TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.
TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.
This is one of the problems caused by zoning laws in the United States, rather than move to a more productive city full of opportunities, you were forced to move to a less productive city because DC has artificially caused housing to be expensive.
People are moving for affordability rather than economic opportunities.
I also have a (likely unpopular) opinion that this is not something that you should do. I read the CNN money articles, and I did one of these moves. What I found is that while the price of living may be less (a difference that is increasingly becoming marginal as more move to “cheap” areas), lost earnings can sometimes eat up more than the difference in the cost of living.
In simpler words, yes, it’s the case that you can live a bit better in a “cheap area” on the same dollar amount, however, high COL regions often also offer higher salaries. So you might be able to get a steak for the price of a burger in a big city, but in some cases you’re going to miss out on 30-50k of salary per year…so…maybe not the best move.
I also share this view, but unfortunately a lot of people are still moving bc of “affordability”
The DC mess is entirely on the mayor and city council allowing developers to run rampant and price the average homebuyer (who have fucking high five to mid six figure salaries) out of the market. It’s unreal and while people try to claim the recent crime wave is bad parenting, the fact that no one can afford a house is a major part of it. Doesn’t help that property taxes can jump by 17-40% per year whenever some developer sells a house in your neighborhood for 2.5x what they bought it.
This is where I like owning property in California. Prop 13 goes a little too far, but it prevents you from being yuppyed out of your house and having your taxes jacked up because a hipster decided to start flipping houses in your neighborhood.
For those that don’t know, this is what prop 13 does (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13):
EDIT: Until the last sentence I’m pretty with them. Why push grandma out of her house? But it shouldn’t necessarily apply to commercial real estate and corporate owned crap.
Ironically Prop 13 is one of the reasons California housing market is such a mess right now.
Ironically DC needs more developers. It’s one of the most economically productive areas of our country. The opportunities to improve your life are endless there. People shouldn’t be blocked from pursuing a better life because someone person doesn’t want to live next to a duplex on someone else’s property
Okay but the developers exclusively flip affordable properties into luxury properties. Middle income housing is rapidly disappearing, the average 3 br costs like $800k to $1MM. The big new thing is buying a single family rowhome that would fit a family of 4-6 (or more) and turning it into a 2-unit condo with an HOA where each unit is only a 2 br and charging double or more what they bought the house for (buy the house for $850k, now trying to sell each unit at $890k). It’s absurd, unsustainable, displaces the local population, and ironically decreases the number of people that could have lived on the property.
LOL, no. The mess – in DC and every other major American city – is entirely on the zoning code not allowing developers to run rampant enough, and instead enshrining single-family houses even when demand warrants multifamily.
DC is rapidly converting affordable homes into multifamily luxury units. Developers running rampant jacked up costs citywide.
Also, the city is less than 10 square miles and built on a swamp. Just based on infrastructure it can only handle so many people before it runs into serious issues.