San Antonio's Economy (Charlotte: unemployed, safe area, live in)

[V3rtigo]

i'll play along.

Dallas has a ton more jobs. Ditto with Houston. If you lose your job in SA, good luck replacing it with something comparable. You'd lose your house, like the record numbers in SA are right now.

Charlotte has the highest percentage of people with Graduate degrees and the highest salaries. I'd take 68% more expensive housing for double the salary.

Phoenix is not expensive any more. A friend just sold her 300K (2 years ago) house for 125k. salaries are higher there.

Denver has a ton of jobs. SA does not.

SLC. It's not fair to compare a city where people would choose to live purely because of religion.

Sacramento has Bay Area salaries. Trust me, that makes up for any cost differences.

Don't know much about Orlando, Cleveland, Milwaukee, or Atlanta.

Originally Posted by lemonfresh

Dallas is 24% more expensive than San Antonio.
Houston is 14% more expensive than San Antonio.
Orlando is 25% more expensive than San Antonio.
Charlotte is 21% more expensive than San Antonio.
Phoenix is 39% more expensive than San Antonio.
Cleveland is 4% more expensive than San Antonio.
Atlanta is 49% more expensive than San Antonio.
Denver is 39% more expensive than San Antonio.
Salt Lake City is 30% more expensive than San Antonio.
Sacramento is 47% more expensive than San Antonio.
Milwaukee is 11% more expensive than San Antonio.

My selling point when moving would be, can I overcome the costs with a higher salary. In each of the cities listed, I could easily.

[dvlpr]

Originally Posted by V3rtigo

it funny that people are complacent with their low salaries. no other city that i have lived in would this be tolerated. my work and my deliverables are worth X dollars. having cheaping housing does not negate my worth or make the going rate X-30%.

Interesting idea. But have you ever tried to buy a house/apartment in NYC, SF, or Chicago? From strictly an economic point-of-view, it would be much easier to live on $100k/year in SA than on $150k/year in any of those places (or $50k in SA vs. $75k in other places). Actually, many of my friends from "bigger" cities moved here precisely for that reason. The prospect of buying a nice place in these cities was a $800k+ proposition. You can live very, very well in SA for less than half that amount.

Don't misunderstand me. I believe that those cities offer a quality of life that is well worth the additional expense. Still...if you're thinking about buying a home...SA (and TX in general) is a pretty amazing value relatively speaking.

[V3rtigo]

Originally Posted by SweethomeSanAntonio

San Antonio has a respectable corporate base. Six F-500, would have been seven but At&T ceo wanted to move home. Cities like San Diego, Phoenix, Orlando, Miami have less.

Comapnies and the number of current openings in SA:

Valero - 7
Tesoro - 16
USAA - 24
Clear Channel - 6

so in a city of 2mil+ people, the 4 largest companies have a whopping 53 jobs. sounds great to me.

by the way, the last sentence was some more sarcasm...

[V3rtigo]

Originally Posted by dvlpr

Interesting idea. But have you ever tried to buy a house/apartment in NYC, SF, or Chicago? From strictly an economic point-of-view, it would be much easier to live on $100k/year in SA than on $150k/year in any of those places (or $50k in SA vs. $75k in other places). Actually, many of my friends from "bigger" cities moved here precisely for that reason. The prospect of buying a nice place in these cities was a $800k+ proposition. You can live very, very well in SA for less than half that amount.

Don't misunderstand me. I believe that those cities offer a quality of life that is well worth the additional expense. Still...if you're thinking about buying a home...SA (and TX in general) is a pretty amazing value relatively speaking.

i lived in SF and contracted in NY. it is easier to live on 100k here than 150k there, but thats not the disparity. in sf, fresh out of college, you can pull in 120k or more. 5 years experience, 180k. directors, etc. are looking at 400-500k. those jobs are few and far between in SA. the housing bubble has corrected some of the housing problems, hopefully it will drop further. yes, having an 800k shack in cali sucks, but at 400-500k, i would live in a shack in cali over a mcmansion here. 800-900k gets you on the pacific ocean with perfect weather every day.

and one more thing abou the salary disparity, i've also noticed that people who have moved here make a lot more money. i've spoken to several locals who become extremely angry when they find out what the guy in the desk next to him is making, just because that guy knew to ask for more and not be happy making the typical low SA wage. trust me, i would be happy for everyone if the salaries were raised across the board, but unfortunately, people are complacent.

[dvlpr]

Originally Posted by V3rtigo

i'll play along.

Dallas has a ton more jobs. Ditto with Houston. If you lose your job in SA, good luck replacing it with something comparable. You'd lose your house, like the record numbers in SA are right now.

