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View Poll Results: Would you leave
Yes 61 57.55%
No 45 42.45%
Voters: 106. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 03-24-2015, 04:33 AM
 
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
20 posts, read 42,213 times
Reputation: 50

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Quote:
Originally Posted by andyadhi01 View Post
I don't care if it's expensive as long as you get what you pay for. For the insanely high price you get ugly, tiny houses, bad schools, terrible commute and a public transit system that's a joke compared to DC/NYC/Boston.
I don't know if this is getting what you pay for, just a NYC point of reference for folks:
1) Paying 2,800/month for a renovated 500 sq. ft studio in an older building
2) Paying 3,700/month for a 600 sq. ft studio in a luxury building with kick butt amenities
3) Paying 1,400/month to live with three other roommates in a two bedroom on the way, way west side of the city (brutal wind tunnel in the winter). I lived in the fenced off living room, so we had no living room.

Option #1 was such a bargain, and I'm not being sarcastic. Smack dab in the center of town close to the subway. Looked into buying it and it sold to an all cash buyer for ~550K. I could not live outside the city due to the subway being so unreliable. Many a time I've stood on the platform for 15, 20 minutes waiting in vain for the train to work, not to mention the numbers of times it just flat out stopped running due to wind, rain or snow. There was no other way to get to work for me as owning a car is ridiculously cost prohibitive, not to mention the crazy driving.

NYC's public transit may run 24 hrs/day but it's the most poorly maintained, dirtiest, noisiest, most unreliable, and smelliest subway I've ever been on. Think constant busking musicians/dancers crashing your ride (cute the first 50 times, annoying after 100 times) and rats the size of your forearm running around on the tracks. The DC metro is a heck of a lot cleaner but I'm told it's not as convenient. Asia's subways put all of them to shame.

I don't believe I've mentioned the weather yet. If two straight months of 10 degree temps (back of the envelope averaging here) coupled with icy sidewalks in NYC or snowfall after snowfall is your thing, power to ya. Not to mention the last two years it's been six months of winter, two weeks of spring, one month of incredibly humid summer (so humid I felt I was in southeast Asia) and who knows what the rest of the year.

Source: Someone who just moved out of NYC after living there for four years and is from Northern Virginia.

I'm just offering up some of the reasons why I moved out, but really I want to say the grass is only greener in patches. There's pros and cons to all places, and having been in the NYC bubble for four years, SF feels not quite so insanely high priced.
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Old 03-24-2015, 08:27 AM
 
Location: Somewhere out there.
10,504 posts, read 6,123,826 times
Reputation: 6548
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alecki View Post
I am in San Francisco and getting tired of the high cost of living, tired of the grime, tired of the homeless. If I move to the suburbs, I will face a long commute and I find them so dull and boring. Spent a weekend in Mill Valley, and I can't imagine actually living there. I feel so trapped.

So many of my friends have left SF and the Bay Area all together and I feel like I am the only one still here.

Here's my personal litmus test...when you leave the Bay Area for some reason, maybe vacation or whatever, when you come back - are you glad to be back or not?

If you are not glad to be back then you are in the wrong place. Life is too short to be be miserable.
There's a whole world out there. You are not trapped, you are choosing to stay there. If you are not happy, you should go, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:08 AM
 
Location: California
1,424 posts, read 1,632,159 times
Reputation: 3144
Quote:
Originally Posted by andyadhi01 View Post
For alcoholic jobless bozos I guess bike commute from Mill Valley will work.. They have all the time to bike around all day For professional people who have to work regular works it doesn't work.
You should tell that to my co-worker who bikes to the office at 6:30 am from Sausalito and leaves around 5:30 pm. He will be floored to find out that he is a jobless alcoholic. We work in the Financial District
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:22 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,668,417 times
Reputation: 7872
Quote:
Originally Posted by cityathrt View Post
I

I'm just offering up some of the reasons why I moved out, but really I want to say the grass is only greener in patches. There's pros and cons to all places, and having been in the NYC bubble for four years, SF feels not quite so insanely high priced.
very good comments.

