Leaving Bay Area

No matter where you live there are compromises…The typical middle class track house in the suburbs is unrealistic in crowded cities…People that live in Honolulu all want a beach house…most live in cramped apartments. …SF preserves it quaint Victorians, which make lousy chopped up apartment buildings. .better to allow midrise and highrise condos with underground parking garages…Peninsula cities should allow 3 stories and granny units, not forcing the preservation of land wasting one story crap shack bungalows and Eichlers

Maybe you should respect their decision to move to a place that is better for them… With the same income even? Sounds like they did well.

Sucks just as much. I have a friend in the burbs, husband commutes in. Same concerns as we have here–balancing commute distance, good schools, and housing price.

The day I stepped foot in SV, heard many folks say that housing is too expensive and have left. Has anything fundamentally changed that make this time is different?

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The only US city that can rival Bay Area is Seattle. We need keep an eye on the competition.

When did you step foot in SV?

2002

Seattle has bad traffic, high prices and bad weather…not that competitive

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That “Median Max Engineer Salaries” metric is interesting… Seattle tops out at 150K, and SF is like 175K? Delta is small, and house price in SF is more than double that of Seattle.

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No doubt Seattle is more affordable. .Question is, is having a nicer house more important than bad weather…Can always upgrade the house, can’t change the weather…

Yeah, rain (lots of it) is not my cup of tea. I will take cold/foggy (but dry) any day…

Have you ever looked at houses in, say, lower Westchester county? For a similar train commute time, the prices beat the socks off Bay Area suburbs. That’s the last time I checked, though, and of course I have no idea what the quality of specific neighborhoods are.

SF doesn’t have great weather, and it’s where the young people want to live. Seattle is light years ahead of SF in terms of being pro development. They don’t have a bunch of hippies protesting gentrification. It doesn’t take years and years to get approval to redevelop land. They are building out their light rail, and their buses are clean. There’s actually public/private partnership happening to build out public transit instead of the Bay Area model of companies funding their own busses. It’s much cheaper to live in good schools. I know multiple people that have made the move. Some stayed with their current employer and others changed employers. All make at least the same they made in the Bay Area. There’s no state income tax, homes are ~40% cheaper, and property taxes are only 1% of assessed value. It makes me wonder where California spends all the money collected in taxes.

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hahahahaha

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No bad weather. Just bad clothing!

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Rain can ruin your bay especially Seattle 40 -50 degree rain 6 months a year…Cabo is more appealing.

This is the big question in my mind. I used to happily pay similar rates in Norway, with very tangible benefits. In CA, what do you get? Crap public transportation, mediocre public schooling, and…?

Here is the breakdown:
https://www.ftb.ca.gov/individuals/taxReceipt/index.shtml

70% is in healthcare and education. I don’t get it. I already pay for healthcare via my employer (or they pay), and I thought the reason I paid ~20K a year in property tax was for the schools (not to mention the fundraisers). So what is going on? Can someone explain this to me?

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You’re supposed to be thankful that you’re fortunate enough to be able to pay that much in taxes.

Michigan was 4% income tax, 6% sales tax, and property taxes were half what I pay here. They are higher as a percent of home value, but homes are worth so much less.

Love Norway, Lillehammer is a hilarious show…But it has no relevance to life in Cali…We pay big taxes, but trying to make the system efficient or responsive is almost impossible due to an unmanageable political mess…We are not an efficient homogenous small oil rich country…Our state government is more concerned about collecting revenue and being politically correct than actually solving anything…

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I contemplated the move to Seattle several years ago and it’s still something that I think I might do in the future, just not now due to various circumstances.