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For a while the Bay Area seemed to be doing fine. However, housing prices, or so I've heard, are outrageously high. Given what happened to Detroit and even East St. Louis when manufacturing declined, do you think if IT declines, or, rather, ends up going to India, China, etc, that the area's housing prices will doom the area as nobody will suddenly be able to afford the area, the jobs will dry up, and people will be stuck with houses that they can't sell and no jobs in the area to allure people into buying them?
The Bay Area has some of the nicest weather on the planet. There is more there than just tech. Nobody is going to leave that place vacant. You might see the tech group move out, but a new group would move in.
If you ever win the lottery, the area behind Stanford is a good place to live.
The good projects in tech will stay in the Bay area. the easy stuff goes offshore. Doubt tech ever stops. Might need fewer people if they can code a machine that does all the coding.
I believe that immigration is the main driver of the housing prices. Over the past 40 years, the Asian population has gone from ~10% to nearly 40%, with the huge shift happening in the last 5 years.
The US now has a 10-year tourist visa program with China, and they're coming over in droves. These people are living here, but are not being counted in the census, so who knows what the actual numbers are.
I used to work in tech in the Bay Area and myself, and most of my coworkers, lived either in a small studio or with roommates in apartments. Your average software engineer/tech worker is not buying a house out there. Even with 150k/year salaries, with a tiny house costing 1.5+ million, it just isn't feasible. We used to joke at work about all our landlords being Chinese.
Sad, but true.
If immigration dries up, so will the Bay Area.
And the weather is the nicest on the planet? Do you get out much? The weather is better than average for the United States, but far from the "best on the planet". San Francisco is in the 60s pretty much year round and the East Bay gets scorching hot in most parts during the summer.
Tech has crashed several times. Early 80's it was personal computers, around 2000 was Y2K and dot com. After every crash, Silicon Valley came back. Tech will crash again and SV will come back again.
You are about 30-40 years too late. It's crashed already as mentioned by Pvande mentioned.
It's like asking if Manhattan will end up like Detroit, when the hedge funds crash in the next market crash. There are booms and busts in large cities.
Will Las Vegas end up like Detroit in the next recession? Will more casinos and close with nobody to buy them ever?
Last edited by move4ward; 07-29-2017 at 02:35 PM..
There's nothing much to compare between these 2 vastly different metros.
Even if the tech sector itself recedes some in metro San Fran due to whatever the reasons, there could be other job sectors that would fill the void left behind quite easily.
Forever is a long time. When Detroit was cranking out automobiles and other manufactured items, they thought it would last forever too. I will agree that the geography of the Bay Area, and California gives it a huge advantage over Detroit, and its environment, and climate. However, nothing is forever. Silicon Valley may be displaced by a new technology based in another region of the country, or world. It could be rendered obsolete.
If nothing else, it could end up being a Hampton or Martha's Vineyard that only millionaires could afford to live in. As for closing immigration, I'm for it. The Bay Area should have thought of that before they tried to displace Americans with Indians to make a crooked buck.
And the weather is the nicest on the planet? Do you get out much? The weather is better than average for the United States, but far from the "best on the planet". San Francisco is in the 60s pretty much year round and the East Bay gets scorching hot in most parts during the summer.
Yeah, but everything in-between is pretty darned nice! Look at San Mateo or Redwood City, and you'll be hard-pressed to find better (year-round) weather anywhere else - at least in the U.S., if not world. And some people like myself think constant 60s, as it is in San Francisco, is just PERFECT. I lived in the city for 5 years, and never complained about the weather. Even the East Bay isn't that bad, since it's a dry heat... being from Maryland originally, I know what a difference humidity can make! I'd rather be in 100F with 20% humidity than 85F with 85% humidity, if you know what I mean.
And no, I'm not worried about us becoming the "next Detroit." I've lived here since 1983, long before the dot-com/tech booms, and it was already an expensive and desirable place to live. If the entire tech industry went kaput, there would still be plenty of folks willing to pay $1M for a house here. Speaking of which, you don't ACTUALLY have to spend a million... if you just want a small condo and don't care about "hoity toity" addresses, you can get something for half a million.
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