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How much do you/should you spend on food (US)?
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I'm worried I'm boring everyone other than you and me, Aaron, but I actually figured out a better way to express what I think we are (maybe) disagreeing about.
If you say that in Seattle a family is effectively priced out if they can't afford more than $500K (perhaps well more than), I'd totally agree. That's my perception and what the search engines seem to reflect, and I trust you as a resident who has looked for properties there, too. And that is totally not true at all in Chicago, there's a huge range of housing at different price points (more if you include the 'burbs).
BUT, if you look at average prices and say that you have a nice 3 bed, 2 bath house of 1700 or 1800 sq ft a 45 min commute from the main working area/downtown, and that in Chicago an analogous house would cost $300K, that's where I disagree. An actually analogous house if you take into account distance/commuting time from work, from neighborhoods with what normally attracts city residents, that is equally safe, perhaps has similar school options, stuff like that, will really be much more. You can find a $300K house (in fact, you can find a $4900 house, but it's in Englewood and comes with a hefty unpaid water bill), but for various reasons it won't be analogous and you most likely would not see it as an option at all if you lived in Chicago. Not questioning that the Chicago house would still be less, even if the houses used were comparable, but just how much less. It's also true that someone in Chicago will have a much broader range of choices and tradeoffs.
That does not take away from the key point, which is that the middle class is largely priced out of Seattle and can find housing easily in Chicago, but having looked for a house not that long ago and knowing what you have to spend to get certain things I expect you have with place, I just think it's inaccurate to say that you have to pay X, but in Chicago could easily have the same thing for, I dunno, $350K, because that's not the market, not taking into account the things home buyers do take into account.
If I get what you are saying, but I think you are underestimating the cost of even the suburbs in the Seattle area.
I'm really not, that was my point. I thought Aaron was underestimating what a comparable place would go for in Chicago. But that aside, I totally agree that Seattle is more expensive, of course it is, for the reasons that have been given.
But Aaron is right, we are off topic and probably only people in Seattle and Chicago care (although I am endlessly fascinated with housing talk so will have to discipline myself not to continue). ;-)
Don't mind me - not enough coffee this morning and reading comprehension failed.
But it is a fascinating topic.
It almost feels like a new normal but when I talk to an older generation like my parents and hear what their experience with housing was it is just so disproportionate. My parents lived in San Francisco and San Diego. My dad worked full time at a middle-management type job selling books after dropping out of college and my mom was part-time at a low paying job. I think combined they made something like 50k a year. But at the time a house cost 50k in that area. So a house was basically one year salary for a family where there was one major breadwinner who had sort of a middle of the road job and that was in So Cal. My wife and I are both professionals with Ph.D's and full time jobs and even a small house on the outskirts of the city is probably in excess of 5 times our annual combined salaries.
So is that the new normal or are we in one big bubble right now?
Yes and Yes.
We are in a state where speculation has exceeded growth. We will be in a continuous series of bubbles until we begin colonizing planets.
This is where I like to rewatch "It's a Wonderful Life". So much wisdom in this film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPkJH6BT7dM
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Aaron_K123 wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I'm worried I'm boring everyone other than you and me, Aaron, but I actually figured out a better way to express what I think we are (maybe) disagreeing about.
If you say that in Seattle a family is effectively priced out if they can't afford more than $500K (perhaps well more than), I'd totally agree. That's my perception and what the search engines seem to reflect, and I trust you as a resident who has looked for properties there, too. And that is totally not true at all in Chicago, there's a huge range of housing at different price points (more if you include the 'burbs).
BUT, if you look at average prices and say that you have a nice 3 bed, 2 bath house of 1700 or 1800 sq ft a 45 min commute from the main working area/downtown, and that in Chicago an analogous house would cost $300K, that's where I disagree. An actually analogous house if you take into account distance/commuting time from work, from neighborhoods with what normally attracts city residents, that is equally safe, perhaps has similar school options, stuff like that, will really be much more. You can find a $300K house (in fact, you can find a $4900 house, but it's in Englewood and comes with a hefty unpaid water bill), but for various reasons it won't be analogous and you most likely would not see it as an option at all if you lived in Chicago. Not questioning that the Chicago house would still be less, even if the houses used were comparable, but just how much less. It's also true that someone in Chicago will have a much broader range of choices and tradeoffs.
That does not take away from the key point, which is that the middle class is largely priced out of Seattle and can find housing easily in Chicago, but having looked for a house not that long ago and knowing what you have to spend to get certain things I expect you have with place, I just think it's inaccurate to say that you have to pay X, but in Chicago could easily have the same thing for, I dunno, $350K, because that's not the market, not taking into account the things home buyers do take into account.
If I get what you are saying, but I think you are underestimating the cost of even the suburbs in the Seattle area.
I'm really not, that was my point. I thought Aaron was underestimating what a comparable place would go for in Chicago. But that aside, I totally agree that Seattle is more expensive, of course it is, for the reasons that have been given.
But Aaron is right, we are off topic and probably only people in Seattle and Chicago care (although I am endlessly fascinated with housing talk so will have to discipline myself not to continue). ;-)
Don't mind me - not enough coffee this morning and reading comprehension failed.
But it is a fascinating topic.
It almost feels like a new normal but when I talk to an older generation like my parents and hear what their experience with housing was it is just so disproportionate. My parents lived in San Francisco and San Diego. My dad worked full time at a middle-management type job selling books after dropping out of college and my mom was part-time at a low paying job. I think combined they made something like 50k a year. But at the time a house cost 50k in that area. So a house was basically one year salary for a family where there was one major breadwinner who had sort of a middle of the road job and that was in So Cal. My wife and I are both professionals with Ph.D's and full time jobs and even a small house on the outskirts of the city is probably in excess of 5 times our annual combined salaries.
So is that the new normal or are we in one big bubble right now?
