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No not a victim for sure. But I do get jealous when I watch those shows. Though like you said, its a trade off. We'd rather be here in LA (suburbs, family, etc...) renting than in Waco, TX with a huge fully updated house. (Nothing against Waco, it just isn't where our lives are).
For almost all of us, our ancestors left their homelands to come to America in search of a better life for themselves and their children & grandchildren.
Harhar, just how (relatively) bad would your LA life need to get for you to consider moving, as your ancestors most likely did, in search of a better life for yourselves & future children/grandchildren?
The home my parents bought in 1969 was built in 1958 and sold new for $28,000.
Eleven years later my parents bought it for $35,000 and were able to take over the mortgage...
In 2007 the same home down the street sold for $725,000 and in 2011 was sold foreclosure for $320,000
Every block in my city had a least one foreclosure.
What is ironic is the same builder here in Oakland also built similar homes in Cupertino and we had family friends that bought one new... it was $23,000 because it was so far out...
Last year the kids sold it after the parents passed... it was well maintained... just not upgraded... really like a perfectly dated 1958 home... the kids got 1.3 million for it and it was sold in a week.
So the Cupertino home not only cost much less new... it appreciated by a factor of 56
The Oakland home appreciated by a factor of 27
Maybe location is the most important factor???
Cupertino is all about the public schools and Asian immigrants.
Interesting anecdote but for every anecdote there's one with an opposing viewpoint.
Texas is full of Californians who have settled in nicely while making major upgrades in housing. I could say the same about North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, etc.
Alabama has some nice areas but as much as I love the American South, I wouldn't voluntarily choose Alabama. That being said, happiness basically comes from within.
Tell your friend to take a vacation to California with the savings she's got due to the lower COL in Alabama.
She was actually calling to see if there were any job openings and to see specifically about her old job.
There could be more to the story... have not heard how well she relates to his family during this extended time... she did mention not being there there and more specifically from California has been a factor in her job search...
They never could have children and her husband has not worked for many years... he was helping his father take out a large tree and there was an accident... don't know all the details other than he was laid up the better part of a year and walks with a distinct limp... didn't have insurance at the time not did his father...
I remember how excited she was to after 56 years to finally own a real home.
I didn't read all of the postings, so not sure if this was mentioned already. What I'm finding, being a renter, is that LLs are taking advantage of the fact there are more and more who need to rent, so the rents are skyrocketing.
Accepting the 'supply and demand' theory, it still seems pretty greed for LLs to jump up with glee and increase rents upwards of $50-100/mo or more just based on the fact that they know they won't have to worry about empty units and losing rents.
Buy that starter house, rip out the linoleum & formica & maybe the cabinets, install tile, granite, new cabinets, new paint, new landscaping, new appliances, then sell it for a profit.
My 1958 home bought from the original owners has formica and linoleum and is all 1958...
I paid 600k for this 1725 square foot home and had to fight with the Assessor for over a year because the Assessor claimed I bought below market...
It was listed on the MLS and had a forsale sign in front...
When the market crashed... I fought several years and did get a reduction to 420k and a year later... making it over two years timewise I received a refund check...
Went through the same process for subsequent tax years... Assessor dragged out appeals as much as possible to stem the tide.
How will young people ever save up for the down-payment on a single family home when they're paying more than $1,000 a month on rent, PLUS they have to pay utilities?
$1K per month for rent is very cheap. In San Francisco, my daughter's 3bd/1ba apartment, a 3rd floor walk-up in a 106 year old building that hasn't been well maintained is $6,000 per month -- and it is hand-to-hand combat for tenants to find apartments to rent, with employees of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Intel etc willing to pay over asking price on apartments just to get their application looked at.
$1K per month for rent is very cheap. In San Francisco, my daughter's 3bd/1ba apartment, a 3rd floor walk-up in a 106 year old building that hasn't been well maintained is $6,000 per month -- and it is hand-to-hand combat for tenants to find apartments to rent, with employees of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Intel etc willing to pay over asking price on apartments just to get their application looked at.
$1k is cheap for somebody who is from California moving to a lower COL state. However, $1k rent a month is expensive for some people who lived in their home state or are native, when rent used to be $500-$700 a month 10-15 years ago. More development of apartments are needed to increase supply so demand and prices go down, it doesn't help when people constantly move to the same area.
States with the highest unemployment rates (between 6.6 and 5.2) were:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
California
Connecticut
DC
Georgia
Illinois
Louisiana
Mississippi
Nevada
New Mexico
North Carolina
Oregon
South Carolina
Tennessee
Washington
West Virginia
Out of those, only six had unemployment figures over 6 percent and none were over 6.6 percent.
One bit of data I would LOVE to see--and appears not to exist--are workforce statistics comparing contingent and traditional workers by region & state with breakdowns for industry and average income. The number of contingent workers may impact unemployment figures as turn-over is higher, but it may not all be bad news. Some "contingent" workers are highly paid 1099 consultants who do very well yoy. Some area's may have more contingent workers in this category than others which might skew the data.
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