We moved to Utah where the tech scene is actually quite strong, and the cost of living is significantly less. We bought an 8k sq ft house for the price of many 1,500 sq ft town homes we had been putting offers in on in California.

It can be such a rat race down there, it is refreshing to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Life exists outside of The Valley, and it happens to be a pretty darn good one (and affordable!) :)

I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah for 11 years. Needless to say, I got out five years ago the first chance I got. If you’re not into winter sports, the weather is shit. You get 10 months of bitter cold and snow every day. You have to dig your car out of the snow all winter and drive on horrible conditions with clueless drivers who seem to forget how to drive in snow every year. Spring and fall are one or so week each and you get rain storms the whole time. Then you have 6 or so weeks of scorching hot summer where it’s unbearable to be outside.

I never ventured outside of the metro area and no one was ever overtly racist but boy if you are not a white Mormon you will stick out, you will be judged and questioned. Most Utah Mormons are conditioned to be nice so on the surface they appear so but they do judge and single out people who don’t belong.

I visited SF over a weekend and was instantly surprised about how accepting everyone was. It just seemed like I fit in and belonged. I’d tolerate much worse conditions than “low income in SF” than be “rich” in Utah.

Are you a minority race and if so would you say that Utah is friendly to non-whites ?

Just FYI, all the Indian folks I knew moved out of Utah. Not sure if it is because of race or nom Christian religion

Didn't hear about this before. Were they in the suburbs or salt lake city? Salt lake city now has lots of Indians.

Utah is pretty friendly overall on account of the high Mormon population.

Metro-SLC is pretty liberal and tolerant. The further out you go, the more ignorance you'll encounter.

My bigger issue is the beer. 2.5% whatttttt?

Actually friendly or just polite?

Actually friendly, like go out of the way to help you friendly.

One counter-point: not sure if this is still the case, but a few years ago Provo, Utah (just south of SLC) used to have the highest per capita usage of anti-depressants. Interpret that how you will :P

I am not a minority race, but Utah is becoming quite diverse. My personal opinion is that it is a welcoming place and is a great place for families to raise their children.

Utah is a lovely place, but this stuck out to me

> Utah is becoming quite diverse

Was curious about this, as it didn't seem to fit my limited observation from my last few trips to Utah (which is again, a lovely place). The Census bureau government says Utah is >91% "white only":

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/49

Which is likely more diverse than Utah was in the past, but could not be fairly compared to California as "quite diverse" given the same number for California is 73%:

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/06,49

That is a fair point. Instead of the word "quite", it might have been better to use the word "more".

Federal numbers count hispanics as white. California was 42.3% non-hispanic white as of 2010, Utah was at 80% in 2013.

Would love to move to Utah for couple of years one day, just because of skiing.

Don't forget the mountain biking!

Hopefully 8k sqft was a typo. I feel like 2500sqft is too much sometimes.

It's Utah. You know, Mormons. The bit about them having huge families is real.

With one kid or wife per bedroom and 1000sqft for kitchen/dining/whatever, you have room for 28. (4 wives, 6 kids each) Making the non-bedroom part of the house more luxurious and adding a bathroom to each bedroom, you have room for about 16. You can hit that even without polygamy.

He may be counting a large garage. That could be 1000sqft by itself, so knock off 3 or 4 bedrooms.

Mormons aren't polygamous. Please stop spreading this narrative that you know isn't true.

Only 95% of Mormons are in "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints".

Fundamentalist Mormons are still Mormon, and yes, 10,000 to 30,000 of them are in plural marriages.

Also, note that I didn't mean it as an insult, and I quite like large families. Even the mainstream Mormons tend to have large families.

Jesus, was hoping someone else caught that too. I have a 2300sq ft for a 4 bed two bath, wouldn't want much bigger at all!

What's the power bill?

I have considered doing the same but seems like you almost have to buy a house that big or live in a non-desirable area.

Another good thing about not living in the bay area is you dont have to pay pg&e rates for electricty. Us avg is 0.12/kwh while pge quickly gets up to +0.30/kwh

I'd have to look at the bill but I think that it averages out to be around $250-350/month for electricity.

800 square meters????

This is something I still don't get, even as an American. I live by myself in a 950 sq ft (~88 sq m) apartment, and that's already more space than I know what to do with. Sure, add a spouse and 2 or 3 kids and my space needs would increase, but I can't imagine needing 8-10x as much space, ever. Maybe 3x, at most 4x.

I grew up in a fairly large house (I don't recall the size, but two floors, 6 bedrooms, kitchen, formal dining room, living room, family room, 3 bathrooms, basement filled with junk; so, fairly large -- semi-rural Maryland, where space was cheap in the 80s/90s). My parents weren't hoarders, though they did accumulate stuff. After my sister and I moved out and my mom passed away, my dad lived in a giant house by himself, couldn't maintain it, and also felt like he couldn't move because the house wasn't in good enough shape to sell.

