> "homes that can be afforded at $100k salary"

There are many places throughout the south, midwest and northeast with decent job markets and dirt cheap housing. The mortgage on my 1800 sq foot house is nearly a third of the cost of my tiny one bedroom back in Seattle. The cost of the entire house is a tenth of a house in the Bay Area.

I am fortunate to work remotely but when deciding where to live I wanted to be able to afford to keep this roof over my families' head even if I didn't have a Bay Area/Seattle gig. I think the biggest obstacle may be coming up with enough cash to secure the financing in the first place, and for that I am grateful to have lived and worked in a tech hub.

How does your total comp fare relative to Seattle? I’m living in downtown Seattle now working for Amazon. I’ve been here almost 8 years. My TC is north of $300K, but the mental strain this fucking company has had on me has me constantly on the edge. I’m thinking about leaving to join another FANG company or drop out of big tech all together.

My TC is significantly lower(half) but we aren't public and not a FAANG so.

Living in Seattle on two high incomes(maybe not relative to you, but still) and having no kids was amazing. Paid off about 80k of student loans in a short amount of time. However, the prospect of having a massive 500k-1m mortgage in a boom or bust town was just too much for me. Here, If the housing market flipped upside down and my house magically worth 0$ id still come out alright! It's that, plus I can afford my housing while working at Starbucks(exaggeration) that gives me peace of mind.

I will say though, if Seattle's housing market crashes I'd be back in a heartbeat. I miss the water and the mountains!

Also FWIW my company is remote first, and I get paid the same in Seattle as I do here.

Seattle is booming but I don't see that big of a bust coming, even though I kind of wish it would. I've lived here 25 years and people thought there would be a real estate bust in 2000 and again in 2008. It was only slightly down for housing in 2000 and in 2008 even some programmers lost their jobs. In my area in 2008 the 2 million dollar houses went down to 1 million for about 6 months, and then under a year later were back up to where they were. Less expensive houses didn't move as much % wise.

In 2008 it was systemically threatening, I don't see it happening this time. Yet, I'm a little bit like you, I am hoping prices will go down, because I want to buy a condo or 4 unit duplex as an investment and I've been waiting for prices to go down. For years ;-)

In Seattle there doesn't seem to be enough new housing to make prices go down on sale purchases. Unless Amazon goes down I don't see demand lessening. The only thing I see easing is apartment housing. And we need an easing so that people not in "the industry" an afford to live here. Theoretically more apts should lower prices for condos eventually. But it hasn't happened.

People I know who work remotely from the midwest for Bay Area/Seattle companies are ~200 TC when they would probably get ~400 if they moved.

Not who you asked, but it's almost guaranteed to be lower. It's extremely rare to be both remote and get paid at the prevailing salary of the company. That only works for companies that generally don't allow remote, as they don't have COL-adjusted salaries to worry about.

As an Amazonian that works remote, I have the same payscale as everyone else in Seattle.

1) Take this list of metropolitan areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic...

2) Remove most of the coastal cities (SF, NYC, Boston, Seattle, Portland, etc. etc.)

3) End up with a list of metros with decent paying jobs and not exorbitantly expensive housing

Remote work is becoming more "real" by the day, so it's certainly possible in the age of the internet to work remotely in a low cost location while making a salary competitive with a higher cost of living city like SF/NY/LA.

If you're in a technical job and an occupation that allows it, sure.

Plenty of machinists, auto mechanics, health care professionals and welders aren't gonna have much luck working from home.

They don't work in the CBD though, so being in housing walking distance to major transport options isn't important (and thus can work out cheaper housing options).

I do this and I want other people to know it's possible too.

I'm putting together a list of the best places to live for remote workers with families, hoping to turn it into a little website that you can filter by schools, available internet speeds, median house price, that sort of thing.

Hopefully it will help someone out there when there's more data.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X2JihFpA97EEAMz8kD-j...

How would one contribute to this?

Agreed, I want to contribute.

So I can direct people away from where I live, so the prices don't skyrocket.

Where I live, there is a concerted effort to do the same thing. For a long time people in the area have been trying to convince the world that our region is the best. Best beaches, best food, best beer, best outdoor activities, best mix of weather, best music, best quality of life.

And then we all saw what happened to Portland, Seattle, and Austin once the word got out and everyone knew about these "secret" cool cities. So now we keep our mouths shut and enjoy our beer and beaches without all the tourists and transplants.

Haha, for now it's just the spreadsheet like I mentioned in parent comment.

For now it's just the spreadsheet, (anyone can edit) but the website will be by done by Nov 11th.

That's the goal anyway, and then from there I could open source or just do weighted average input for people to rate their favorites w/ no login required.