I read a prescient article just before the last crash that posited that .75 - 2.5x household income are sustainable levels and when you get outside of that, correction is inevitable. The problem is that corrections take time, especially with a relatively stable workforce.
Some percentage of homeowners in Seattle, DC, Chicago, etc are still living in that .75 - 2.5x range, as they've homesteaded before the market went crazy. So they're either going to survive the bust(if they are prudent) or cash out and leave before the bottom drops out. In the meantime, you have what happened in 2003-2008, new blood/money comes in and keeps pushing the market up, not understanding that there's a very real and provable cap on costs. On the west coast and in Hawaii, it's worse because you have/had investors from Japan bolstering the market due to a misunderstanding of what real estate is actually worth, most of them learned from the last 2-3 cycles that Tokyo pricing doesn't apply in the US.
TL;DR: It's a bubble the question is how long.
Yeah I tend to agree. I really don't feel like trying to uproot and find new jobs in an entirely different city though, even if that were possible. Luckily we bought at a time where it wasn't too insane (maybe 3x our salary at the time) and we got a very good rate on our mortgage so we are doing okay....its just a lot for what we got.
One useful and meaningful clue is comparing rent and mortgage prices, they should be within 100% of each other. either way.
so 1000 rent 2000 mortgage or 1000 rent 500 mortgage. is a safe range. anything beyond that is a bubble clue.
Well rents are pretty high in Seattle as well so actually by that metric it might not be a bubble. Or rent is in a bubble somehow.
I don't think it's a bubble in Seattle, because of the rents and because it's related to genuine shortage of properties.
My question is whether that's rectifiable -- can zoning changes or the like increase supply significantly?0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »We live downstate IL mid-size community....same house in S. Cali or Seattle would be 4-5X as much.
Yeah not even an exaggeration....pretty spot on. Median price per square foot for houses:
Seattle: $506
Los Angeles: $635
Illinois: $141
Illinois x 4 = Seattle
Illinois x 5 = So Cal.
Your house would probably be ~1.2 million in Seattle. Food prices probably a little higher in Seattle as well but not nearly to that degree.
Acutely aware after family moved from St. Louis to Mission Viejo in the mid 1970s and living as a single sailor in San Diego in 1996. Food, gas, basics in general were about double the price largely due to taxes associated with the product. Economics in motion - supply and demand.
I don't want to divert too much from the thread's topic, but housing (in Seattle at least) is NOT economics in motion. It's investors having their fun. The demand for low-income housing is through the roof. Nine percent of children attending public schools do not have a roof over their heads at night. An overwhelming number of adults living without shelter are employed full time. But there are plenty of housing options for the top 20% and plenty of vacant properties too (although a lot of that is zoned for business). I'm sure we'll be like Vancouver, BC soon, with vacant overpriced properties everywhere you look.
High demand, low supply. How is this not economics? Seattle's primary issue is dealing with reality.
You can either rail against a system which you have no control over, or you can change that which you have control over. Get a group of investors together and purchase property offering low-income housing.
Eh I think you can understand that when a city (which obviously has to employ a labor force and base-level professional workers) has housing costs that vastly exceed the income of those people it creates a very awkward situation where you need people to work in the city but they can't afford to live in the city. You can't really get a house within the Seattle city limits for less than 500k now and if you get one that is 500k you are talking like a 900 sqft townhome on the outskirts.
This is precisely my point. We can sit and discuss it, but market forces being what they are those with wealth can either decide to provide necessities to maintain status quo or suffer. Until workers utilize their power there will be no change. Seattle like so many other cities needs to quickly come to terms with reality. Chicago is in the same situation, only the disparity is not as obvious. Government blames industry. Industry blames government. Both have the power to implement a solution.
No offense but I think that Vancouver and Seattle are in rather unique situations that you aren't fully grasping. The real estate economy is so "booming" or "bubbling" that it has attracted a lot of foreign investment of people buying up property not to occupy it or even to use it really but like they are valuable trading cards or something. So the market is being driven by people who aren't actually affected by the living conditions of the city itself. Sure, free market capitalism balances the whole system, but if you look locally to the actual people who live in the actual city they are getting kind of screwed by investor wars driving up prices and making housing overpriced and non-functional for the general population. When a run down 900 sq ft townhouse costs more than a typically 2 person household can afford that is sort of a problem and if the market "equalizes" by crashing that isn't good either.
My wife and I both work and are both professionals both earning more than the national average and we managed to buy a 1600 sqft home in the outskirts of Seattle 3 years ago. If we were trying today I don't think we could afford a house in Seattle at all. I don't think anything like that is happening in Chicago. Looks to me from Zillow like in Chcago can buy a 3 bed 3 bath 2000 sqft house like literally in the downtown area for under 500k. In Seattle that would be something like 2 million and you cannot buy something that size within the city limits at all for 500k.
It depends on the neighborhood in Chicago, and how much of a fixer-upper it is. Downtown doesn't really have houses, so I'm curious what that listing is. I would not expect to see a house near downtown for less than $500K (or near $500K), in many closer in neighborhoods a teardown would be more. (My guess is you may be talking Humboldt Park or maybe certain parts of the South Side.)
That said, the Chicago market is WAY better for buyers than Seattle and some other places, although it's still quite expensive in others. (Here's a map of price per sq ft by neighborhood, although there's quite a variety depending on different factors: https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Illinois/Chicago-heat_map/)
I was just talking to a friend who is a real estate developer in another city about why Chicago is so comparatively cheap, and I really think a lot of it is the layout of the city. If you get priced out of the longstanding more convenient/better neighborhoods, you can move west (or northwest) within the city and find affordable housing. Now, you might be living in a place that's basically a suburb, but it's within city limits and affordable.
You see that with some of the neighborhoods now being gentrified and ones that have gentrified more recently, although there's sufficient supply now (and supply is in relative terms for here at a shortage) that there's not pressure on many other neighborhoods and there are dirt cheap neighborhoods with a lovely housing stock and pretty convenient to downtown that are currently impossible because of crime (for example, East Garfield Park).
