That's what I've seen anecdotally too. Not on the west coast, but in a major metro area on the east coast that has traditionally been seen as "expensive". I'd occasionally get sucked down Zillow rabbit-holes where I'd look at cheaper areas in the middle of the country and daydream about the palace I could buy for the price of my modest house here. But these days, the enormous differential doesn't seem to be there. I certainly won't say the middle America prices have caught the coasts, but they've grown at higher rates so that the difference isn't what it used to be.
Obviously this behavior is an improvement for the individuals. I don’t see that it’s an improvement overall. Long distance commutes are in conflict to climate goals (especially flights). Also, these super commuters disturb the local economy with their purchasing power (there was an article recently on HN about a US family living in Portugal because it’s so cheap there).
I guess governments will have to address this somehow.
I've been thinking more and more about this concept where people, how you put it: "disturb the local economy with their purchasing power".
My grandparents lived a couple of miles from the city where Grandpa worked, but then when he retired they moved maybe 30 miles out where things were cheaper. I knew other folks whose parents or grandparents retired to Florida to take advantage of a lower cost-of-living and no income tax. That's just what people did - why pay a premium to live near the jobs if you aren't working?
More recently I've read complaints about folks from richer areas (often California) moving to cheaper areas, driving up the cost of living, straining local services, etc. Some of them are retirees, although remote work has added to the issue, leading to "go back to California" sentiment in Portland, Boise, etc. I've heard similar stories about expats driving up rents in Mexico City and Portugal, making those areas unaffordable for locals.
So I've got a healthy 401(k) balance and will be retiring one of these days. What are the rules for where I can retire if I want to move somewhere my dollars will go further? Is it still thought of as OK at all to exploit another area's lower cost-of-living in this way? Does it depend on the degree, like it'd be fine if I move to a nearby suburb that is 10% cheaper but not if I move to Thailand? Does it depend on economic conditions in an area, like how many existing residents are being priced out?
> Is it still thought of as OK at all to exploit another area's lower cost-of-living in this way
I think it is only a few terminally online people that object to this. In real life locals object to people coming in and buying second homes or renting out airbnbs, not new people moving into the area permanently.
> I think it is only a few terminally online people that object to this.
The reality of the matter is that the insane population growth of the 20th Century led to some pretty haphazard development (e.g. CDMX’s never ending sprawl).
This has made areas with livability amenities (e.g., walkable safe neighborhoods) relatively rare all things considered.
For various reasons, certain areas with good amenities remained isolated from broader real estate markets (e.g., living in CDMX would seem laughable to an American in the 1980s based on crime statistics alone).
Because of COVID, a lot of those areas are now a part of larger real estate markets.
The people who live there now realize that they can’t afford the prices that the larger market brings, so acting in self interest, they try to remain isolated from the market.
(In the vein if SF experiencing the worlds problems a decade before anywhere else) This is basically the story of SF’s Mission district over the past 20 years and why you’d see ridiculous things like people protesting new development because it had floor to ceiling windows.
It’s a weird phenomenon, but one that most people on this forum can’t really relate to.
Trust me, there are plenty of places where people object to new people moving into the area permanently. If you haven't seen this you've never lived in Montana, Northern Idaho, etc. Xenophobia against out-of-staters is practically the regional religion.
Which, to be honest, is not totally unjustified, these places are wonderful and people whose families have lived there for generations are finding themselves pushed out by the rising property values caused by the migration of people out of the rich cities and into their communities.
It's unfortunately a feature of our system- if you don't have money you don't get to live in good places. People are just justifiably unhappy with that particular feature acting on them.
Property values is just one part of the problem. A lot of the xenophobia is also due these migrants bringing their political opinions (and votes) with them.
I disagree, at least anecdotally. I spent most of my life in that region and after moving out of the area I can see it from both sides. The political thing is only marginally an issue. Yes, people in small (relative to the west coast) towns in Montana do think Californians are somewhat more left-leaning, but that's not ultimately an issue. This area of the country has a very 'rugged individualist' live-and-let-live attitude in that domain. It's much more an issue of rising property values literally destroying the communities that they once knew and turning them into mini-californias where they are no longer welcome. It's quite literally a case of not being able to afford to live where your family has lived for hundreds of years.
Literally no one west of the Mississippi has had their family live anywhere for "hundreds of years". I can see the case being made in Europe, but ultimately this in the US it's just transplants upset at other transplants. aka "I got mine, and therefore I want to close the door behind me".
You don't even need to bring your political opinions to f things up.
I know a guy who moves from CA to Idaho.
He complains people don't maintain their houses nicely enough.
He complains the dirt roads aren't graded well enough.
He complains that the super market doesn't have what he wants.
He complains that the way they do excavation is wrong (he's a septic guy by trade).
