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  #81  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:19 PM
skyscraperpage17 skyscraperpage17 is offline
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
Real-estate was already taken into account from the beginning, this was about beer, gas and a slice of pizza. Other than housing, the cost difference between NY and other parts of the country is negligible. Unless you're in a tourist trap that jacks up prices on everything.
I'm not sure what you mean by "taking into account." I was speaking in general in my post about why COL comparisons are frequently brought up.
     
     
  #82  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:21 PM
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No, she doesn't have higher quality of life. She has a much bigger house
Are you suggesting the fact that your sister is able to afford more of the space she desires for herself and her family does not improve her life (thus raise its quality)?
     
     
  #83  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:26 PM
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Originally Posted by skyscraperpage17 View Post
Are you suggesting the fact that your sister is able to afford more of the space she desires for herself and her family does not improve her life (thus raise its quality)?
Right, that's utterly ridiculous. My family of 5 could afford to live in SF or NYC, but our quality of life would be greatly reduced. My wife and my incomes would probably increase about 10% only living in either city, but our cost of living due to housing would be at least 50% higher.
     
     
  #84  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:26 PM
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What you fail to understand is that real estate is what takes up (by-far) The largest share of our income. Per month, the largest bill is a combination of mortgage, taxes and insurance on a home (or rent if you're not a owner).

So that's why people keep bringing it up. Some people want to keep the percentage of their income that goes towards real estate as low as possible (and get more for their buck)
i thought the discussion was about wealth, and wealthy people. (see thread title.)

wealthy people do not spend a huge percentage of their available income on their primary residence.

my wife and i aren’t UHNW by any means, but we spend less than 10% of our pre-tax income on housing. in san francisco. and we have a kid. a single decent trip every month is far more than the “average” mortgage or rent payment.
     
     
  #85  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:29 PM
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And DuPage County has Hinsdale and environs which aren't that dissimilar to the North Shore.

I don't think there's much difference between a Hinsdale and a Winnetka when it comes to housing values, employment, political leanings, lifestyles, etc.

The suburban counties with DuPage-style demographics have gradually shifted to blue over the last few years. Places like Orange County, CA, Oakland County, MI. Moderately affluent counties that tend to be socially moderate and educated.
I still remember Hindsale and Winnetka having quite different types of wealth and different demographics, though. Both had money, but Hinsdale more likely to be the small business owner type that reliably votes Republican (until one comes along that is too much to stomach even for a tax break), and Winnetka more likely to have couples where one is an attorney and the other is a professor.
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  #86  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:33 PM
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Originally Posted by skyscraperpage17 View Post
Are you suggesting the fact that your sister is able to afford more of the space she desires for herself and her family does not improve her life (thus raise its quality)?
She has more space, which improves quality of life, but might face a reduction in quality of life in other areas. The local restaurants may not be as good, the entertainment and cultural opportunities not as exciting, appealing travel destinations less easily accessible, weather more disagreeable, the neighbors less interesting, etc.

If quality of life was all about square footage of housing then no one would live in Manhattan and we'd all move to Olathe, KS or someplace.
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  #87  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:36 PM
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i thought the discussion was about wealth, and wealthy people. (see thread title.)

wealthy people do not spend a huge percentage of their available income on their primary residence.

my wife and i aren’t UHNW by any means, but we spend less than 10% of our pre-tax income on housing. in san francisco. and we have a kid. a single decent trip every month is far more than the “average” mortgage or rent payment.
Someone pointed out the fact that "rich" and "wealthy" is all relative, and that's how we ended up talking about COL differences.
     
     
  #88  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:41 PM
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Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
She has more space, which improves quality of life, but might face a reduction in quality of life in other areas. The local restaurants may not be as good, the entertainment and cultural opportunities not as exciting, appealing travel destinations less easily accessible, weather more disagreeable, the neighbors less interesting, etc.

If quality of life was all about square footage of housing then no one would live in Manhattan and we'd all move to Olathe, KS or someplace.
Quality of life is relative.

Yes, I may be able to ride the subway and shop at Tiffany, but if I'm someone that likes my privacy and space, is my life really all that great if I have to share a small apartment with roommates?
     