People with good jobs are leaving IL. so higher end housing prices stay down compared to "hot" areas of the country.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »stanmann571 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »I'm worried I'm boring everyone other than you and me, Aaron, but I actually figured out a better way to express what I think we are (maybe) disagreeing about.
If you say that in Seattle a family is effectively priced out if they can't afford more than $500K (perhaps well more than), I'd totally agree. That's my perception and what the search engines seem to reflect, and I trust you as a resident who has looked for properties there, too. And that is totally not true at all in Chicago, there's a huge range of housing at different price points (more if you include the 'burbs).
BUT, if you look at average prices and say that you have a nice 3 bed, 2 bath house of 1700 or 1800 sq ft a 45 min commute from the main working area/downtown, and that in Chicago an analogous house would cost $300K, that's where I disagree. An actually analogous house if you take into account distance/commuting time from work, from neighborhoods with what normally attracts city residents, that is equally safe, perhaps has similar school options, stuff like that, will really be much more. You can find a $300K house (in fact, you can find a $4900 house, but it's in Englewood and comes with a hefty unpaid water bill), but for various reasons it won't be analogous and you most likely would not see it as an option at all if you lived in Chicago. Not questioning that the Chicago house would still be less, even if the houses used were comparable, but just how much less. It's also true that someone in Chicago will have a much broader range of choices and tradeoffs.
That does not take away from the key point, which is that the middle class is largely priced out of Seattle and can find housing easily in Chicago, but having looked for a house not that long ago and knowing what you have to spend to get certain things I expect you have with place, I just think it's inaccurate to say that you have to pay X, but in Chicago could easily have the same thing for, I dunno, $350K, because that's not the market, not taking into account the things home buyers do take into account.
If I get what you are saying, but I think you are underestimating the cost of even the suburbs in the Seattle area.
I'm really not, that was my point. I thought Aaron was underestimating what a comparable place would go for in Chicago. But that aside, I totally agree that Seattle is more expensive, of course it is, for the reasons that have been given.
But Aaron is right, we are off topic and probably only people in Seattle and Chicago care (although I am endlessly fascinated with housing talk so will have to discipline myself not to continue). ;-)
Don't mind me - not enough coffee this morning and reading comprehension failed.
But it is a fascinating topic.
It almost feels like a new normal but when I talk to an older generation like my parents and hear what their experience with housing was it is just so disproportionate. My parents lived in San Francisco and San Diego. My dad worked full time at a middle-management type job selling books after dropping out of college and my mom was part-time at a low paying job. I think combined they made something like 50k a year. But at the time a house cost 50k in that area. So a house was basically one year salary for a family where there was one major breadwinner who had sort of a middle of the road job and that was in So Cal. My wife and I are both professionals with Ph.D's and full time jobs and even a small house on the outskirts of the city is probably in excess of 5 times our annual combined salaries.
So is that the new normal or are we in one big bubble right now?
I read a prescient article just before the last crash that posited that .75 - 2.5x household income are sustainable levels and when you get outside of that, correction is inevitable. The problem is that corrections take time, especially with a relatively stable workforce.
Some percentage of homeowners in Seattle, DC, Chicago, etc are still living in that .75 - 2.5x range, as they've homesteaded before the market went crazy. So they're either going to survive the bust(if they are prudent) or cash out and leave before the bottom drops out. In the meantime, you have what happened in 2003-2008, new blood/money comes in and keeps pushing the market up, not understanding that there's a very real and provable cap on costs. On the west coast and in Hawaii, it's worse because you have/had investors from Japan bolstering the market due to a misunderstanding of what real estate is actually worth, most of them learned from the last 2-3 cycles that Tokyo pricing doesn't apply in the US.
TL;DR: It's a bubble the question is how long.
Yeah I tend to agree. I really don't feel like trying to uproot and find new jobs in an entirely different city though, even if that were possible. Luckily we bought at a time where it wasn't too insane (maybe 3x our salary at the time) and we got a very good rate on our mortgage so we are doing okay....its just a lot for what we got.
One useful and meaningful clue is comparing rent and mortgage prices, they should be within 100% of each other. either way.
so 1000 rent 2000 mortgage or 1000 rent 500 mortgage. is a safe range. anything beyond that is a bubble clue.
Well rents are pretty high in Seattle as well so actually by that metric it might not be a bubble. Or rent is in a bubble somehow.
I don't think it's a bubble in Seattle, because of the rents and because it's related to genuine shortage of properties.
My question is whether that's rectifiable -- can zoning changes or the like increase supply significantly?
As with any neighborhood I think there is resistance to tearing down old houses with character and building condo blocks but that is happening for sure. Onwards and upwards.1 -
Single lady here. I spend maybe $10 - $15 a week on groceries and eat out about once a week at about $25. I pack my breakfast and lunch everyday. I buy things like bulk oatmeal, potatoes, dried beans, cheap veggies, bananas, chicken or pork, anything on clearance, occasionally wine or beer.
I certainly have splurge meals if I have friends over or am making a dish for a pot luck, but I still shop very frugally.
I consider myself exceptionally frugal regarding food and waste...eveything gets used and nothing is discarded.4 -
funjen1972 wrote: »I consider myself exceptionally frugal regarding food and waste...eveything gets used and nothing is discarded.
Yeah I'll say, you spend on your entire week of groceries for all but one of your meals what I spend on lunch.
This thread has inspired me to start to be a little more budget conscience in small steps. Started bringing oatmeal to work for breakfast and drinking the free work coffee instead of hitting up Starbucks for a sandwich and espresso drink. That alone should save me about $30-$40 a week.
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Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »We live downstate IL mid-size community....same house in S. Cali or Seattle would be 4-5X as much.