It's early days.

Oh I totally agree. I'm doing this very thing: SF salary, live in Western MI.

But that's really only available for a small subset of the population.

On a team of 50 (all remote workers), I have four coworkers at my multi-national tech company who live in/around Grand Rapids. It might be more common than you think.

Problem is a lot of companies get smart and "pay by location". I've seen big cos from the Bay offering half the salary (before currency exchange) for workers in Vancouver.

Gitlab, for example. You can see the multiples in the json used for the salary calculator (eg. Vancouver 57.367 % of a SF salary): https://about.gitlab.com/salary/data.json

Nebraska has a higher factor than Vancouver :facepalm:

Angola 120.056?!

Meanwhile if you live at the Bermuda you can get more than if you lived in LA... I think they are just messing with us! lol

The solution is to not work for those companies.

> Problem is a lot of companies get smart and "pay by location"

I never saw any sense in that. Would they start paying you more if you later moved to a more expensive location?

I work freelance remotely for no country in particular and my current location is never a factor for prices.

The trick is usually to get a job locally in SF, do well for a couple years, and then ask to work remote.

And then just work for that company forever? What's the end-game?

Enjoy life outside of work? Look, I enjoy my work and it's pretty meaningful work that affects people in real ways.

But I work to live, not live to work. My job is a means to an end, that end being to have a fulfilling life that doesn't revolve around what I do for a living.

Because of that, I find the quest to climb the corporate ladder has lost it's appeal. I'm cool staying at my current, well-paying, work from home job until I retire. I don't want to be running a company, I want to be running my life.

Amen. You could also consider starting a small business if you want to stay lower key.

Corporate ladder does seem a bit... sad? But maybe some people like it! More power to them!

Cool thing about a small business is you can create a long term sustainable lifestyle that suits you. I like the philosophy of TJ Holowaychuk with Apex (created expressjs and a million other amazing things), super cool. At one point it was referred to as a “non startup”. Love that dude :-D

Nothing wrong with building a company up to an ipo either, that could be a blast depending on the people and context.

One could also work for a medium sized company. Build mission critical software, then maintain it.

I know a guy that has done this for a few companies and then moved onto consulting for them. Makes SV money in the midwest. Works whenever he wants, 99% of time remotely, and companies will sometimes wait if he has too much going on to do work for them.

The guy is living the life. So, I want to do the same.

I love this comment.

Work for yourself eventually?

All of these options people are presenting are not realistic for most workers. Contracting, starting your own company, and working at the same place for the rest of your life are generally not advisable (Or even doable!).

Yes I think a lot of people were thinking of working for Lehman Brothers until retirement, but then the company died.

This is a great goal for certain types of people with exceptionally high talent and resilience.

Small town America will have $500 / month for a 2-bedroom apartment, while paying medical-doctors $200k+ / year.

But you may be the only doctor around for 10s of miles. Which is why you'd be so valuable. I'm sure there are other $100k to $200k jobs that small towns need.

No, you won't get high-tech or programming in small-town America. But there's more to life than just the tech-field. Its easy to forget because we're mostly programmers in this website.

If you consider automation to be sufficiently tech-y, there's still plenty of jobs like those around, particularly in the rust belt. The people I knew in this area lived in small towns and got paid well enough to live in neighborhoods surrounded by medical doctors.

Part of the problem is these jobs don't have the sex appeal of SV tech so they aren't on people's radar or just not considered desirable because of the nature of manufacturing work.

the sweet spot in terms of arbitrage right now is: find full time employment at a high earning job in a major metro area, move far enough from that metro area to work remote while being able to come into the office a handful of times per month.

A three hour commute is easier when you only do it twice a week, or a few times a month.

If you want to be mind-numbingly bored, sure. Despite the cost of living in a city, I (and others who enjoy city life) would much rather pay to enjoy amenities like public transit and being able to walk to a bar.

I don't think its fair to say that living outside a city has to be boring. Many value and enjoy being among nature. My ex-coworkers who live in rural areas seem to have a good time on their quads, tending their gardens that sometimes approach small farms, hiking/biking, boating on the lake in summer, ice fishing in winter, hunting, camping, etc.

Your Friday night at a bar is their Friday night around a fire with their hounds.

>Many value and enjoy being among nature. My ex-coworkers who live in rural areas seem to have a good time on their quads,

Listening to an extremely noisy engine for hours on end is not my idea of "enjoying nature".

I've lived in rural areas. They generally suck, even for nature. In America, all the wooded land is "POSTED" (no trespassing), so you can't go there, and will probably be shot if you do; you have to find a park instead. If your rural house is located near a park, great, but otherwise you're out of luck.

