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0 pointscoding1234y ago0 comments

It's comical though - the reason the pay is so high is because the housing prices are so high. The housing prices are so high because the pay is so high. It's a never ending cycle.

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4 comments · 3 top-level

lotsofpulp4y ago· 1 in thread

Housing prices are high because the supply of housing is very low relative to demand from people who have the ability to pay a high price.

If you took the same amount of high earners and dropped them in an area with five times as many equivalent utility houses, then prices would not be high even though there are the same number of high earners. Hence high housing prices are not a result of a population of high earners simply existing.

As an example, I can afford and am willing to pay $5 for an apple, but I will not because I can easily find an equivalent one for $1.5.

coding123OP4y ago

Well that doesn't happen. High earners aren't "dumped" somewhere by some magical god that moves people around. There's often some reason a bunch of high earners are somewhere and when it happens the tap doesn't turn off. It just keeps going until there are no homes left. And at that point there's high pressure for low income people to sell because of the ability for them to get $1.5MM for their $200K house.

mrep4y ago

My target comp here in chicago is $250,000 for the level below senior software engineer and average home price here is $303,559 [0].

Pay is usually max(COL, local market rate). You don't need a super high COL if the local market is very competitive, but COL can raise the pay because you still need to convince people to move to your location and most people won't do that if it has an abnormally higher cost of living without a corresponding pay increase.

The reason house prices are high in Seattle is because geography limits how well they can sprawl to build new houses and lots of people don't like higher density housing.

[0]: https://www.zillow.com/chicago-il/home-values/

goodpoint4y ago

...with an interesting "side effect": it allows most people in those cities to buy plenty goods and services made by people in poor countries. And not the opposite.

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