Yeah not even an exaggeration....pretty spot on. Median price per square foot for houses:
Seattle: $506
Los Angeles: $635
Illinois: $141
Illinois x 4 = Seattle
Illinois x 5 = So Cal.
Your house would probably be ~1.2 million in Seattle. Food prices probably a little higher in Seattle as well but not nearly to that degree.
Acutely aware after family moved from St. Louis to Mission Viejo in the mid 1970s and living as a single sailor in San Diego in 1996. Food, gas, basics in general were about double the price largely due to taxes associated with the product. Economics in motion - supply and demand.
I don't want to divert too much from the thread's topic, but housing (in Seattle at least) is NOT economics in motion. It's investors having their fun. The demand for low-income housing is through the roof. Nine percent of children attending public schools do not have a roof over their heads at night. An overwhelming number of adults living without shelter are employed full time. But there are plenty of housing options for the top 20% and plenty of vacant properties too (although a lot of that is zoned for business). I'm sure we'll be like Vancouver, BC soon, with vacant overpriced properties everywhere you look.
High demand, low supply. How is this not economics? Seattle's primary issue is dealing with reality.
You can either rail against a system which you have no control over, or you can change that which you have control over. Get a group of investors together and purchase property offering low-income housing.
Eh I think you can understand that when a city (which obviously has to employ a labor force and base-level professional workers) has housing costs that vastly exceed the income of those people it creates a very awkward situation where you need people to work in the city but they can't afford to live in the city. You can't really get a house within the Seattle city limits for less than 500k now and if you get one that is 500k you are talking like a 900 sqft townhome on the outskirts.
This is precisely my point. We can sit and discuss it, but market forces being what they are those with wealth can either decide to provide necessities to maintain status quo or suffer. Until workers utilize their power there will be no change. Seattle like so many other cities needs to quickly come to terms with reality. Chicago is in the same situation, only the disparity is not as obvious. Government blames industry. Industry blames government. Both have the power to implement a solution.
No offense but I think that Vancouver and Seattle are in rather unique situations that you aren't fully grasping. The real estate economy is so "booming" or "bubbling" that it has attracted a lot of foreign investment of people buying up property not to occupy it or even to use it really but like they are valuable trading cards or something. So the market is being driven by people who aren't actually affected by the living conditions of the city itself. Sure, free market capitalism balances the whole system, but if you look locally to the actual people who live in the actual city they are getting kind of screwed by investor wars driving up prices and making housing overpriced and non-functional for the general population. When a run down 900 sq ft townhouse costs more than a typically 2 person household can afford that is sort of a problem and if the market "equalizes" by crashing that isn't good either.
My wife and I both work and are both professionals both earning more than the national average and we managed to buy a 1600 sqft home in the outskirts of Seattle 3 years ago. If we were trying today I don't think we could afford a house in Seattle at all. I don't think anything like that is happening in Chicago. Looks to me from Zillow like in Chcago can buy a 3 bed 3 bath 2000 sqft house like literally in the downtown area for under 500k. In Seattle that would be something like 2 million and you cannot buy something that size within the city limits at all for 500k.
It depends on the neighborhood in Chicago, and how much of a fixer-upper it is. Downtown doesn't really have houses, so I'm curious what that listing is. I would not expect to see a house near downtown for less than $500K (or near $500K), in many closer in neighborhoods a teardown would be more. (My guess is you may be talking Humboldt Park or maybe certain parts of the South Side.)
That said, the Chicago market is WAY better for buyers than Seattle and some other places, although it's still quite expensive in others. (Here's a map of price per sq ft by neighborhood, although there's quite a variety depending on different factors: https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Illinois/Chicago-heat_map/)
I was just talking to a friend who is a real estate developer in another city about why Chicago is so comparatively cheap, and I really think a lot of it is the layout of the city. If you get priced out of the longstanding more convenient/better neighborhoods, you can move west (or northwest) within the city and find affordable housing. Now, you might be living in a place that's basically a suburb, but it's within city limits and affordable.
You see that with some of the neighborhoods now being gentrified and ones that have gentrified more recently, although there's sufficient supply now (and supply is in relative terms for here at a shortage) that there's not pressure on many other neighborhoods and there are dirt cheap neighborhoods with a lovely housing stock and pretty convenient to downtown that are currently impossible because of crime (for example, East Garfield Park).
People with good jobs are leaving IL. so higher end housing prices stay down compared to "hot" areas of the country.
Chicago's location is a key factor in this case - it's proximity to Indiana and Wisconsin. Most of my clients are based in the Chicago area, but I moved to Wisconsin due to the more sensible government. Seattle has a monopoly on this and there is no nearby alternative. With Chicago one can easily move out of the immediate area and commute.2 -
Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »We live downstate IL mid-size community....same house in S. Cali or Seattle would be 4-5X as much.
Yeah not even an exaggeration....pretty spot on. Median price per square foot for houses:
Seattle: $506
Los Angeles: $635
Illinois: $141
Illinois x 4 = Seattle
Illinois x 5 = So Cal.
Your house would probably be ~1.2 million in Seattle. Food prices probably a little higher in Seattle as well but not nearly to that degree.
Acutely aware after family moved from St. Louis to Mission Viejo in the mid 1970s and living as a single sailor in San Diego in 1996. Food, gas, basics in general were about double the price largely due to taxes associated with the product. Economics in motion - supply and demand.
I don't want to divert too much from the thread's topic, but housing (in Seattle at least) is NOT economics in motion. It's investors having their fun. The demand for low-income housing is through the roof. Nine percent of children attending public schools do not have a roof over their heads at night. An overwhelming number of adults living without shelter are employed full time. But there are plenty of housing options for the top 20% and plenty of vacant properties too (although a lot of that is zoned for business). I'm sure we'll be like Vancouver, BC soon, with vacant overpriced properties everywhere you look.
High demand, low supply. How is this not economics? Seattle's primary issue is dealing with reality.
