9/10 http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/30/pf/city_county_rankings
San Jose #1 as the Richest American city with a pop of +250K
Here is my question. How the hell do you survive with an income of
$71,765? You can't even buy 1/2 of a house in San Jose with that
type of income. $71,765 is the median, so clearly someone's making
less than that. I don't understand how people survive in SJ. It's
crowded and it's a total dump. Housing is ridiculously expensive
and single women there are incredibly few and ugly.
\_ http://wealth.mongabay.com/tables/100_income_zip_codes-20000.html
\_ you know, houses weren't always that expensive.
\- there are plenty of people who are say retired school
teachers in san jose who live in a ~$1m house they
paid <$50k for in 1970s and some of them bought extra
real estate and some point and now own a $3million apt
bldg ... and they live modestly too and done have any kids
left to send through college. they have very different
income:wealth ratios compared to the +$200k income
yuppie couple still paying off law school loans who take
$5k vacations and drink $40 wines every night.
\_ And the school teachers live comfortably and own lots of
^school teachers^school teachers who got here in the late 60s
land, and truly understands the term "money working for
you", all thanks to this thing called ***Proposition-13***.
Look, inflation is above 2%, housing inflation is well
above 2%, and if your tax incr is just 2% then it's a
sure thing that most smart and entrepreneurial people would
want to buy land, lots and lots of land.
\_ Sure, real estate is a good investment - mostly
because if you rent it out it is 'free'. That combined
with leverage can make a lot of money. However, in
terms of returns, real estate historically has
returned at about the level of inflation. Stocks do
much better historically.
\_ rents are no where near the mortgage costs in the SF
area and many other cities. if rent could cover a
mortgage then no one would claim we're in a bubble.
that people will pay for something that they're not
living in and cant be rented out to recoup the rent
costs means they can only recover if the sale price
goes up and then sell. then those people having to do
the same, etc. of course if the buyer is going to live
in the house and can cover it thats fine but that isnt
the topic here.
\_ Most landlords are covering the mortgage with
rent. The last 4 years are an anomaly.
\_ how did oakland become #11? all the engineers who can't afford sj?
\_ Looking at the chart, I sense the numbers are totally meaningless.
By limiting it to cities with populations of over 250,000 people
they are excluding rich enclaves. On the other hand, most large
cities are so diverse that they'll never make the list. Witness
the absence of LA, Chicago, and NYC, which are probably the
wealthiest cities in the country. When NYC (or even Santa Barbara)
does not make the list and Riverside does you know your stat is not
too useful. The county numbers are even more useless, since
counties are often even more diverse. I was driving through Santa
Barbara once with friend from out of state. As we went through
a Latino area they said "I thought Santa Barbara was expensive".
I said "It is! Lots of these little houses are worth $650K or
more". Easterners especially equate expensive with 'white upper
class with the exclusion of blacks and Latinos'. So there
forms this structure whereby they have wealthy white
cities/counties and poor minority cities/counties, with the
glaring examples of the ubercities like NYC. That's what these
figures reflect more than anything, IMO. In CA, to the extent
glaring counterexamples of the ubercities like NYC. That's what
these figures reflect more than anything, IMO. In CA, to the extent
that phenomenon exists, it is restricted to the elites who move
into cities like Tiburon and not to middle class slobs making
\_ I strongly agree with you that these numbers are meaningless.
Mostly, I think they reflect the difference in definition of
"city" of the east vs. the west. Many eastern counties are smaller
in square miles than many western cities. Hell, I think the
entire state of CT is smaller than san diego. Thus to even
look at the numbers and conclude that easterners live
farther from downtown is simply wrong. There are 169 towns in
ct, probably most of which have real downtowns.
\_ Yes, this is true, too. The cities there are constructed
differently. A good example is DC. Wealthy people live
in places like Bethesda (not only different city and county but
different state) and less affluent people live in their
own suburbs. It's a sort of gerrymandering whereby rich
people isolate themselves from the poor. It happens in
the West (e.g. Beverly Hills) but it is much less common
here. Cities like Santa Monica have $4 million houses a
few blocks from the homeless shelter.
\_ There are 4 million dollar homes a few blocks from homeless
shelters on the east coast also. They just define towns
differently, so that place a few blocks away is a different
town a lot of time.
\- ObPiedmont
\_ Tiburon is relatively impoverished, as these things go.
Belevedere just next door is quite a bit richer. And those
Marin towns aren't even in the same league as the big three
on the Peninsula.
\_ I just chose a town at random. It could have been Beverly
Hills or Atherton or even Orinda. Point is the same,
which is that not a lot of $70K income earners are buying
there.
only $70K per year. Further, are Anaheim, Oakland, and San Jose
considered wealthy cities?! I'd say they are not perceived to
be compared to their neighbors. It's probably that 250K cutoff
driving that. |
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