     
  #89  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
She has more space, which improves quality of life, but might face a reduction in quality of life in other areas. The local restaurants may not be as good, the entertainment and cultural opportunities not as exciting, appealing travel destinations less easily accessible, weather more disagreeable, the neighbors less interesting, etc.

If quality of life was all about square footage of housing then no one would live in Manhattan and we'd all move to Olathe, KS or someplace.
As someone who has a huge house...sure, we have the space but that also means a shitty commute into work. So +1 for space, -1 for sitting in a car for an hour each way. A small apartment in NY most likely means a palatable commute to and from work and amenities.
     
     
  #90  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 4:47 PM
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Originally Posted by mthd
it was soooooo onerous to live in san francisco or new york, people wouldn't do it
Gimme a break. We're not talking about a black-and-white duality where the only options are "they're the same" and "sooooo onerous nobody would do it." A place can be more expensive but not so much more expensive that it isn't worth the benefits (and there is more to QOL than square footage of house). As I said in an earlier post.
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  #91  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 5:02 PM
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Right, that's utterly ridiculous. My family of 5 could afford to live in SF or NYC, but our quality of life would be greatly reduced. My wife and my incomes would probably increase about 10% only living in either city, but our cost of living due to housing would be at least 50% higher.
That's not how it works. If you moved to SF and NYC, you would probably pay the same amount of income towards housing.

You would just have to adjust to a smaller living space or different type of neighborhood. But it would be highly unlikely that % of income to housing costs varies.

Where do you live in Chicago? Is your family's quality of life "greatly reduced" because you aren't somewhere like Harvey, IL, where you can buy a house for like 10k? I doubt it.
     
     
  #92  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 5:15 PM
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I still remember Hindsale and Winnetka having quite different types of wealth and different demographics, though. Both had money, but Hinsdale more likely to be the small business owner type that reliably votes Republican (until one comes along that is too much to stomach even for a tax break), and Winnetka more likely to have couples where one is an attorney and the other is a professor.
You could be right. They look/feel about the same to me, and my sister's doctor friends all ended up in either the North Shore or Hinsdale area when they had kids.

I think you get a bit more for your money in Hinsdale and maybe a bit less of a snob factor. Hinsdale is maybe like Short Hills, NJ compared to Greenwich, CT (basically the same but slightly less prestigious location).
     
     
  #93  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 5:26 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
That's not how it works. If you moved to SF and NYC, you would probably pay the same amount of income towards housing.

You would just have to adjust to a smaller living space or different type of neighborhood. But it would be highly unlikely that % of income to housing costs varies.

Where do you live in Chicago? Is your family's quality of life "greatly reduced" because you aren't somewhere like Harvey, IL, where you can buy a house for like 10k? I doubt it.
Yep, my quality of life would be diminished in NYC or SF from my life in Chicago. My house would be tiny or I would be forced to live way out in the middle of nowhere. We have looked at jobs and pay in both those cities compared to here. Barely a salary adjustment, like 10% more. We currently live in Lincoln Square in a brick, 100 year old, 3000+ SF SFH on a 7200 SF double lot. My commute is about 30 minutes to work each way on the CTA. We're paying about 12% of income for housing including taxes and insurance. What would this cost me in SF or NYC?
     
     
  #94  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 7:01 PM
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the other thing not being mentioned here in the housing/COL discussion is that even within individual metro areas there can be HUGE discrepancies of how far your house dollar will go based on location.

my cousin and I both own homes in chicagoland that are within $5,000 of each other based on their zillow zestimates.

my cousin and his wife have 3 kids and live in a giant 4,800 SF tract home on a half-acre lot in a soulless former cornfield housing development on the exurban fringe of chicagoland out in elgin, roughly 40 miles from downtown chicago. good schools, safe neighborhood, close to absolutely nothing, 100% autocentric, blah, blah, blah

my wife and i have 2 kids and are about to move into our new city home in a couple of weeks. it's a 2,400 SF two floor condo unit in a 3 flat in the lincoln square neighborhood roughly 6.5 miles NW of downtown. good schools, safe neighborhood, close to everything, eminently walkable, surrounded by transit, blah, blah, blah.

same money. same metro area. two very different housing outcomes.

i think he and i would both claim that we have a very high quality of life based on what's important to us. we just value very different things when it comes to housing.
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  #95  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 7:17 PM
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i think he and i would both claim that we have a very high quality of life based on what's important to us. we just value very different things when it comes to housing.
Yeah, I think this is a good summation. Subjective factors like quality of life cannot be determined by a single metric (say amount of sq. ft. of living space).