You can either rail against a system which you have no control over, or you can change that which you have control over. Get a group of investors together and purchase property offering low-income housing.
Eh I think you can understand that when a city (which obviously has to employ a labor force and base-level professional workers) has housing costs that vastly exceed the income of those people it creates a very awkward situation where you need people to work in the city but they can't afford to live in the city. You can't really get a house within the Seattle city limits for less than 500k now and if you get one that is 500k you are talking like a 900 sqft townhome on the outskirts.
This is precisely my point. We can sit and discuss it, but market forces being what they are those with wealth can either decide to provide necessities to maintain status quo or suffer. Until workers utilize their power there will be no change. Seattle like so many other cities needs to quickly come to terms with reality. Chicago is in the same situation, only the disparity is not as obvious. Government blames industry. Industry blames government. Both have the power to implement a solution.
No offense but I think that Vancouver and Seattle are in rather unique situations that you aren't fully grasping. The real estate economy is so "booming" or "bubbling" that it has attracted a lot of foreign investment of people buying up property not to occupy it or even to use it really but like they are valuable trading cards or something. So the market is being driven by people who aren't actually affected by the living conditions of the city itself. Sure, free market capitalism balances the whole system, but if you look locally to the actual people who live in the actual city they are getting kind of screwed by investor wars driving up prices and making housing overpriced and non-functional for the general population. When a run down 900 sq ft townhouse costs more than a typically 2 person household can afford that is sort of a problem and if the market "equalizes" by crashing that isn't good either.
My wife and I both work and are both professionals both earning more than the national average and we managed to buy a 1600 sqft home in the outskirts of Seattle 3 years ago. If we were trying today I don't think we could afford a house in Seattle at all. I don't think anything like that is happening in Chicago. Looks to me from Zillow like in Chcago can buy a 3 bed 3 bath 2000 sqft house like literally in the downtown area for under 500k. In Seattle that would be something like 2 million and you cannot buy something that size within the city limits at all for 500k.
It depends on the neighborhood in Chicago, and how much of a fixer-upper it is. Downtown doesn't really have houses, so I'm curious what that listing is. I would not expect to see a house near downtown for less than $500K (or near $500K), in many closer in neighborhoods a teardown would be more. (My guess is you may be talking Humboldt Park or maybe certain parts of the South Side.)
That said, the Chicago market is WAY better for buyers than Seattle and some other places, although it's still quite expensive in others. (Here's a map of price per sq ft by neighborhood, although there's quite a variety depending on different factors: https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Illinois/Chicago-heat_map/)
I was just talking to a friend who is a real estate developer in another city about why Chicago is so comparatively cheap, and I really think a lot of it is the layout of the city. If you get priced out of the longstanding more convenient/better neighborhoods, you can move west (or northwest) within the city and find affordable housing. Now, you might be living in a place that's basically a suburb, but it's within city limits and affordable.
You see that with some of the neighborhoods now being gentrified and ones that have gentrified more recently, although there's sufficient supply now (and supply is in relative terms for here at a shortage) that there's not pressure on many other neighborhoods and there are dirt cheap neighborhoods with a lovely housing stock and pretty convenient to downtown that are currently impossible because of crime (for example, East Garfield Park).
People with good jobs are leaving IL. so higher end housing prices stay down compared to "hot" areas of the country.
Chicago's location is a key factor in this case - it's proximity to Indiana and Wisconsin. Most of my clients are based in the Chicago area, but I moved to Wisconsin due to the more sensible government. Seattle has a monopoly on this and there is no nearby alternative. With Chicago one can easily move out of the immediate area and commute.
Yep and business just moving out due to stupid IL government.1 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »funjen1972 wrote: »I consider myself exceptionally frugal regarding food and waste...eveything gets used and nothing is discarded.
Yeah I'll say, you spend on your entire week of groceries for all but one of your meals what I spend on lunch.
This thread has inspired me to start to be a little more budget conscience in small steps. Started bringing oatmeal to work for breakfast and drinking the free work coffee instead of hitting up Starbucks for a sandwich and espresso drink. That alone should save me about $30-$40 a week.
I was inspired by volunteering at a food pantry. I started cutting back and being less wasteful and it has led to this minimalism. It started with food and has transgressed to all areas of my life. I've come to realize stuff doesn't matter, experiences and people do.6 -
Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »We live downstate IL mid-size community....same house in S. Cali or Seattle would be 4-5X as much.
Yeah not even an exaggeration....pretty spot on. Median price per square foot for houses:
Seattle: $506
Los Angeles: $635
Illinois: $141
Illinois x 4 = Seattle
Illinois x 5 = So Cal.
Your house would probably be ~1.2 million in Seattle. Food prices probably a little higher in Seattle as well but not nearly to that degree.
Acutely aware after family moved from St. Louis to Mission Viejo in the mid 1970s and living as a single sailor in San Diego in 1996. Food, gas, basics in general were about double the price largely due to taxes associated with the product. Economics in motion - supply and demand.
I don't want to divert too much from the thread's topic, but housing (in Seattle at least) is NOT economics in motion. It's investors having their fun. The demand for low-income housing is through the roof. Nine percent of children attending public schools do not have a roof over their heads at night. An overwhelming number of adults living without shelter are employed full time. But there are plenty of housing options for the top 20% and plenty of vacant properties too (although a lot of that is zoned for business). I'm sure we'll be like Vancouver, BC soon, with vacant overpriced properties everywhere you look.
High demand, low supply. How is this not economics? Seattle's primary issue is dealing with reality.
You can either rail against a system which you have no control over, or you can change that which you have control over. Get a group of investors together and purchase property offering low-income housing.
Eh I think you can understand that when a city (which obviously has to employ a labor force and base-level professional workers) has housing costs that vastly exceed the income of those people it creates a very awkward situation where you need people to work in the city but they can't afford to live in the city. You can't really get a house within the Seattle city limits for less than 500k now and if you get one that is 500k you are talking like a 900 sqft townhome on the outskirts.
