For sure. I mean, how much of the country it can spread to depends on how many people there are that can afford insane house prices, compared to how many that can't, and their distribution -- basically, as long as our society keeps moving to increase disparity in wealth and income, keeps moving to a bimodal distribution with the "rich" 10-15% on one hump separated by an ever-increasing amount of dollars from the rest.... the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer and the middle keeps shrinking... it'll keep eating up more and more of the country.

The only solution in aggregate is political, indeed. I didn't mean to suggest individual choice of where to live as a solution to the socio-political problem, but it can be an individual's solution to present situation that's making you miserable. Even that's not available to everyone, but just for those who can manage to get a job that pays well more than typical for the USA, even if not enough to live comfortable in Seattle. As long as you buy before the place "blows up", you're good even if it does. But if you want to reduce the chances the place you pick will "blow up" for a good long time, and are willing to live a place with less obvious regional amenities to do so, while there's no guarantee, we can all come up with places that seem like good bets. Des Moines maybe? Median house price $185K compared to $870K in Seattle.

I grew up in Des Moines, it's a rather nice place to live and raise a family. Great amenities, pleasant(relatively) traffic, good roads, decent airport, quality schools, etc... there's plenty of compelling reasons to live there - especially at that price.

Boring at times, but it's a lively enough city and you can still park in front your destination for free, which I've always appreciated.

I think this trend is because of two concrete factors:

Factor 1 - Very low interest rates allow people to borrow large sums.

Factor 2 - NIMBY-ism is in various degrees the de facto policy in most major cities, so very little new housing is built there.

Factor 1 might be ending as we speak, since the Fed is talking about changing policy.

Factor 2... I wish it will change, but don't have a ton of hope.

> NIMBY-ism

Bingo. If you want to be part of the solution, this is a good group of people: https://yimbyaction.org/2021/

Although, it must be said that building homes takes time, and getting the politics right takes time, so don't think of it as a short-term solution.

Even if 2 went away overnight and zoning didn't exist... it would take probably a decade for supply to catch up to demand.

Even if 2 went away and zoning didn't exist, you would still have the banal, inane mountains of bureaucratic spaghetti that slow the process down every step it can, so some of that would have to go as well. AFAIK, one of the main reason California has such a large housing shortage isn't NIMBYs or zoning laws, there's plenty of space after all, but ass-backwards regulations, and stupid politics.

Builders want to build. Let's make it easier for them to do that.

it's not just zoning that makes it hard to build--it's building codes and environmental regulations

Yeah, I think about half of the SF Bay Area is nature reserves.

Millions of people could live there.

that’s BS, it’s almost entirely single-family zoning and NIMBYs

This is exactly what has happened in NZ in the past few years. People flee the biggest cities, then those people push out others from the small cities and big towns, then even the little economically depressed towns 60 minutes from jobs are overpriced.

In 2021 there is not a single remote corner of this place that's affordable anymore.

Just a few days ago I saw stories coming out of Bloomberg insisting that Arkansas is the next Austin:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-04/arkans...

And of course there’s plenty of cities that were reasonable a couple years ago but are creeping up: Boise residents complain constantly about all the transplants, and I expect Raleigh to look a lot like Austin in 10-15 years (to give a couple examples).

I think that right now, you can still get a very nice house for < 500K in many midwestern college towns (e.g. Oberlin OH, but there are hundreds of good small colleges in smaller towns). A college town offers some of the benefits of urban living (probably better coffee), likely good internet, and often good schools. And the worse the weather is, the better the real-estate value. And, they may need some adjuncts teaching CS.

> I think that right now, you can still get a very nice house for < 500K in many midwestern college towns

I'm in Madison, WI. The house I'm currently in was 180k back in '09. It has appreciated some since then. My neighbors have each turned over in the past decade and have sold their house for ~$300k.

If you go with 500k, you're in a very nice part of town or one of the extremely large corner lots. Most of the houses are in the 300k - 350k range.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1305-N-Thompson-Dr-Madiso... isn't uncommon.

> And the worse the weather is, the better the real-estate value.

That's a big consideration for many people. Little tolerance for the winter.

Yikes. Living in Canada, the weather is shitty everywhere compared to a large part of the USA. There's way less nice weather places to live here. Things are going to get squeezed sooner here than in the US.

You could recently get a good house within <1h drive from Seattle for <600k. Prices are probably up now, but the problem here is Seattle in particular. No need to even leave the county (although you can hop to an adjacent one)

Which is true with a number of major cities. The Bay Area being something of an outlier in part because of geography.

But, for example, while Boston/Cambridge are very pricey in general as are some of the more exclusive suburbs with good school systems, there's almost certainly housing in that general range within an hour drive (or even on a commuter rail).

