm paying about the same as the prices in the article but I rent an entire house in outer sunset. 3br/2ba with garage and backyard. I'm ~35 minutes from downtown SF on the N Judah line. It takes me 2 minutes to walk to the train stop.
The roommate stoodout. Know very few people that has a place by themselves. Also, doesn't look like they counted stock. Understandable for startups, but they included Google in that, 170k should just be cash comp.
I don't see why this was downvoted, as it is factually correct and is often a large blocker when it comes to people living near tech/financial hubs around the world. Hence having to commute for large lengths of time merely to sit in a chair at some office for hours on end.
[+] [-] danso|9 years ago|reply
The advice I would give to me 2 years ago: do not attempt to live in Palo Alto; same horrid cost of living as SF with the cultural/social opportunities of a Midwest suburb. Except with worse street traffic.
Edit: And fewer dive bars.
[+] [-] minimaxir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rconti|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superuser2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foota|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|9 years ago|reply
In either case, when the job is lost, they are both going to run out of money at about the same time.
Our local HRDC will flat out decline any form of housing assistance to anyone attempting to rent an apartment for over 30% their income.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|9 years ago|reply
They're surely better-off than a minimum wage earner, but I'm not sure that's a particularly important or useful point.
[+] [-] KeepTalking|9 years ago|reply
We were in the market to buy a small home in the bay and were totally out priced from the market despite being a 2 income high tech couple. While most people talk about the hip SF and downtown areas, desirable homes in even more middle of the road places like Fremont and South Bay(Milpitas, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara) are over inflated. In one instance our offer was declined in East Palo Alto / East MPark area even after being over 22% of list price.
While I am not for protectionist ideas, It might be worth considering a cap on the number of foreign 'investors' in residential real estate -unless- they actually live in the home or area. I have seen that a huge section of the current price inflation is driven by overseas investors putting together a safe home for future generations without actually living in the place. This ensures that sufficient stock is available in the real east market.
Also all overseas cash home sales in the bay area above $'X' should be subject to an IRS audit to prevent overseas ill-gotten gains, corruption money or worse drug money being re-invested in US real estate.
[+] [-] cylinder|9 years ago|reply
I'm not from the Bay but seems you could hack together a much better situation if your office is in SF vs Valley, due to BART and more land east of the Bay.
[+] [-] mahyarm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|9 years ago|reply
You can generally assume that if a property near San Francisco is affordable, there's something wrong with it: usually something like 'not actually being near San Francisco' or 'crime'.
[+] [-] photigragraphy|9 years ago|reply
Having grown up around that area, and now living in Redwood City, that $1800/month house is surrounded by bad neighborhoods and a broken school district.
Concord and Martinez would be a much better and slightly closer option. I found 3bed 2bath rental Concord for $2300 last year for example.
[+] [-] iav|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevesearer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serge2k|9 years ago|reply
Difference is the other half is still more than most people make.
> https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/2e1q1s/30_...
Did someone really just reference /r/personalfinance as though it is fact?
I've always heard 30% of gross income. but whatever, it loses meaning when you can spend 50% on rent and still walk away with thousands of dollars a month.
> one of Google’s software engineers is living in a van!
by choice.
> Last year we noted that technology workers looking for savings may want to consider heading south to Silicon Beach
Oh but who would I work for down south? Oh your company.
Gee, I wonder why they wrote this.
> the $995 rental price nearby its office means SpaceX employees have the largest percentage of take home income in their pockets after paying rent each month
True, but the difference after tax and everything else is a few hundred dollars a month.
[+] [-] temuze|9 years ago|reply
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OuAnC8s...
[+] [-] rconti|9 years ago|reply
(granted, it's impressive that this holds true even so close to the beach)
[+] [-] danhak|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elteto|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrpoptart|9 years ago|reply
That said, I am a developer and live with my family about 45min public transit-only commute away. I've done the driving thing, I love reading too much to give that time away. My kids and my wife much prefer not living in the city and I get a 3+br for less than the 1br listed here.
[+] [-] ModernMech|9 years ago|reply
But, my wife and I enjoy going to concerts. In PA, this meant we had to drive an 1.5 hours to Philly, pay gas, tolls, deal with Philly traffic, pay for parking, then drive 1.5 hours back, and try to stay awake for the ride home. Also meant I couldn't really drink at concerts.
By contrast, I went to a concert at the Fillmore yesterday. 5 minute Uber to get there, dropped off and picked up in front of the venue. Home by 11. Yeah, we're paying $2500 in rent, but we are paying for intangibles like not having to drive home through sketchy areas of Philly in the middle of the night.
At the end of the day we just ask ourselves "are we happier here?". If the answer is "yes" then the rent is what it is, and we just live with it.
[+] [-] Veratyr|9 years ago|reply
The downside is that you'll deal with a ~1hr commute to SF depending on how far you are from BART and if you're a young single engineer who loves to party, there's not much to do.
[+] [-] arebop|9 years ago|reply
People I know who have young families bought their houses a long time ago or have so much money from when their startups IPOd or got acquired that the high housing cost is still small compared to their investment returns.
[+] [-] xenadu02|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahyarm|9 years ago|reply
1. Live with roommates.
2. Commute from somewhere cheaper
3. Have rent controlled apartments. Rent controlled apartments from even 2 or 3 years ago are significantly cheaper.
4. Are dual high income couples
5. Own a place already.
[+] [-] withdavidli|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispytx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] markstos|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] _ao789|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ao789|9 years ago|reply