I just don't get this need for more and more space. It just encourages you to buy more stuff that you don't need, and takes more time/effort/money to maintain. I hesitate to "tell people how to live", but this keeping up with the Joneses attitude is a component of what causes cost of living to rise and is ultimately a zero-sum game.

I know people who don't have the discipline to keep spaces open, but large open spaces can be wonderful (and easy to maintain). The tough thing is maintaining large arrays of intricate special-purpose rooms which you don't need and which are full of stuff that makes it feel small nonetheless.

Space is wonderful for doing things like dancing, hosting guests, exercise, communal/family cooking (sprouting many kilograms of chickpeas, fermenting 40+qt of kimchi).

There are certainly times I regret having so much space for our kids to clutter, but we ultimately bought it as a place for us to grow into. My wife is expecting our 6th child later this year, and our house has 6 bedrooms. So in that sense, it isn't insanely lavish, but a comfortable place to raise a large family.

Also, as the commenter below mentioned, we do enjoy hosting people for parties and family get-togethers. We spend a good amount of energy and time and money on these activities that are for the enjoyment of other people.

Wealthy people often build massive palaces to honor their own greatness and inflate their egos, I can assure you this is not one of those homes :).

A lot of it isn't "need" for more space; rather, it's that all that is available. I've been living in the same 3.3k sq-ft house for 10 years. There's simply nothing smaller in my area. OK, one retired farmer down the road has a house that's about 1200 sq ft, but that's by far the smallest house.

It's a pattern I found recurring as we were looking at houses: unless you wanted a 100 year-old house (which could be a good or bad idea), there was simply nothing under 3,000 sq ft on the lot sizes we were looking at.

If you were a Mormon living in Utah, you might need space for three or four wives, not to mention lots of children...

I'm sure the OP purchased such a large house for efficiency... as their children mature they can just start their own families in various parts of the vast, cavernous manor.

Yes, I guess 8,000 sq ft translates to 743 meters :)

8k sqft is ridiculous even by American standards. For a family of 5, I'd call about 2400 sqft (~220 sqm) normal, maybe a bit overkill.

Probably around 180 square meters plus 50 square meters garage, driveway and garden?

Edit: duh, it's really 800 sqm.

My reaction exactly. Americans use way too much, to be honest. 8k sq ft is more than enough for like 7+ families.

After living in 'cramped old london' for over a decade (still), I can only dream of the luxury of 800 Sq.m. Where do I sign up? :) fitting multiple people/families into anything less is just bad living standards as far as I'm concerned. You work hard all day long to go back to such a depressing existence. Time to start living fellow HN'ers!

Eh, grass is greener. Some of us worked hard to live in lively, crowded European cities. The suburbs have their downsides. For me, it was crushing loneliness.

You live in the centre when you're young and single and changing jobs. You move to the suburbs when you have married, settled down and want kids, a garden, good local schools etc.

When the kids have moved out, you can downsize to that retirement place in Spain... except that may not work as well after the UK leaves the EU.

Well, I don't live in the UK, so there's that. I am expecting a child within a few months and hope to stay in the city; we'll see how it pans out.

Which is why Londoners move to suburbia...

..and always dream of places like Spain (or better yet "Texas")

Time was Greater London was suburbia.

Does that make Luton, St Albans etc. the 'suburbs' of London?

Suburbia started at Aldgate, which is just outside the city walls ;-)

A good rule of thumb is (or was): Does it have black cabs?

Or time to charge more and get bigger

Yeah.. I mean, space is nice, but in homes of 800 or so square feet I've been pretty happy.

How much carbon is emitted cooling and heating an 8k sq ft home in Utah? How far do you have to drive to do things?

Our utility bills certainly have gone up, which we aren't thrilled with. We are considering some solar panel options to help bring our carbon footprint down. Being fully remote, I try to make up for that by not driving very much :)

Overall, the valley we live in has pretty much everything we could want, from a retail perspective.

A nice small-town grocery store about 3 mins away, and larger national chains further down the road.

Yeah, seems fairly ridiculous. You'd spend your life vacuuming.

That was actually an onerous task at first. But I bought my wife a Neato robot vacuum a few years back and it has been such a nice thing to have.

Btw, I run https://twitter.com/SLCTechEvents which is a great way to plug in and see what's going on around Salt Lake City.

Not sure if it will be helpful to you but I hope so. :)

I assume 8k is the lot size (~0.2 acre)? I had a similar experience moving to Colorado from CA.

I have to ask: 8000ft²? What are you doing with all that space? Are you Mormon?

Just remember that you'll want to select a city that has a decent economy and tech scene in the event that you lose your job and need to take a location dictated position.