I know someone with a $3 million Lincoln Park home, and it's around the same size as a new construction $300k home in the cornfields in Chicagoland exurbs. Both will have safety, good schools and nearby amenities. Same metro area, same hypothetical access to the same regional stuff. Huge price difference for obvious reasons, though.
     
     
  #96  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 10:31 PM
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that said, there are some cities like san francisco where family-sized housing (3 bed/2 bath) in the city proper is pretty much out of the question for middle class families to purchase. i could only find two 3 bed/2 bath homes for sale in SF on zillow that were sub-$750K ($735K & $699K), and they were both on the extreme southern edge of the city and both looked like they needed some serious remodeling. everything in that size range that looked nice and move-in ready was all north of $1M!

needless to say, as wonderful of a city as it is, my family will not be moving to san francisco anytime soon.


it's one reason why i consider chicago to be a goldilocks city of sorts. chicago is big enough and real enough and urban enough to scratch most urbanists' itch (unless you desire manhattan level urbansim, in which case only manhattan will suffice in america), but purchasing real estate for family size living (3 bed/2 bath) hasn't gotten completely retarded, at least not yet. philly also still seems pretty reasonable in that regard too.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Jan 4, 2018 at 11:08 PM.
     
     
  #97  
Old Posted Jan 4, 2018, 11:42 PM
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And DuPage County has Hinsdale and environs which aren't that dissimilar to the North Shore.

I don't think there's much difference between a Hinsdale and a Winnetka when it comes to housing values, employment, political leanings, lifestyles, etc.

The suburban counties with DuPage-style demographics have gradually shifted to blue over the last few years. Places like Orange County, CA, Oakland County, MI. Moderately affluent counties that tend to be socially moderate and educated.
The North Shore of Chicago has a significant Jewish population, DuPage doesn't. Which partially explains the more "liberal" outlook in the former.

Similarly I believe the Grosse Pointes (where there are virtually no Jews) are more GOP than the affluent Oakland County suburbs.

Of course, Trump under-performed big-time with suburban WASP Republicans (and the trend against the GOP among affluent suburbanites had been underway since at least the 1992 election).
     
     
  #98  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2018, 3:02 AM
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The North Shore of Chicago has a significant Jewish population, DuPage doesn't. Which partially explains the more "liberal" outlook in the former.

Similarly I believe the Grosse Pointes (where there are virtually no Jews) are more GOP than the affluent Oakland County suburbs.
Yes, the Pointes have very few Jews, or diversity of any type, even today. I believe Hinsdale and environs are kinda similar.

Catholics are now common in the Pointes, but nonwhites or non-mainstream Christians are still pretty rare. There are a few black professional athletes who play downtown (the Pointes are like 15 minutes to downtown; the rich Oakland County suburbs are 30-40 minutes away).

I think Metro Detroit is a bit more skewed in terms of wealth compared to Chicagoland, though. While Chicagoland wealth concentrates on the North Shore, there are other rich enclaves, like Hinsdale, or Barrington. Metro Detroit wealth is REALLY focused on Oakland County these days. Like 95% of metro area $1 million+ sales are in Oakland County. Grosse Pointe has moderately declined, kinda like Shaker Heights outside Cleveland.
     
     
  #99  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2018, 3:23 AM
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I love how you just flippantly throw baseless percentages around.
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  #100  
Old Posted Jan 5, 2018, 3:41 AM
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Yep, my quality of life would be diminished in SF from my life in Chicago.
Yeah, no. Not being stuck inside for 4 to 5 months of the year is a huge upgrade.
     
     
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