Nonsense. Most Googler engineers (more than 5% of the workforce) will be making at least $200k take-home after five years or so. This kind of salary can easily pay for a $1.5M home purchase. That won't buy you a four-bedroom in Chelsea, but it can buy you a reasonable home further out. And that's assuming no contribution from your spouse.

Now they may choose to rent, as I do, but that's because there are some big flexibility advantages to renting compared to buying.

$200k/yr can "easily" pay for $1.5m home purchase? The general rule-of-thumb for how big of a mortgage you can afford is in the range of 2-3x your gross income. [1][2][3]. You're talking about a staggering 7.5 multiple, assuming no down payment. Yes you can accrue a nice down payment after a couple years with that salary, but it's hard to make a huge dent in $1.5m.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/05/030905.asp

[2] http://time.com/money/collection-post/2792048/how-much-shoul...

[3] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/buy-a-home-for-2-5x-your-sal...

200k take-home in NYC is about 350k gross. And why on earth would we assume no down payment? Surely we have been saving some fraction of our income during the years prior to buying.

"Googlers, hardly the gilded class" is a silly argument. SWEs can afford to buy in the Bay, and can in NYC too. $250-300k is enough to afford a $1.5m place.

Yes, many Google employees aren't engineers, and not everyone working there gets paid like one.

As long as you assume all things remain constant for the next 30 years which is an exciting assumption.

Friend just bought a $400,000 one-bedroom co-op in Midtown East. He makes a low six-figure salary, and will have to be judicious about his spending for a few years. New York isn’t the Bay Area—we build supply to meet demand.

I don’t understand - are you giving this near half-million single bedroom as an example of affordability?

Well if your income is $133k/yr, then it would fit in the 3x annual income rule for housing affordability, which the typical sr eng at google now exceeds.

It’s one room! I think that 3x rule is supposed to be about space for perhaps a family and other normal requirements for most adults. Not digs for a twenty-year-old.

It's also in Midtown East.

Also, one bedrooms are luxurious. Advice for anyone looking for an apartment in Manhattan: don't waste your time on one bedrooms, look for studios. You pay an unnecessary premium for the extra wall, and it ultimately just makes the space less usable. You can find larger, nicer, better located studios for much less than you'd be paying for a one bedroom.

Also, never have a family

> Also, never have a family

People, Americans particularly, overestimate the space a human being needs to thrive. I know several families who are healthy and happy in two- and three-bedroom apartments. They pay reasonable rents uptown or a forty minute subway ride out of Manhattan in Jersey or Queens. That’s much better than almost any metropolis, where sprawl makes the density gradient gentler and thus commute times between cost zones longer.

The thread has been about buying one bedroom/studio places for only $400k. If you are planning on starting a family that seems like a really bad idea.

I mean, maybe?

Firstly, to be perfectly frank, you can get 2, 3 years into your first kid before a studio makes a practical difference over a 2-bedroom apartment. For the first chunk, keeping the crib in your bedroom for ease of care is pretty normal, and once the kid is mobile chances are they're going to be sneaking into your bed to sleep at every opportunity anyway.

Secondly, the average length of ownership of a house in the US is like 7.5 years. A lot of people never make it through their 30 year mortgage because they either move for work, their circumstances change and they need more or less house or their income changes and they can/can't afford a nicer, bigger house than they could before.

So living in a studio well into baby #1 before deciding to trade up to a larger place when it's time to look for the "good" schools or baby #2 is on the way is kind of a perfectly normal way to go about things?

This is honestly offensive, I grew up in manhattan, and tons of my friends growing up lived in very small spaces (families sharing studio apartments). The key difference is that the amenities that most people in the suburbs have within their own homes are available in shared spaces all around you.

It's also in Midtown, which is likely not an ideal situation for a family. Check Queens or Brooklyn with more ideal family situations (and still reasonably short commutes) and you'll get a lot more space for less money

Affordability should still mean that you get value for your money, not that any surplus wages disappear in the pockets of the land owning class.

> it would fit in the 3x annual income rule for housing affordability

Could you please expand on this rule? Where did it come from? Feels like impossibility in some countries.

It’s a oft-repeated guideline in the US that you should spend no more than 1/3 of your income on housing (rent, mortgage + property taxes + ....).

It’s not a law and it certainly doesn’t apply to all people or locations. Some lenders might use it as a heuristic though.

Good point. For instance, the Googler in question probably doesn't own a car.

Yes, and those countries have really bad housing affordability!

3x is a benchmark of what is affordable, not a law or a specific financial lending regulation.

There are people making a third of that where I live who have four bedroom houses with garages and pools.

This isn't true in the slightest, the only people who will be this way are those who are unwilling to make sacrifices in terms of quality or amount of space within a certain location, in return for the desire to own. The regional home prices in the bay area are more than twice what they are in the greater NYC region.

Way more than 5% of my coworkers at Google NYC own their own place.

You're also off on the stats for the Bay Area as well.

My plan right now is to rent in the city, buy a cabin or getaway house upstate for 200k and move there when I get older. Hard part is just finding somewhere that doesn't suck.

Bearsville, Woodstock, Saugerties. The Rondout in Kingston has a certain charm but may be impacted by flooding.

Downside is you need a car or take one of the Peter Pan buses. Could Amtrak to Rhinecliff and taxi.

A lot actually live outside of NYC (not just Manhattan): Westchester, New Jersey, Long Island, etc

95% of Googlers in NYC who insist on living in Manhattan. Hell, not even then.

Curious why I got downvoted here. I was disagreeing with the post I was replying to. Did I come across in the opposite direction?

I was attempting to make the point that this statement would only possibly be true for those who insisted on living in Manhattan, and that it isn't even true for that segment.