I dislike bars, clubs, people in general.

I like outdoors, silence, beach.

I feel miserable around all the other "robots" in the city.

I feel decent enough in the suburbs with less people and more space.

I actually am thankful for folks who think living outside a major metro area is "mind-numbingly" boring. That means you'll stay in the city with all the other crazy people.

See, these low-effort insults work both ways!

Cool. And thanks for car-induced climate change. I can’t wait for the oceans to turn to acid so you can enjoy your homesteading fantasy.

"Estimates suggest that cities are responsible for 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, with transport and buildings being among the largest contributors."

https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/resource-effici...

A 3 hour commute each way is not easy even when you do it only twice a week

Round-trip

But my weekly commuting is less than 5 hours total. And I live in the Seattle area. I will add before I switched jobs to one on the same side of the lakes as I live on, it was 10 hours / week ;-)

Why isn't a 1 hour commute enough to find cheap land/housing?

At least where I'm at, those areas have already been built out at least twenty years ago. So unless you want to buy a McMansion, housing isn't cheap.

In the grand scheme of things, even $200K is not a lot of money. I made record this year (~$320K), but I end up saving it all. Can I afford to buy a home? Absolutely. Will I buy a home? Absolutely not. Let’s say I purchase an $650K home outside Seattle and commute to work. I still have a huge mortgage weighing on my shoulders and I could get wiped out if my employer let me go. Just not worth the risk.

Even in small towns $500 won’t get you much. A small, old, place in a marginal part of town.

It was walking distance from the local university + local hospital. My sister at the time was studying to be a medical doctor, so she needed to be close to those two spots.

There wasn't much else going on in the town aside from the university + hospital.

What kind of "small town" are we talking about? Most "small town"s I think of don't have universities. Maybe a community college for the whole county.

Well, its all relative ain't it.

Lets just say... Buies Creek, North Carolina. I've been to smaller towns, but I'd say population of 2,942 is small for most people. EDIT: Seems like prices may have gone up in recent years: I'm seeing $800 to $1000 on Rent.com, but there's still a listing or two for $600/month. Or maybe "word of mouth" is still king there.

Buies Creek is still reasonably close to the Raleigh metropolitan area. So this is still "somewhat suburban". I've visited my cousins in Coulee City, WA (Population 562), so I know what "actually rural" looks like too.

Jeeeez, rental prices in the States are INSANE.

I live in a dense urban area of ~1 million, on a tropical island. My 550 sqft apartment is ~$520. Hardwood floors, natural gas range and hot water, structure is proof against typhoons up to Category 5 (already experienced several), as well as earthquakes. Gigabit fiber optic internet @$35/month Speedtests around 550MB. Daily flights to practically every major city in Asia.

HOUSES, however, are insanely priced. The mortgage rates are low (1-3%, slightly less than 1% if you are a government employee) but the principal is stratospheric for the size of home and land you are buying.

That's pretty impressive. I didn't think there were many cities with such good infrastructure and cheap housing prices.

Yeah, that's my point. $500 is going to be sketch.

I'm actually pretty familiar with Buies...my mom's family all lives in Sanford and used to drive through there.

I work for a company that does rental listings so I look at these numbers a lot.

Yeah - 30 miles outside Raleigh isn't really a small town, IMO. It seems more like a suburb.

Nah, I'd say it counts. Population is under 5,000. It's very much NOT Raleigh.

There is a meaningful difference between Buies Creek, NC and Coulee City, WA.

Its less about population size and more about distance from the urban center. Coulee City is a 2-hour drive from a major city (Spokane), while Buies Creek is maybe a 40-minute drive from a major city (Raleigh).

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From MY perspective, both Buies Creek and Coulee City are rural.

But from the perspective of someone who lives in Coulee City, they probably think Buies Creek is suburban (since it is commute-distance from a city).

> From MY perspective, both Buies Creek and Coulee City are rural.

Yeah - for a person who is adjusted to only living in big cities then sure. However, Buies Creek is 30 minutes away from the downtown of a city. It is not rural by almost anyone else's definition.

It'd be like saying Atherton, CA is rural because it's a "smaller" town of 7k people. Ignoring that it's within a 8 million population metro and within 30-45 minutes of a 1 million population sprawling city (San Jose) and another 800k+ densely populated one (San Francisco).

> Yeah - for a person who is adjusted to only living in big cities then sure

I've never lived in any big city. Literally never. Not even close, always 20+ minutes away from the major city.

The thing is: suburbia itself is a network of smaller cities. Buies Creek has no "smaller city" near it. Buies Creek IS the city.

