[quote=AN][quote=spdrun]Again, housing expectations are purely local. Yeah, you will get a 3/1 or 3/2 for $600k instead of a 4/3 on more land. That doesn’t make it a worse place to live, just a DIFFERENT place to live.[/quote]
No, it makes it A LOT more expensive to live all the while, the pay is not that much more. Which was my point. BG tried to say pay was 40% more while housing is 0-25% more. I completely debunked that with DATA. Now, you’re saying a 3/1 or 3/2 is 80-100% more than SD while pay is 15-25% more? Yeah, no thanks. Which is why I didn’t move up there. I want to escape the rat race, not get deeper in it. If I move up there, my chance of retiring early diminish to almost 0. So, please explain to me why it’s entirely worth it for gen Y to get deeper in the rat race by living in an area that pay 15-25% while the same living standard would cost them 80-100% more?
I know the two places are different. Every place is different. There’s no point in debating that places are different because there are no two places that are the same. But, it does make it a worse place to live when it put you that much deeper in the rat race.
Now, back to my original statement, which is, the Bay area folks are more likely to have to pay this new tax. An average S/W Engineer 5 in Palo Alto makes around $143k in Palo Alto while a similar Engineer in SD makes $123k. Since SD is a lot cheaper to live, one can choose to live on a single income with $123k salary and still live very well. in the bay, it’s much harder to live on a single $143k income. So, if both spouses work, their combined income is $286k. They will be hit with this new tax. Even if the couple in SD decide to have double income. If they have similar income at $123k, their combined is only $246k, which means they still won’t be affected by this new tax. So, yea, I still stand by my original point that the W-2 folks in the bay area will be most affected by this.[/quote]
AN, I started a salary comparison of current local government openings for six bay area counties plus SD County. It is not yet complete. My 40% higher statement was from our local-government salary surveys of CA counties which had a population of over 1M (for bargaining-table use in ’94 and ’98) and four of the six bay-area counties had salaries of over 40% more than SD for the majority of identical classifications at that time. I’ll post it as soon as I identify the identical or nearly identical classifications for comparison.
I realize residential RE values have nearly quadrupled in several cities of least 2 bay-area counties since 1998.
I can’t put my finger on it here but I’m getting a bit of whining or lamenting from your posts. You stated you interviewed in SV for positions in your field (2-3 yrs ago? … not sure) and those positions paid ~25% more than SD at the time but you considered that your life would be a “rat race” there so elected not to pursue any of the positions further. You stated you want to retire “early.” You also state that you don’t wish your spouse to work very much (or work at all). I don’t know how many kids you have but if your spouse doesn’t bring in any income and you have no regular “passive income stream,” I don’t care WHAT kind of engineer you are, you will limit yourself in coastal CA counties to owning in the lesser-expensive areas.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, AN. From your former posts, my understanding is that you grew up in MM and you currently reside within a block or blocks of your parents. Your spouse is a nurse (RN or LVN). Nurses typically work in shifts, negating the need for expensive child care bills. I don’t see how you and your spouse would be hit with AMT if she worked FT as a nurse and you continued to hold your position.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live near other family members while raising your family and there’s nothing wrong with an educated mom (and her spouse) deciding not to use her education to bring in money while raising young kids. These are choices you have chosen for yourselves. For these choices, you forego positions (at least for YOU, anyway) of higher visibility at a (likely) company HQ where you may be able to move up faster or get many different kinds of experience, making you ultimately more marketable.
The choices you have made to not accept a higher-paying, higher-visibility SV position (2-3 yrs ago?) was due to how you perceive your family should be living. If you didn’t have a family (or had one AFTER you established yourself professionally in SV), you might have made a much different choice.
It might interest you to know that residential RE has doubled in value in the last three years in the SV communities you mentioned here. I personally toured mid-century ranch listings (avg 2300 sf) on ~1/2 AC lots in Saratoga (SC Co) in 2000. At that time, several cosmetic fixers could be had there for $270-$300K!
I don’t know when you purchased your MM residence but I highly doubt MM RE has gone up 400-600% since 2000, as parts of SV have.
Ask yourself why this is so.
I have a couple of questions for you, AN:
What was the price (approx or range) you paid for your MM property?
What year did you purchase it in?
Did it have all the BR/BA and same size garage it does now in it when you purchased it?
How much did you spend since you purchased your residence to get it like it is today?
How much do you think your residence is worth today?
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I’m not trying to “research” your property here. I don’t CARE. The point I’m trying to make is that even though MM has recently gone up in value, after costs of sale, you may or may not be able to recover your expenses of upgrade/remodeling upon sale today and still come out ahead.
OTOH, had you accepted a position in SV ~3 yrs ago and bought a 3/1 or 3/1.5 (as spdrun suggested) and installed another shower or added a master suite, etc, your property would now be worth at least 200% over what your paid for it AND sunk into improvements!
I understand MM is now very convenient to tech jobs in SD. But MM is by no stretch of the imagination comparable to SM or SC counties. I don’t need to tell you that MM is a flat mesa, an “irrigated desert” subject to heat. It is an “upzoned” part of a a very large city (SD) which currently has under construction big box stores and several very large multifamily projects. Due to SD’s “General Plan, this will continue until there is absolutely no space whatsoever left to build on in MM. I don’t have to tell you that it’s already very hard to parallel-park on many streets there.
OTOH, nearly ALL of the cities in SV (both SM AND SC counties) have been “downzoned” by their respective governments for many, many years. Nearly half of both of these counties is dedicated open space developed into state parks and county parks, including horse trails. Save for the infamous “Foster City” dredging project, there have been no CFD’s formed in SM County, nor will there ever be any. There are very few “big box” retailers (if any) in SM county. “Scaled-down” versions of big box retailers in SF are typically built below the street level. There are no “franchises” allowed (or business signs higher than ~30 feet) in 3-4 cities in Marin Co. Because of these “quality-of-life” differences (and more) MM is not comparable to those small cities in SV (near tech jobs) and never will be.
I’m not “condemning” MM here OR your life choices. But having lived and traveled extensively in the bay area, I see it as it was in the 60’s all the way to the present. Likewise, I see SD as it was in the ’70’s all the way to the present. I don’t believe one can fully understand what it is unless they also understand what it was. Comparing your life here to how it would be there (or would have been had you accepted a position and purchased a residence there) is comparing apples and oranges, IMHO.