Charlotte has the highest percentage of people with Graduate degrees and the highest salaries. I'd take 68% more expensive housing for double the salary.

Phoenix is not expensive any more. A friend just sold her 300K (2 years ago) house for 125k. salaries are higher there.

Denver has a ton of jobs. SA does not.

SLC. It's not fair to compare a city where people would choose to live purely because of religion.

Sacramento has Bay Area salaries. Trust me, that makes up for any cost differences.

Don't know much about Orlando, Cleveland, Milwaukee, or Atlanta.

My selling point when moving would be, can I overcome the costs with a higher salary. In each of the cities listed, I could easily.

Yeesh. Lot's of, uh, "interesting" contentions here. Are you having a hard time finding a job in SA, or do you just believe that everyone else is?

Dallas & Houston do have more jobs, in terms of total numbers. They're huge metro areas, so that shouldn't really be a suprise. But on a percentage basis, they have higher unemployment than SA (plus, you have to live in Dallas & Houston.....and who wants that?).

Denver has "tons of jobs"? Even though it's unemployment rate is 38% higher than SA?

Charlotte has been hit pretty hard with the downturn in the finance/banking world; they're currently at 11.5% unemployment (more than double SA's). Your belief that you can "double your salary" just by moving there is laughable.

[dvlpr]

Originally Posted by V3rtigo

i lived in SF and contracted in NY. it is easier to live on 100k here than 150k there, but thats not the disparity. in sf, fresh out of college, you can pull in 120k or more. 5 years experience, 180k. directors, etc. are looking at 400-500k. those jobs are few and far between in SA. the housing bubble has corrected some of the housing problems, hopefully it will drop further. yes, having an 800k shack in cali sucks, but at 400-500k, i would live in a shack in cali over a mcmansion here. 800-900k gets you on the pacific ocean with perfect weather every day.

and one more thing abou the salary disparity, i've also noticed that people who have moved here make a lot more money. i've spoken to several locals who become extremely angry when they find out what the guy in the desk next to him is making, just because that guy knew to ask for more and not be happy making the typical low SA wage. trust me, i would be happy for everyone if the salaries were raised across the board, but unfortunately, people are complacent.

Can't argue about the weather, especially with this brutal start to summer!

I've noticed that some folks on this board don't believe that there are high-paying jobs in this city. Obviously, we don't have as many of them as anyone would like, but there are plenty of people in this town that make really good money.

Oh - and you don't have to live in a McMansion just because you live in SA. This city has the greatest concentration of historic architecture of any city in Texas.

[V3rtigo]

i have no problems finding a job wherever i am. my wife has hired 30+ people in the past 6 months so i hear a lot of info about how long people have been unemployed and the crap jobs theyve taken to make ends meet. the unemployment rate might be low here, but thats because of the types of jobs available here. your typical techie/carpenter/whatever is not likely to take an $8 job in those other cities. here, we didnt have many of those to begin with.

doubling my salary is not laughable. go do some research on what jobs pay in other cities.

as for the architecture, there is some, and we looked at several, but what it boiled down to is that i wouldnt feel comfortable having my wife walk alone in any of those neighborhoods. thankfully we didnt get a mcmansion though but we didnt get the style of house we wanted.

Originally Posted by dvlpr

Yeesh. Lot's of, uh, "interesting" contentions here. Are you having a hard time finding a job in SA, or do you just believe that everyone else is?

Dallas & Houston do have more jobs, in terms of total numbers. They're huge metro areas, so that shouldn't really be a suprise. But on a percentage basis, they have higher unemployment than SA (plus, you have to live in Dallas & Houston.....and who wants that?).

Denver has "tons of jobs"? Even though it's unemployment rate is 38% higher than SA?

Charlotte has been hit pretty hard with the downturn in the finance/banking world; they're currently at 11.5% unemployment (more than double SA's). Your belief that you can "double your salary" just by moving there is laughable.

[lemonfresh]

Originally Posted by V3rtigo

Phoenix is not expensive any more. A friend just sold her 300K (2 years ago) house for 125k. salaries are higher there.

Oh my god. You just didn't actually post that, did you?

[lemonfresh]

V3rtigo, your argument is weak to begin with and all you do is weaken it with every post.

[V3rtigo]

Originally Posted by lemonfresh

V3rtigo, your argument is weak to begin with and all you do is weaken it with every post.

its not my argument. i'm quoting 3rd party published facts. you Moderator cut: 5 words, substitute "shouldn't" try to argue against facts. this city is not immune to the woes of the economy. the salaries are embarrassingly low. this city has way too many small-town thinkers. those are FACTS.