A friend of mine just moved from NYC to SF Bay, hoping to get away from the NE winter and fast pace and still get to enjoy a high level of urban vibrancy NYC offers. He ends up hating the new place commenting that he is constantly surrounded by ugly suburbs and that the Bay area has nowhere even remotely similar to NYC's urban vibe and pedestrian experience NYer are so used to - it is just one suburb after another, from the southern half of San Francisco all the way to San Jose.

Just saying they are both great places with big pros and cons. It just depends on what pros you really need despite those cons.
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:38 AM
 
Location: Somewhere out there.
10,504 posts, read 6,123,826 times
Reputation: 6548
Quote:
Originally Posted by botticelli View Post
very good comments.

A friend of mine just moved from NYC to SF Bay, hoping to get away from the NE winter and fast pace and still get to enjoy a high level of urban vibrancy NYC offers. He ends up hating the new place commenting that he is constantly surrounded by ugly suburbs and that the Bay area has nowhere even remotely similar to NYC's urban vibe and pedestrian experience NYer are so used to - it is just one suburb after another, from the southern half of San Francisco all the way to San Jose.

Just saying they are both great places with big pros and cons. It just depends on what pros you really need despite those cons.
Yes I totally agree. I've just done the opposite thing - moved from Bay Area suburbs to NYC suburbs. I wouldn't knock the Bay Area - I made a ton of lifelong friends there. A lot of people love it and there is much to love about it. I might even make a trip back this summer. But I found despite everything I liked about it I was unhappy too much of the time. Some people can't bear endless months of snow - me I missed the seasons. Horses for courses. America is a really big place. There's no reason to stay where you are not happy.
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:53 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,668,417 times
Reputation: 7872
Quote:
Originally Posted by likealady View Post
Actually no, I don't expect a 2000 sq ft home with a 2 car garage, a new SUV and an Audi, and an acre backyard. I'd even settle for a modest 2 bedroom condo with parking for one car. Fat chance. I live near a real estate office, I see the postings daily. Few 2 bds are going for 800K or less. That said, 800K is not cheap either, many will save for a decade to get the downpayment for that and will probably require a double salary to pay the mortgage. Then you start to consider value. Is a dated home in the outskirts worth it? You can live in the outer parts of SF and it'll take you longer to get to downtown than some stops in Oakland or Berkeley.

Now throw kids into the mix...
There's a good chance we'll be leaving when that time comes unless we a) save a huge amount of money to coast on when I inevitably leave a job to care for the newborn or b) husband gets a large pay raise. Option A is more likely than option B.

Media outlets don't report on the Bay Area being the most expensive in the country for no reason.
Fair enough. I recognize that SF is very expensive, which makes normal families life harder.

But like I said, it is expensive for a reason - it pretty much has all the best elements one wants from city life - fantastic weather, decent transit and walkability, great economy, high paying jobs, unparalleled nature backdrop, and pretty vibrant by American standard.

When some place like this exists, it will most likely have a drawback - the price. You will have to pay a premium for each of the perks (and lack of serious problems people complain about in other cities) you enjoy. And more than likely the high wages don't fully offset the high prices in cities like this (examples are everywhere), and one will have to settle for smaller or even cramped spaces to enjoy all the other benefits. You think SF is super expensive? take a look at London where middle class is completely priced out. In Paris, apartment starts at 1000 euros a square foot in the decent neighbourhoods in very old buildings with bad ventilation and HVAC, and regular people make like 2500-3000 euros a month. SF is nowhere near that bad price/value wise, but probably will head that direction.

What I am saying is unless one can make tons of money, in moving to SF, he should be prepared to sacrifice a lot of space he is used to elsewhere in the US. Learn live like those in Hong Kong, Tokyo or Singapore, where 600sf for a family of three is considered very spacious (wages in these places are not as high and weather not as great as SF by the way). If you think that's not something you can accept, then you should move to somewhere more like a typical American city, like Atlanta or Seattle.

