San Fran Vs. NYC cost of living (Los Angeles, San Jose: apartment, lease)

[hsw]

Macro-stats can be misleading

Would argue, if renting equivalent quality new condos...some 30%+ cheaper in SF than Manhattan

Land in best suburbs on SF Peninsula like Woodside is prob 50-100% more expensive than equivalent quality land in NYC's Greenwich

SF region has far more of a car culture than NYC...many firms in City of SF pay for employees' garaging costs, so have easy 10min intra-SF drive to office; SV is obviously CA car culture w/endless free parking and legendarily fast fwys like 280 from City of SF

And SF weather/topography is near-perfect vs NYC's crappy cold/slushy or hot/humid weather

NYC region prob has about as many >$500K/yr, <50yo workers as SiliconValley/SF....prob fewer on a per capita basis

IIRC, Manhattan/Westchester/Fairfield are some 3.5MM people...and SF/SanMateoCty/SantaClaraCty are some 3MM....most elite parts of both regions are rather similar rivals in population/wealth/education levels...no doubt the world's two most economically powerful regions

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by hsw

IIRC, Manhattan/Westchester/Fairfield are some 3.5MM people...and SF/SanMateoCty/SantaClaraCty are some 3MM....most elite parts of both regions are rather similar rivals in population/wealth/education levels...no doubt the world's two most economically powerful regions

Hmmm...that's actually a great comparison.

[ssmaster]

going by just san francisco city proper and manhattan then manhattan is MUCH more expensive.i searched condos for sale on upper east side and upper west side and there are over 100 listed for over $5.5 million.the most expensive listed for $60 million

[evanusc]

Well said. The fact that SF/LA/NY is not affordable is a direct reflection of desirability of these places (or considered "nice"), and whenever something is desirable by a large number of people, you will have to compete to get it. What's wrong with a house in Minnesota anyway? If you are not competitive enough for la creme de la cream, then you just have to deal with Minnesota. I think the US is a completely capitalist country where the only way to get a life you want is to be outstanding (ie. the government will not take care of you). So when you are complaining about the fact that top tier cities such as SF and NYC are not affordable, have you thought about whether you are also a top tied person?

[quote=san phlegmatico;1354155]Young Man:

1. Lose the 'entitlement mentality': you are not entitled to own a home in any locale (hometown or otherwise; gentrified neighborhood, gated, or blighted) unless you can earn a salary commensurate with the sum of monies needed to secure a mortgage in your chosen neighborhood. Simple as that. If you're boxed out of NJ or the Northeast, relocate. It's the law of the jungle here in the U.S., contrary to what the socialist/ egalitarian-idealists tell you on your groove tube.

2. The reason Manhattan "holes in the wall" demand such lofty rents as $1600/mo. is precisely because the city is -- you said it yourself -- "very nice." They don't call it the "Big Apple" for nothing. NYC and its surrounding bedroom communities (and self-sufficient fifedoms): the creme de la creme. You reaped the benefits of being raised in such a fertile setting; but now you must learn to swim or (as you might say) risk drowning if you so choose to plant adult roots there. To rent... for life... Oh horror of horrors! -- GASP!! --

[plavenia]

Can we please post phlegmatico's response in every middle and high school across the land?

[uptown_urbanist]

We have lived in LA and SF and are planning on buying a house in Minnesota. Nothing wrong with that. Minneapolis is also a city, and I can live there without driving. There's also great cultural opportunties (although on a smaller scale than NYC, at least) and with our savings we can afford to travel. Nothing wrong with renting for life, though, other than the fact that we can't afford to pay a SF rent and save for retirement.

I can understand the poster's complaint that he can't afford to buy where he grew up - it may be the way of the USA, but that doesn't mean that it's fair or good for the country or for a community. The people who can afford Manhattan (or many parts of SF) are NOT necessarily the "creme de la creme" - they're people who for whatever reason have or make more money than other people. Higher salary or investment returns does not automatically equal a smarter or more successful (other than monetarily) person or indicate someone who will contribute more to the community than someone with a smaller paycheck.

The average person in today's youngest generation has it pretty bad; higher education is a must, yet tuition increases and financial aid decreases, cost of living goes up but many salaries aren't keeping pace (that's IF you can find a job), health care is through the roof, and younger people are less likely to have good coverage; want to have kids and stay home? Good luck affording that, but at the same time good luck finding and paying for daycare. As far as retirement benefits, who knows what will even be around by the time young people get to retire? Pensions are increasingly a thing of the past, and who knows what the state of social security and medicare will be. We can try to save on our own, but given increased costs for everything people don't have as much money to save. Baby boomers had a lot of assistance getting to where they are now, and are the last people who should be talking about the horrors of "entitlement."

[Stacy From Cali]

Originally Posted by san phlegmatico

Young Man:

1. Lose the 'entitlement mentality': you are not entitled to own a home in any locale (hometown or otherwise; gentrified neighborhood, gated, or blighted) unless you can earn a salary commensurate with the sum of monies needed to secure a mortgage in your chosen neighborhood. Simple as that. If you're boxed out of NJ or the Northeast, relocate. It's the law of the jungle here in the U.S., contrary to what the socialist/ egalitarian-idealists tell you on your groove tube.

2. The reason Manhattan "holes in the wall" demand such lofty rents as $1600/mo. is precisely because the city is -- you said it yourself -- "very nice." They don't call it the "Big Apple" for nothing. NYC and its surrounding bedroom communities (and self-sufficient fifedoms): the creme de la creme. You reaped the benefits of being raised in such a fertile setting; but now you must learn to swim or (as you might say) risk drowning if you so choose to plant adult roots there. To rent... for life... Oh horror of horrors! -- GASP!! --

I would submit that this is your greatest flaw: that renting is somehow a drowning, a life not worth living. Working people, artists, and educators have been doing it for years, especially in prime locations such as New York and Los Angeles.

All of the aforementioned points in this section (#2) are seemingly self-evident notions that often get lost in the droning moan of the LA/SF/Boston/NYC-is-so-expensive whiners running amuk in City-Data.

3. Learn a college-level or better command of the English Language and you'll better be prepared to fill the job opportunities and wages you so covet: do so and you may indeed secure the privilege to purchase private property and thus break the woeful (GASP!) rent cycle.

It's called The American Dream, realized by good ole Protestant Work Ethic (infused with Enlightenment and diligence to Adam Smith principles). Rise to the level of competitiveness in the economy at-large, and you manifest your financial destiny; otherwise, shut up and take the scraps tossed your way. Live in the rented cottages and flats that some kind soul is willing to lease you or move!

Incorrectly spelling 'Manhattan' (as you did twice) and your abysmal display of syntax are just a couple of ghastly evidences I am seeing that speak volumes to your lack of a competitive education and your lack of essential communication skills.

Now I realize we live in a dumbed-down America -- a nation practically bereft of its roots in classical education, eloquence, and refinement, both within its presumably enlightened urban centers and out in the historically undereducated hinterlands. But, we're still a country that values basic communication skills (minimally) in nearly all professional-grade careers. And a 'professional' of some type you MUST become, as an urban dweller particularly, if you aspire to home ownership, especially in the high cost-of-living areas. Or, you must wield a deft hand in things such as craftsmanship, construction, sales, thievery, snake oil, pyramid schemes, and American Idol contests to name a few alternatives (of varying towardness).

Ivy League educations produce highly-skilled and high-performing (and ruthless) professionals who have their pick of the litter for jobs, homes, and lifestyles... Wowza! -- Ever wonder *why* these individuals worked so hard to gain admittance to Princeton, Columbia, Yale? Busted their nuts in order to run the difficult gauntlet of coursework? Did whatever it took to secure the funds, loans, and scholarships to finance all of this? Work like dogs at the jobs they do have in order to stay the Lead Dogs? Then again, you probably mocked them in high school: the pocket protectors, the cardigan sweaters, their punctilious attention to academic detail...

I find it tragic that you guffaw at the Ivy Leaguers, the aristocrats, and the over-achievers of the world as if they were somehow the 'top-tier of the top-tier', and that the all-encompassing top-tier at-large -- of which you, as working man and job-holder, ought to be an equal member as they -- should all be treated equally and heaped with the lavish luxuries of life like palacial homes in primo burbs-on-a-hill and a rent-free existence from age 23 onward.

You've got it all wrong!

The Ivies and the Trust Funders are the 'top-tier' -- the only top-tier in the U.S, in fact. Always have been, and will be until long after we pass. The only hope you have is to gain the skills, learned-intelligence, and clout necessary to thrust your little old self into the mix as a professional of some type and to feed off of the likes of them. (Better start retracting the put-downs you levied on Mr. Sweater Vest back in the day.)

And if you should do so expediently, you will be compensated to the tune of a few hundred thousand a year, which will punch your ticket to home ownership in NJ, NY, almost anywhere. The Lap of Luxury shall be yours...

OR, you'll end up like most Americans when you finally realize your long-aspired-for position of status and wealth -- your white-washed white picket fence home, your swift ascent through the social ranks... You'll take a weary look around: IS THIS IT???!