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To continue your Atherton example... Atherton is a suburb of ___Palo Alto___, not a suburb of San Fran. It is a brisk 4-mile bike-ride from Atherton to Palo Alto and back, you don't even need a car if you live in Atherton and commute to Palo Alto.

There's NOTHING walking or biking distance to Buies Creek, NC. Rural is more about "distance from nearest metro".

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Buies Creek NC is 40-minutes to Raleigh. This is rural by my experience. True, Buies Creek NC is "less Rural" for people who are used to 2-hour drives (Coulee City to Spokane), but a 40-minute drive away from a big city is Rural by most people's definition of Rural.

> Not even close, always 20+ minutes away from the major city.

lol - this is so disconnected from how anyone who lives a truly rural lifestyle would think of it.

20 minutes is a joke! Living multiple hours away is considered more standard.

By whom?

99% of the rural population isn't Eastern Montana.

Atherton is 7,000 people. It's also 30 miles outside of SF. Is that rural then?

No, because its 4-miles away from Palo Alto (city of 60k).

Rural is mostly about being far away from urban centers. Buies Creek NC is 30+ miles from its nearest population center (10k+ citizens). While Atherton is 4-miles away from its nearest population center (60k+ citizens in Palo Alto).

It has a population center of 20k within 15 miles. That was only one that I looked at. I didn't even have to try for that. I know nothing about that region but at an eagle eye's glance, it's obviously a suburb. It's part of an incorporated metropolitan area. It is, therefore, a suburb. It is not rural. Atherton isn't a suburb of Palo Alto btw. Palo Alto is the suburb.

Can I say how much you've moved the goal posts here? The original post was about some place that wasn't a "big city", not an isolated rural farm.

Housing in Texas is still very cheap comparatively. And salaries are $100k+ in tech. You can get a house in round Rock ( for example 1309 green terrace Dr is on the market for under $240k and it's a 2300 sqft house with a 2 car garage ) and it's an 18 minute drive from Apple and Facebook.

And no state income tax, though property taxes will take your breath away.

If you're looking for the best ROI where there are the highest SE salaries per living cost, check out: https://skilldime.com/blog/see-which-cities-pay-the-highest-...

There's many places that have great ROIs but Palo Alto isn't one of them: they're dead last.

Look for places that other people don't want to live. There are plenty of midwestern cities with senior developer jobs paying $100k+ and a low cost of living. My two bedroom condo 20 minutes from the downtown of a major metro area was $80k.

Do tell; which midwestern cities?

Can’t speak for others, but Indianapolis is one

Austin and Chicago definitely fit in that overlap. On top of that, when you compare SF to say, Cleveland, sure the median salary in SF could be 2x as high, but the median home price is close to 10x as high.

NIMBYism is going to absolutely choke the bay area over time, and newer generations of startups, VCs, and accelerators will wise up and broaden their horizons. The frequently parroted argument of "SF has the best pool of engineering talent" only goes so far.

Especially when quality engineers can move wherever they want, and Stanford and UC Berkeley aren't pumping out nearly enough CS grads to justify the absurd cost of operating for startups to stay there.

Or San Antonio. A few less jobs and a little lower pay than Austin but housing is way cheaper.

Mid 20s guy here; I lived in San Antonio a few years back for a year and spent every other night driving up to Austin, because there is basically nothing to do in downtown SA unless your only interests are drinking and food trucks.

"Household income" so a couple with incomes of say $75k and $25k would put you in the "low six figures."

If you find one, please share :)

Less sarcastically: is there an index for this kind of thing? E.g. cost of living for an equivalent neighborhood plotted against median salaries for tech jobs?

A large chunk of the midwest is like that. Housing is very cheap in the small-medium cities (and the big cities are still a lot cheaper than the coasts) and you'll usually find a few local software companies + satellite offices of bigger ones that pay in that range.

There are a few different rankings that sort of assess this.

There's a CompTIA "Tech Towns" report[1] from last year that does a good breakdown of salary + job opportunities vs CoL by city.

Anecdotally, I think it was right to rank Charlotte NC at the top. It's easy to find 100k+ salary jobs there if you have experience (avg is a bit lower though) - and median housing prices are like 230k. But the big downside is that you pretty much have to be cool with working for a bank.

[1] https://www.aitp.org/blog/aitp-blog/2018/10/23/tech-town-usa...

Dallas, TX is one - but as resident, I up and moved to Denver because .... ugh.

There are numerous cost of living calculators[0] online, but they basically just tell you how much more or less you need to earn to maintain your standards if you move to another city (not neighborhood level). Still, they're interesting.

[0] Here's one: https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator