Even something like living in the countryside domestically would worry me (that is, longer times between calling for help and it arriving, then time to be transported to a medical centre or hospital, and then probably getting transported to the city anyway for access to advanced medical care).
I'm a digital nomad and have been traveling full time for 7 years now. It's great, it's a good balance of work/life balance but one thing you slowly start to notice is when you leave your country, no matter if you learn the language or how much integrate yourself into that country, you will always be an outsider to the majority in that country.
As an american you will always be a Yankee, Farang or Gringo and will carry the weight of the US collective.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5436-Agana-Dr-Santa-Barba...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2aEXsdH9hU3o4SZw5 (winter, March 2012)
I can cry that my dream flat in London is more expensive than I expected 30 years ago but that just shows how stupid I’ve been the last 30 years
You do have to pay interest taxes and maintenance, whether that exceeds the rent for an equivalent property is another question.
Yes, housing is more expensive. A lot more. Everything else is way cheaper.
It's not that it's cheap here, not by any measure, but it's not nearly so dire as y'all want to claim.
Plenty of people live in any city with less than that, but it is below the average income in many nice counties in the US.
Lots of people are paying millions extra just to live up winding roads on a hill, where the commute is longer, and you need a geotechnical engineer to design your patio.
50 mins - what on earth? Take the train. Even a bicycle would be faster.
Only way to get a nice house for 300k now is to work remote in some podunk town for a big city salary.
1. The neighborhood I grew up in in San Jose has 3, 4, or even 5 cars in front of every house. My working thesis is that despite being small, these are multi-generational homes, probably with the notional homeowners being the ones that were living there back in the mid-80s.
2. My aunt lives in a much nicer part of San Jose in the house that her husband inherited from his parents. Many of the other neighborhood homeowners are in the same situation, although there has been some flipping going on.
3. Three more boomers at the family event are all living in inherited houses, including one couple that has a pair of houses that they each inherited from their respective parents. They're not renting out the surplus, but instead have turned both into animal rescue sites.
All of these folks are grandfathered in to extremely low Prop 13 property taxes.
I would also add, the forklift driver who bought the house for 40k in 1971, by state law (Proposition 13), is still paying 1971 valuation property taxes and contributing essentially nothing to local school funding, funding which is mostly covered by you according to a "new guy has to hold the bag" type scheme. In a state obsessed with fairness, a most unfair policy.
Should you wish to modify the property, conventional area wisdom is to just do so unpermitted. Boomers don't like construction because it increases supply and they want no supply, only demand, home price go brrrr. Environmentalists don't like construction because the more nature the better. Others don't like construction because they make it their business to set the vibe of the area as static and frozen. These political interests culminate in a construction permitting process that basically autorejects everything, paradoxically increasing public danger because everyone now does everything unpermitted.
Even the famously wealthy Steve Jobs ran afoul of it and couldn't buy his way out. He had a property he wanted to modify but they wouldn't let him touch it at all. So he just let it sit and rot to make a point. Ultimately the government agreed his plan was better than a rotting house.
I miss knowing where the darkest place is for 50 miles in all directions. I never got to bike highway 1 from SF to Big Sur. My boyfriend and I would have an easier time finding jobs there. There’s better roads for car enthusiasts.
There was a lot of depressing tech saturation in the Bay Area, but there’s still good pockets of the pre-software culture around there if you’re willing to live towards the edges and look for the weirdness.
It just doesn't stack up. This world is cooked. The steak used to be medium rare once upon a time, but now it's pure charcoal.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/221-Woodbridge-Cir-San-Ma...
However then your interest rate is not 1%. The best I've seen is 30 year fixed, where you pay off your house is 2.5%.
I'm paying 0.65% right now, thanks to SARON going to 0.
It just does not make financial sense to pay it off even if could.
my wife doesn't drive and we wanted to have access to good public schools and good transportation. this is not a given if you go more rural. The postbus goes maybe every hour or so.
the lakeside communities near Zurich are great and all of our friends live in one of them (on the same side of the lake of course). not living here would have severe effects on my wife's and our kids' social lives.
$4.888
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/86-Rittenhouse-Ave-Athert...