You'll bemoan your not being admitted to Tweed Tree Country Club or selected to your local charity's (read: money-washing cabal) Board of Directors. You'll sell your home in Penultimatetown, U.S.A. and buy the most decrepit Brownstone on the shadiest block of the lousiest street on the wrong side of the Upper West Side, Manhattan, or an entry-level place on the margins of Scarsdale -- all because you must always have what is just beyond your grasp. Middle class wouldn't be enough for you; you must exude power, status, the finest in Brooks Brothers foppish duds, rare miniature English sportscars for carousing, a cabin upstate for duck hunting...!

Nothing's ever enough for Americans: the poor want to be middle class; rank and file middle classers want to be Country Clubbers; Leisurely Larry wants to be a portfolio-wielding Donald Trump; Trump wants to be a god; and then the real GOD shows up and levels the great humility: that all are mere, pathetic mortals -- American materialists and social-climbers: among the worst kind!

4. Lastly, you bemoaned and questioned the prospects for your very "survival" at the outset of your puerile hissy fit. You WILL survive living in an apartment, driving a Prius, eating microwave dinners, wearing Levi's off-the-rack, drinking Coors Light, and going to every third Giants home game with your Carhartt-wearing buds; and, your wife WILL work -- I promise! It's called the 'working class': it comprises the VAST majority of citizens in this country. Again, your idealized notions that the U.S. is somehow devoid of a caste system is your problem. The likes of you ought to be glad -- indeed, ecstatic -- that the exponents of the American virtues of 'liberty and equality for all' have amazingly conspired over the course of recent history to raise up the hoi polloi; in centuries past, the Great Unwashed were begging for scraps, often enslaved, did not maintain the right to vote, and were basically pi--ed upon by the landholding elites. They had no "opportunities" other than to plow tracts of land for their keepers, to carry water for their merciful overlords. They were laughingstocks. Relatively speaking, the working classes of today don't hit the lick of a snake when compared to the serfs of yesteryear.

We've come a long way, baby. Recent progress has, for the most part, been extremely kind to the common folk. Be glad for what you do have! Be thankful to the noblesse oblige -- the enlightened worldviews and generosity of the your forefathers' employers!

One of these days the worm will inevitably turn (though it will not happen during our existence, but might affect your grandchildren) and what Alexis de Tocqueville dubbed the "crass, middling, mediocre masses" will once again play subject to iron-fisted masters. It's the natural way of the world: for power to normally accumulate in the hands of a few at the expense of the many; and for the few to dominate the throngs and subordinate to their selfish whimsies -- that's not me talking; it's Plato. The Republic. These are not 'normal' times.

I just have to add...even though this is an old thread and it matters not...that I find it rather striking that someone so obviously elitist can be so anti-entitlement. Yuck.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist

Baby boomers had a lot of assistance getting to where they are now, and are the last people who should be talking about the horrors of "entitlement."

I think there is truth to both sides. Baby Boomers are the ones who started the entitlement/unrealistic expectations mindset, and now they act shocked when their kids act entitled and have unrealistic expectations.

At the same time, we will have to get over this entitlement mentality thing. The good news it's completely possible to be just as happy renting as it is owning a home. Psychologists and economists who study happiness are finding that once you have an income of around 40K or 50K, and have a roof over your head having more money or more stuff doesn't really make people any happier, although many of us think it will.

[kiwilover70]

My husband and I moved from Sacramento (I grew up in Santa Rosa,spent a huge majority of my life in and around "The City" and lived there until I was 29,I am now over 40 ). We moved last fall to upstate N.Y. about 1 hour north of NYC.I still own my home in Sac,thank God because the cost of livinig here is crazy. OK ,so I do not live IN the city but I see how expensive it is and it is not so much more fantastic in NYC vs SF. We have visited many times since living here. The cost of everything else is about the same,except for the rediculous prices for heating oil and other heating options,as it is in california,specifically SF. I guess it is my built in bias but I MUCH prefer the city and its surrounding locals.

[TVR1997]

Originally Posted by hsw

Mac
IIRC, Manhattan/Westchester/Fairfield are some 3.5MM people...and SF/SanMateoCty/SantaClaraCty are some 3MM....most elite parts of both regions are rather similar rivals in population/wealth/education levels...no doubt the world's two most economically powerful regions

One must include Long Island as part of the most elite area when speaking of the NYC metro area. The wealthiest town in America (Brookville) is on Long Island. 9 out of the top 25 richest towns in America are located on Long island. They don't call that area the Gold Coast for nothing.