This is precisely my point. We can sit and discuss it, but market forces being what they are those with wealth can either decide to provide necessities to maintain status quo or suffer. Until workers utilize their power there will be no change. Seattle like so many other cities needs to quickly come to terms with reality. Chicago is in the same situation, only the disparity is not as obvious. Government blames industry. Industry blames government. Both have the power to implement a solution.
No offense but I think that Vancouver and Seattle are in rather unique situations that you aren't fully grasping. The real estate economy is so "booming" or "bubbling" that it has attracted a lot of foreign investment of people buying up property not to occupy it or even to use it really but like they are valuable trading cards or something. So the market is being driven by people who aren't actually affected by the living conditions of the city itself. Sure, free market capitalism balances the whole system, but if you look locally to the actual people who live in the actual city they are getting kind of screwed by investor wars driving up prices and making housing overpriced and non-functional for the general population. When a run down 900 sq ft townhouse costs more than a typically 2 person household can afford that is sort of a problem and if the market "equalizes" by crashing that isn't good either.
My wife and I both work and are both professionals both earning more than the national average and we managed to buy a 1600 sqft home in the outskirts of Seattle 3 years ago. If we were trying today I don't think we could afford a house in Seattle at all. I don't think anything like that is happening in Chicago. Looks to me from Zillow like in Chcago can buy a 3 bed 3 bath 2000 sqft house like literally in the downtown area for under 500k. In Seattle that would be something like 2 million and you cannot buy something that size within the city limits at all for 500k.
It depends on the neighborhood in Chicago, and how much of a fixer-upper it is. Downtown doesn't really have houses, so I'm curious what that listing is. I would not expect to see a house near downtown for less than $500K (or near $500K), in many closer in neighborhoods a teardown would be more. (My guess is you may be talking Humboldt Park or maybe certain parts of the South Side.)
That said, the Chicago market is WAY better for buyers than Seattle and some other places, although it's still quite expensive in others. (Here's a map of price per sq ft by neighborhood, although there's quite a variety depending on different factors: https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Illinois/Chicago-heat_map/)
I was just talking to a friend who is a real estate developer in another city about why Chicago is so comparatively cheap, and I really think a lot of it is the layout of the city. If you get priced out of the longstanding more convenient/better neighborhoods, you can move west (or northwest) within the city and find affordable housing. Now, you might be living in a place that's basically a suburb, but it's within city limits and affordable.
You see that with some of the neighborhoods now being gentrified and ones that have gentrified more recently, although there's sufficient supply now (and supply is in relative terms for here at a shortage) that there's not pressure on many other neighborhoods and there are dirt cheap neighborhoods with a lovely housing stock and pretty convenient to downtown that are currently impossible because of crime (for example, East Garfield Park).
People with good jobs are leaving IL. so higher end housing prices stay down compared to "hot" areas of the country.
Chicago's location is a key factor in this case - it's proximity to Indiana and Wisconsin. Most of my clients are based in the Chicago area, but I moved to Wisconsin due to the more sensible government. Seattle has a monopoly on this and there is no nearby alternative. With Chicago one can easily move out of the immediate area and commute.
Which ultimately means that Chicago will be able to sustain those numbers much longer. Whereas when businesses(and workers) start leaving Seattle, the potential bust could leave it looking like Flint or Detroit.0 -
funjen1972 wrote: »Single lady here. I spend maybe $10 - $15 a week on groceries and eat out about once a week at about $25. I pack my breakfast and lunch everyday. I buy things like bulk oatmeal, potatoes, dried beans, cheap veggies, bananas, chicken or pork, anything on clearance, occasionally wine or beer.
I certainly have splurge meals if I have friends over or am making a dish for a pot luck, but I still shop very frugally.
I consider myself exceptionally frugal regarding food and waste...eveything gets used and nothing is discarded.
ive done this too..and once I did this - if I run out to fast food or coffee on the run - I get so sick to my stomach. "o yeah I eat healthy now"
1 -
stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »We live downstate IL mid-size community....same house in S. Cali or Seattle would be 4-5X as much.
Yeah not even an exaggeration....pretty spot on. Median price per square foot for houses:
Seattle: $506
Los Angeles: $635
Illinois: $141
Illinois x 4 = Seattle
Illinois x 5 = So Cal.
Your house would probably be ~1.2 million in Seattle. Food prices probably a little higher in Seattle as well but not nearly to that degree.
Acutely aware after family moved from St. Louis to Mission Viejo in the mid 1970s and living as a single sailor in San Diego in 1996. Food, gas, basics in general were about double the price largely due to taxes associated with the product. Economics in motion - supply and demand.
I don't want to divert too much from the thread's topic, but housing (in Seattle at least) is NOT economics in motion. It's investors having their fun. The demand for low-income housing is through the roof. Nine percent of children attending public schools do not have a roof over their heads at night. An overwhelming number of adults living without shelter are employed full time. But there are plenty of housing options for the top 20% and plenty of vacant properties too (although a lot of that is zoned for business). I'm sure we'll be like Vancouver, BC soon, with vacant overpriced properties everywhere you look.
High demand, low supply. How is this not economics? Seattle's primary issue is dealing with reality.
You can either rail against a system which you have no control over, or you can change that which you have control over. Get a group of investors together and purchase property offering low-income housing.
Eh I think you can understand that when a city (which obviously has to employ a labor force and base-level professional workers) has housing costs that vastly exceed the income of those people it creates a very awkward situation where you need people to work in the city but they can't afford to live in the city. You can't really get a house within the Seattle city limits for less than 500k now and if you get one that is 500k you are talking like a 900 sqft townhome on the outskirts.
This is precisely my point. We can sit and discuss it, but market forces being what they are those with wealth can either decide to provide necessities to maintain status quo or suffer. Until workers utilize their power there will be no change. Seattle like so many other cities needs to quickly come to terms with reality. Chicago is in the same situation, only the disparity is not as obvious. Government blames industry. Industry blames government. Both have the power to implement a solution.