I understand for Americans who typical grow up in large suburban homes with 2 empty guestrooms and big basement and free parking everywhere they go, it is hard to accept tiny condos and cramped staircases for a million dollars all of a sudden, but that's what they have to pay for what they get.

While one complains about SF being too expensive, think about those in Shanghai and Tokyo who pay $1 million for a two bedroom flat, with cold winters and suppressive hot summers, no ocean or mountains nearby, and who earn much less money.

I live in Toronto, where median house price is about $1 million as Feb, and downtown condos start at $600-650/sf, (and monthly transit pass costs $141.5). Not as expensive as San Francisco, but today when I head out to work it was 15F in the morning with a high of 36F on March 24! And local pay scale is probably 30% lower than the Bay area (face value, not even considering the rapidly declining CAD value). Do you prefer trading places for a moderately lower price?
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Old 03-24-2015, 10:07 AM
 
Location: Madison, WI
1,044 posts, read 2,761,159 times
Reputation: 984
I will leave when I can (retirement) so I voted yes. For me it comes down to the choice between retiring almost anywhere else at age 55 versus staying here and having to work until 65+ due to having too much of my net worth locked up in housing.
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Old 03-24-2015, 11:21 AM
 
24,351 posts, read 26,808,433 times
Reputation: 19827
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cruithne View Post
Here's my personal litmus test...when you leave the Bay Area for some reason, maybe vacation or whatever, when you come back - are you glad to be back or not?

If you are not glad to be back then you are in the wrong place. Life is too short to be be miserable.
There's a whole world out there. You are not trapped, you are choosing to stay there. If you are not happy, you should go, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
I agree with this method!
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Old 03-24-2015, 11:22 AM
 
781 posts, read 740,532 times
Reputation: 1062
Quote:
Originally Posted by likealady View Post
Actually no, I don't expect a 2000 sq ft home with a 2 car garage, a new SUV and an Audi, and an acre backyard. I'd even settle for a modest 2 bedroom condo with parking for one car. Fat chance. I live near a real estate office, I see the postings daily. Few 2 bds are going for 800K or less. That said, 800K is not cheap either, many will save for a decade to get the downpayment for that and will probably require a double salary to pay the mortgage. Then you start to consider value. Is a dated home in the outskirts worth it? You can live in the outer parts of SF and it'll take you longer to get to downtown than some stops in Oakland or Berkeley.

Now throw kids into the mix...
There's a good chance we'll be leaving when that time comes unless we a) save a huge amount of money to coast on when I inevitably leave a job to care for the newborn or b) husband gets a large pay raise. Option A is more likely than option B.

Media outlets don't report on the Bay Area being the most expensive in the country for no reason.
In a similar boat that you are in.

I am 100% on the same page as you regarding the housing. I would ALSO settle for a similar modest place but it's very expensive and IMO financially risky to get into the market right now.

After hours and hours of researching other areas, if the right job opportunity ends up working out it will make sense to go. However, it is a process to apply to the right jobs in more affordable areas. I think there is too much of a premium to pay to live here and I feel the same way about NYC and DC.
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Old 03-24-2015, 01:36 PM
 
379 posts, read 783,710 times
Reputation: 250
I ponder this from time to time. The Bay Area has changed a lot in the past decade, my friends have been leaving for cheaper pastures in droves, and I have a parent in a pretty cool lower COL city who'd love to have me move there. But there are still things I love about this city (beauty, walkability, great weather, entrepreneurial spirit, and quirky personality, to name a few), and I'm very blessed I got locked into rent control just before rents shot way up. I don't know what'll happen in the long-term future, but for the time being I plan to stay barring a great opportunity elsewhere or a compelling change in my personal circumstances.
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