So long as you and your partner are both making 6 figures you should be able to afford any of the following cities:

- Seattle

- Portland

- Austin

- Denver

I would strike Seattle from this list. Just over the last couple of years, home prices are up 50% or more. It's not SF/SV prices but it's 80-90% there...unfortunately. It is, however, easier to build in Washington, so hopefully this will be a bubble and not a permanent trend.

I wouldn't get too comfortable with the "easier to build" bit, either - Seattle has a strong far-left presence, and as we've seen in SF it's very easy for homeowners to convince them (against all reason) that more housing means higher prices and get them to start blocking new construction across the board (whoever thought up the "100% affordable or not at all!" bit is a genius at playing progressives like a fiddle, and is probably making a killing on a ton of SF property). Meanwhile, the office buildings that are actually luring more people to the city and driving prices up keep getting built, because they're not in the neighborhoods that NIMBYs care about.

I'd leave Seattle on the list.

In SF/SV, the high housing prices extend far enough out from SF to cover almost everything that is in reasonable commute distance. Same for Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, and San Jose.

In Seattle, prices are high or getting there in Seattle, Redmond, and Bellevue, but there is still reasonable housing between Seattle and Tacoma, and across the Sound over in Kitsap county. If you can get a work schedule that lets you miss the heavy commute hours it should be reasonably possible to get affordable housing without too bad a commute.

true this. Average sale price in seattle metro for march was just shy of 700k. The city is trying to be pretty aggressive about building but if you want to live in the city you are going to pay a lot. That being said, if you dont mind commuting you can get a nice place that is affordable(30 minutes commute to the city).

>So long as you and your partner are both making 6 figures

That's a pretty high bar for cost of living. Here in Charlotte, NC, I make half of that, and could support two people without any difficulty.

I get the feeling that tech people no longer have reasonable understandings of cost of living. I live in the PNW and could keep my current nice standard of living on a $60k salary (as a single person). I cannot think of a scenario where I would need two six figure incomes unless I really ramped up spending (private school, nicer car, nicer house).

Yeah. There's definitely a culture tax in the NW. I can freely enjoy the virtues of legal cannabis, frequent the best coffee shops in the world, and hike the glacial peaks all in the same day. To me that's worth the cost.

In Charlotte, I'm 2 hours away from the Appalachian mountains, and can easily get good coffee.

I wouldn't consider legal marijuana worth $100k a year, personally.

> Portland

Rents in Portland are skyrocketing (I had friends whose landlords were pulling out 30% rent increases). I went from Portland to Oakland and my rent isn't that much more.

My brother is moving in from Portland with me in Pittsburgh. He eventually wants to own a house, but that's not possible out there, since he works in a bookstore. He sometimes would complain about Californians moving north, and driving up real estate. Pittsburgh is vastly more affordable.

You can still buy a house in Portland for $500k. I live here. Bought in 2015. It's more expensive in 2017, but not 100% more. Once 1000sqft houses hit a $1mm average Portland will be too expensive. Until then we're doing just fine.

As a point of reference, you can buy a new 3,000+ sq ft house on 5+ acres of land just 30 minutes outside Minneapolis for that!

Not impressed.

Sure, compared the the Midwest or South it's not great, but compared to other west coast cities it's not bad. Portland is cheaper than the bay area, Seattle, LA, and San Diego. It has good culture, great nature, and a mid-sized & growing tech sector.

I dunno, developers were snapping up lots in our hood in Albina for 750, demoing them to lower the tax burden, and letting them sit empty to appreciate. Long term residents who had been renting for 30 years were getting chased out and moving to the numbers... those don't seem like great situations.

> moving to the numbers

I lived in Portland for six years and never once heard this expression and yet I know exactly what you mean.

20 years ago = 57th is bad

10 years ago = 82nd is bad

Now = 122nd is bad

I count myself lucky to live West of 82nd.

That was the same with the Upper East/West side of manhattan, (although truncate the timeframe by 1/2 and going N/S instead of E/W).

Still not as bad as Seattle, though here the rental market has started to slow, while the house market is super hot.

I wonder how many couples make six figures. What is the percentage of population with 350k combined income that are not business owners.

And can both move and find jobs in a new city at once.

I mean, my COMBINED income with my partner is around $160k. This isn't a whole lot of money in a large city, and especially not with children.

Most of southern New Hampshire is within commuting distance of Boston - plus there are no income taxes. Housing is a little pricey, but not compared to Bay Area prices. A 200k+ household income would let you live like kings.

I left New Hampshire a long time ago. It's quite boring.

There are a number of people here in Bend who want more space and a smaller town. It's getting expensive here too, but hopefully there's the political will to not repeat all of the mistakes of San Fran, Boulder and other places. I certainly do my share of talking to people like city councilors when I can.

If anyone's up here visiting, I'll happily buy you a beer - or whatever you prefer, but... there's lots of beer here.