No offense but I think that Vancouver and Seattle are in rather unique situations that you aren't fully grasping. The real estate economy is so "booming" or "bubbling" that it has attracted a lot of foreign investment of people buying up property not to occupy it or even to use it really but like they are valuable trading cards or something. So the market is being driven by people who aren't actually affected by the living conditions of the city itself. Sure, free market capitalism balances the whole system, but if you look locally to the actual people who live in the actual city they are getting kind of screwed by investor wars driving up prices and making housing overpriced and non-functional for the general population. When a run down 900 sq ft townhouse costs more than a typically 2 person household can afford that is sort of a problem and if the market "equalizes" by crashing that isn't good either.
My wife and I both work and are both professionals both earning more than the national average and we managed to buy a 1600 sqft home in the outskirts of Seattle 3 years ago. If we were trying today I don't think we could afford a house in Seattle at all. I don't think anything like that is happening in Chicago. Looks to me from Zillow like in Chcago can buy a 3 bed 3 bath 2000 sqft house like literally in the downtown area for under 500k. In Seattle that would be something like 2 million and you cannot buy something that size within the city limits at all for 500k.
It depends on the neighborhood in Chicago, and how much of a fixer-upper it is. Downtown doesn't really have houses, so I'm curious what that listing is. I would not expect to see a house near downtown for less than $500K (or near $500K), in many closer in neighborhoods a teardown would be more. (My guess is you may be talking Humboldt Park or maybe certain parts of the South Side.)
That said, the Chicago market is WAY better for buyers than Seattle and some other places, although it's still quite expensive in others. (Here's a map of price per sq ft by neighborhood, although there's quite a variety depending on different factors: https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Illinois/Chicago-heat_map/)
I was just talking to a friend who is a real estate developer in another city about why Chicago is so comparatively cheap, and I really think a lot of it is the layout of the city. If you get priced out of the longstanding more convenient/better neighborhoods, you can move west (or northwest) within the city and find affordable housing. Now, you might be living in a place that's basically a suburb, but it's within city limits and affordable.
You see that with some of the neighborhoods now being gentrified and ones that have gentrified more recently, although there's sufficient supply now (and supply is in relative terms for here at a shortage) that there's not pressure on many other neighborhoods and there are dirt cheap neighborhoods with a lovely housing stock and pretty convenient to downtown that are currently impossible because of crime (for example, East Garfield Park).
People with good jobs are leaving IL. so higher end housing prices stay down compared to "hot" areas of the country.
Chicago's location is a key factor in this case - it's proximity to Indiana and Wisconsin. Most of my clients are based in the Chicago area, but I moved to Wisconsin due to the more sensible government. Seattle has a monopoly on this and there is no nearby alternative. With Chicago one can easily move out of the immediate area and commute.
Which ultimately means that Chicago will be able to sustain those numbers much longer. Whereas when businesses(and workers) start leaving Seattle, the potential bust could leave it looking like Flint or Detroit.
Precisely! A colleague of mine has become very fond of the phrase "revolt or bolt", but this is exactly what those in charge want the oppositions to do - bolt. My behavior allows the irresponsible actions of government to remain irresponsible. Seattle will be the canary in this coalmine. Smart governments will watch this closely and implement correction and corrective/preventive actions.0 -
stanmann571 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Aaron_K123 wrote: »Packerjohn wrote: »We live downstate IL mid-size community....same house in S. Cali or Seattle would be 4-5X as much.
Yeah not even an exaggeration....pretty spot on. Median price per square foot for houses:
Seattle: $506
Los Angeles: $635
Illinois: $141
Illinois x 4 = Seattle
Illinois x 5 = So Cal.
Your house would probably be ~1.2 million in Seattle. Food prices probably a little higher in Seattle as well but not nearly to that degree.
Acutely aware after family moved from St. Louis to Mission Viejo in the mid 1970s and living as a single sailor in San Diego in 1996. Food, gas, basics in general were about double the price largely due to taxes associated with the product. Economics in motion - supply and demand.
I don't want to divert too much from the thread's topic, but housing (in Seattle at least) is NOT economics in motion. It's investors having their fun. The demand for low-income housing is through the roof. Nine percent of children attending public schools do not have a roof over their heads at night. An overwhelming number of adults living without shelter are employed full time. But there are plenty of housing options for the top 20% and plenty of vacant properties too (although a lot of that is zoned for business). I'm sure we'll be like Vancouver, BC soon, with vacant overpriced properties everywhere you look.
High demand, low supply. How is this not economics? Seattle's primary issue is dealing with reality.
You can either rail against a system which you have no control over, or you can change that which you have control over. Get a group of investors together and purchase property offering low-income housing.
Eh I think you can understand that when a city (which obviously has to employ a labor force and base-level professional workers) has housing costs that vastly exceed the income of those people it creates a very awkward situation where you need people to work in the city but they can't afford to live in the city. You can't really get a house within the Seattle city limits for less than 500k now and if you get one that is 500k you are talking like a 900 sqft townhome on the outskirts.
This is precisely my point. We can sit and discuss it, but market forces being what they are those with wealth can either decide to provide necessities to maintain status quo or suffer. Until workers utilize their power there will be no change. Seattle like so many other cities needs to quickly come to terms with reality. Chicago is in the same situation, only the disparity is not as obvious. Government blames industry. Industry blames government. Both have the power to implement a solution.
No offense but I think that Vancouver and Seattle are in rather unique situations that you aren't fully grasping. The real estate economy is so "booming" or "bubbling" that it has attracted a lot of foreign investment of people buying up property not to occupy it or even to use it really but like they are valuable trading cards or something. So the market is being driven by people who aren't actually affected by the living conditions of the city itself. Sure, free market capitalism balances the whole system, but if you look locally to the actual people who live in the actual city they are getting kind of screwed by investor wars driving up prices and making housing overpriced and non-functional for the general population. When a run down 900 sq ft townhouse costs more than a typically 2 person household can afford that is sort of a problem and if the market "equalizes" by crashing that isn't good either.
