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LordFast | 5 years ago
I'm not a housing expert, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Middle income cities grow faster because there was more growth in middle income demographics. The most common demographic with a lot of growth is the "senior software engineer" at tech company X. As tech companies exploded, this was the segment that grew the most.
As a result, this is the segment that is most competitive when it comes to housing, because that's where all the people are. This "middle class" income bracket for housing in the Bay Area translates roughly to the $1.25m to $2.5m range for single family home purchases depending on whether you have 1 or two tech incomes in the household.
There's no getting around it: wherever most of the people are will be the most competitive for housing, and when it comes to essentials like food and shelter, people /will/ compete. Want less competition? Buy a house in Vallejo for under $1m, or go above $3m, and there will be fewer people in those brackets who can compete with you.
Either increase the supply or decrease the demand, there's no way around the physical reality of housing.
P.S. It never fails to make me pause and think when people accept $200k jobs without asking, or trying to find out: "What's the distribution graph of incomes within a 30-min commute distance of the job, and where do I land on that bell curve?"
jseliger|5 years ago
That's not true at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16704501
We know how to build as much housing as people want to live in. We make building said housing illegal.
barry-cotter|5 years ago
This isn’t middle income. Entry level FAANG is already high income, never mind senior software engineer.