Absolutely. Last year I bought a house about eight miles outside of Boston. It's a 25 minute walk or a five minute drive to the supermarket. It's a five minute walk and a thirty minute train ride to downtown. I've got about ten restaurants/bars within walking distance. I like my neighbors. $500K.

Costal California has always had ridiculous home values, and nothing has changed that. 20 years ago I looked in Oakland and homes were 400k, which were still relatively unaffordable based on the salary I made at the time, 70k.

I think the income levels interest rates have helped raise values, but I think income has more to do with it. You’ll see high prices anywhere that can support workers, and they will pay for proximity.

This was actually one of the reasons I did not want to move to California. Around 2000 I had someone from Oakland staying at my $139k home in Minneapolis. Admittedly, I did live in a very nice neighborhood, but her estimate was that my house would cost at least $500k in a comparable area in Oakland.

That was all the incentive I needed to stay put. IIRC, I wasn't making that much more than $70k at the time but I could have worked in a coffee shop and paid my mortgage.

I remember a conversation I had with a taxi driver in La Jolla in January 2002. I asked how a taxi driver could buy a house. He laughed and said you shouldn't be a taxi driver if you want to buy a house there, because the cheapest piece of junk was $400,000.

Housing prices were one reason I didn't move out to the Bay Area in the 1990s--at a time when salaries in the tech industry were nothing particularly remarkable relative to engineering salaries elsewhere.

Home values are way up in Texas, but most markets are still reasonable. Only Austin's prices are even remotely comparable to San Francisco/Seattle.

Median home values (per Zillow):

San Francisco: $1,526K

Seattle: $870K

Austin: $606K

Dallas: $287K

Houston: $238K

Some say TX prices are depressed due to high property taxes since it represents a significant component of household TCO. Comparing Seattle to Austin, the property value is 43% greater but the ongoing tax burden is 8:11, 27% less.

Seattle: 0.930% of Assessed Home Value

SF: 0.640% of Assessed Home Value

Dallas: 1.930% of Assessed Home Value

Austin: 1.820% of Assessed Home Value

Houston: 2.030% of Assessed Home Value

Source: https://smartasset.com/taxes/property-taxes

That SF number isn't accurate. The 2021-2022 rate is 85% higher (1.18248499%). [1]

Another important thing about property taxes is to know when an updated assessed value is triggered and if there are any limits on how it changes. For example in SF, the assessed value is basically set to the sale price, immediately. But then the assessed value doesn't change until there's another property sale (or permitted improvements are made).

In some states assessed values are updated every year regardless of sales or improvements. [2]

[1] https://sftreasurer.org/property/secured-property-taxes

[2] https://taxfoundation.org/state-provisions-property-reassess...

Yeah, my locality changes the rate annually to make their revenue numbers and reassess regularly although not aggressively and never downward.

Not sure if this is included in the assessment, but TX does not have a state tax.

Yes, the complete absence of state income taxes makes an enormous difference. Texas property taxes sound crazy until you take that into account.

Putting taxes on sales and property means that even those paid under the table can't escape taxation.

In the absence of an income tax and presence of similar overall government spending then increased rates of other revenue sources are a first order effect.

How this shapes the valuation of other things, like houses, is an interesting second order effect. Property tax rates shape how affordable housing is during the mortgage period and after.

Specifically Austin vs Seattle, that's a non-factor. No state income tax in WA either

I'm wondering how it will spread as well, I am already seeing bay area prices on houses in my area of socal where 1.5-2 years ago it was 30-40% cheaper. I think people in high paying positions are moving to nice areas that are not extremely crowded and close to nature. If this continues as it is(covid variants popping up and tech keeping offices closed), I could see the big companies finally allow remote full time, and then expect to see certain areas skyrocket in price. Think Boulder CO is expensive now, wait until it gets to Palo Alto levels of affordability. Or same with Bozeman, or Bend etc...

Oakland is still SF Bay Area, that’s really not “the rest of California”. In fact, yes things are pricier in the every part of CA, but not even close to the extent.

There are still reasonable homes in Texas. The real problem is that you would have to live in Texas.

I hear Dallas is quite nice.

The Dallas housing market doesn’t really qualify as affordable anymore. Affordable compared to Seattle or the Bay Area, for sure, but housing prices here have probably doubled over the past few years. The days of finding a well-maintained starter home for under $200k are gone.

Booo

There are so many things wrong with Texas, it is hard to even know where to start. I would probably start with "kids pledge allegiance to the Texas flag in school" [1] and end with "politicians will call you a freeloader for expecting electricity to be available in the winter" [2]

1. https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Why-do-publ...

2. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-mayor-resigns-aft...

First reaction - Oh no no no. How can I unread this comment?

Second reaction - so uh where in Oklahoma exactly?

Tulsa has been courting remote workers for years before the pandemic. Not exactly rural, though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553