My wife and I both work and are both professionals both earning more than the national average and we managed to buy a 1600 sqft home in the outskirts of Seattle 3 years ago. If we were trying today I don't think we could afford a house in Seattle at all. I don't think anything like that is happening in Chicago. Looks to me from Zillow like in Chcago can buy a 3 bed 3 bath 2000 sqft house like literally in the downtown area for under 500k. In Seattle that would be something like 2 million and you cannot buy something that size within the city limits at all for 500k.
It depends on the neighborhood in Chicago, and how much of a fixer-upper it is. Downtown doesn't really have houses, so I'm curious what that listing is. I would not expect to see a house near downtown for less than $500K (or near $500K), in many closer in neighborhoods a teardown would be more. (My guess is you may be talking Humboldt Park or maybe certain parts of the South Side.)
That said, the Chicago market is WAY better for buyers than Seattle and some other places, although it's still quite expensive in others. (Here's a map of price per sq ft by neighborhood, although there's quite a variety depending on different factors: https://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Illinois/Chicago-heat_map/)
I was just talking to a friend who is a real estate developer in another city about why Chicago is so comparatively cheap, and I really think a lot of it is the layout of the city. If you get priced out of the longstanding more convenient/better neighborhoods, you can move west (or northwest) within the city and find affordable housing. Now, you might be living in a place that's basically a suburb, but it's within city limits and affordable.
You see that with some of the neighborhoods now being gentrified and ones that have gentrified more recently, although there's sufficient supply now (and supply is in relative terms for here at a shortage) that there's not pressure on many other neighborhoods and there are dirt cheap neighborhoods with a lovely housing stock and pretty convenient to downtown that are currently impossible because of crime (for example, East Garfield Park).
People with good jobs are leaving IL. so higher end housing prices stay down compared to "hot" areas of the country.
Chicago's location is a key factor in this case - it's proximity to Indiana and Wisconsin. Most of my clients are based in the Chicago area, but I moved to Wisconsin due to the more sensible government. Seattle has a monopoly on this and there is no nearby alternative. With Chicago one can easily move out of the immediate area and commute.
Which ultimately means that Chicago will be able to sustain those numbers much longer. Whereas when businesses(and workers) start leaving Seattle, the potential bust could leave it looking like Flint or Detroit.
I think you are stretching credulity with that one. I think houses are a bit overpriced due to a tech boom and an influx of people relative to the amount of available housing. I think that those prices cannot continue to go up or even necessarily stay at their current levels long-term because it is pricing out the labor force and even middle-class professionals from being able to own (or even live at all) in the city. That said I think that equalization will be prices dropping a lot when interest rates go up. Not sure how that makes us a ghost town. The problem isn't a dwindling economy from failing manufacturing industries, it is too much influx of money into too small of an area.
Flint and Detroit didn't end up like they did because they were flush with cash and all the house prices were skyrocketing, they ended up like that because the bottom dropped out of their primary industry that they were a bit too heavily invested in. Seattle has Amazon in distribution, Boeing in manufacturing, Alaska Air and Expedia in travel, Starbucks, Nordstroms, REI and Costco in retail, MSNBC in communications, T-Mobile in cell and Microsoft in software. Seattle has 10 companies on the Fortune 500 headquartered here.Not seeing the bottom dropping out of all of those nor do I see why they would "flee".
Problem isn't the city failing, its that the influx of cash makes it hard to afford to live here. If you give an example of a city that failed and got deserted because there was too much buisness going on there then give that example...Flint and Detroit aren't it.0 -
Found this interesting chart for cost of living in metro areas in the US
Suprised me a bit because looks like Chicago isn't actually that far off from Seattle. That said I'm guessing housing doesn't get calculated into cost of living here.0 -
I just got back to Cincinnati from 10 days in AZ. I was shocked at how cheap produce prices were in Tucson, especially, compared to Ohio. Even things that are typically Midwest grown were more expensive. Made no sense to me at all. I would spend 2/3 of what I spend now living in AZ versus Ohio. I can understand things like oranges or perhaps pecans being cheaper (Green Valley has the largest producer of pecans in the US) but I was seeing strawberries, green beans, asparagus, tomatoes all much cheaper. Perhaps proximity to Mexico made that much difference but it was honestly shocking.0
-
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Found this interesting chart for cost of living in metro areas in the US
Suprised me a bit because looks like Chicago isn't actually that far off from Seattle. That said I'm guessing housing doesn't get calculated into cost of living here.
What year is this from?0 -
Here's an interesting cost of living index for current and earlier years -- and one that will allow us to focus on groceries!
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=0190 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »Found this interesting chart for cost of living in metro areas in the US
Suprised me a bit because looks like Chicago isn't actually that far off from Seattle. That said I'm guessing housing doesn't get calculated into cost of living here.
What year is this from?
Not sure to be honest. It was from a King County website and they referenced the ACCRA data set. Found another site that utilizes that data and has it live. Also breaks it down by cost type.
https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator/Illinois-Chicago/Washington-Seattle0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »Here's an interesting cost of living index for current and earlier years -- and one that will allow us to focus on groceries!
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=019
Cool breakdown but wow...what is going on in Sheridan, WY? Those numbers can't be right can they? A meal in an inexpensive restaurant costs $2.07? A 1 bedroom apartment in the city center is $207 a month? Price to buy is $55 a sqft?
Seattle in comparison a meal in an inexpensive restaurant costs $15. 1 bedroom apartment in city center is $1945 a month. Price per sqft to buy is $577.0 -
I don't think I've ever seen a thread get so derailed on these forums.4
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