At literally every turn he complains that the locals are doing it wrong.
I've told him that the problem probably isn't the locals. (And I concur with what the other guy said about rising property values destroying communities.)
I agree with all of the above, but just to add a bonus bit of anecdata:
My parents now live in a red flyover state and complain about foreign Californians making everything too expensive and changing the local culture. To put it in perspective, my parents who are complaining have lived ~3x longer in California than they have in their new red state.
I love them, but not all of the people complaining about Californians are the people it would make much sense to get complaints from.
I think people will complain about newcomers of any type. That's just how it goes, all the way back the stone age. My opinion is that it does not matter. People will migrate, communities will change no matter who grumbles about it. It's a delusion — very likely a harmful one — to think they ever static in the first place, or should be prevented from changing.
I like your point. I guess we can solve this with taxation. Maybe we want to tax frequent flights but not retirees. Depends on the goal people want to achieve. Every community has its own problems and ways to solve them.
It's not about how much money you have, it's about what you do with it. Do you match your standard of living to those around you, or do you distort the environment to provide you with what you desire regardless of what those around you have? Do you isolate yourself except for your spending, or do you participate in the community in the ways expected of a local? Are you living there to live there, or are you living there for financial reasons?
If your goal isn't to live like a colonial master, make sure your execution doesn't look like an attempt at colonialism. That principle should get you 99% of the way there.
People don't care that you're there. They care that you are making boutique $15 sandwich shop(s) a viable business where they were not previously causing rent to go up driving the burger joint they loved out of business or whatever.
Ideally you've retire to Arizona or Florida or some other traditional retirement or tourism destination with an economy has had an influx of money for a long time and reached equilibrium. In lieu of that the next best thing is assimilating and living like the locals.
That's not really the problem. The big problem is that people who move from a HCOL to a less or low cost of living place are able to pay more for housing than people who live in the local economy.
This doctor is a great example of it. He makes more than an Austin doctor, he probably is buying or renting at the top end of the market and driving up prices.
I live in Portland, Oregon. Pretty much every who lives here has had a conversation with a Californian transplant who raves about how cheap the housing is, when most people will never dream of owning a home here.
Can you give an example of this? I haven't personally experienced my everyday cost of living of going up due to other factors.
The only thing I've really experienced is the price of real estate/rents causing businesses to charge more, but that's still fundamentally tied to housing/real estate.
Say a bunch of rich people move in and want their lawns to be perfect and are willing to pay for the service. Your landscaper is going to up his rates for his normal services to reflect the fact that time spent doing those is time spent not mowing some rich guy's lawn.
You're just describing supply and demand. You've provided two hypotheticals that I've never seen borne out in reality.
Rich people generally want to pay the least amount of money for lawn service like everyone else. Can you point to actual real life examples where something like lawn care became unaffordable due to rich transplants?
There are 'rich' boutique services everywhere. You haven't established how selling a $15 sandwich somehow makes running a cheap burger joint untenable.
There's only so much supply for lawn care, so some rich people moving in increases demand, raising prices. For the sandwich shop, there's only so much commercial real estate available, so $15 sandwich shops increase demand for real estate in that location, raising rents, and making the cheap burger joints either raise prices to pay rent, or go under to make room for more boutique restaurants.
>There's only so much supply for lawn care, so some rich people moving in increases demand, raising prices.
Again, any real examples of this? Lawn care supply is not finite. As demand goes up, more people will enter that profession.
>r the sandwich shop, there's only so much commercial real estate available, so $15 sandwich shops increase demand for real estate in that location, raising rents, and making the cheap burger joints either raise prices to pay rent, or go under to make room for more boutique restaurants.
That's not really true. Cheaper food options are almost always more profitable than high-end places.
The whole argument seems like nonsense that sounds like it might be true if you haven't thought about it very long.
Yes, I am. That's not an excuse for anyone to ignore their effect on it.
>You've provided two hypotheticals that I've never seen borne out in reality.
The second example was taken from what I saw in my youth when an infrastructure project made my region noticeably more suitable as a retirement destination.
>There are 'rich' boutique services everywhere.
No there are not. For example there are three non-chain Mexican restaurants in Bangor Maine and none of them are upscale. I use this example because I was recently in Bangor and reviewed their menus on my phone before choosing which one to eat at.
>The second example was taken from what I saw in my youth when an infrastructure project made my region noticeably more suitable as a retirement destination
So your whole understanding of the topic comes from your childlike understanding of something in your youth?
>No there are not. For example there are three non-chain Mexican restaurants in Bangor Maine and none of them are upscale. I use this example because I was recently in Bangor and reviewed their menus on my phone before choosing which one to eat at.
I mean, you have to be just being silly at this point.
I would rent a house for a month in the area you're considering and ask the local people what they think. Some economies (particularly tourism-heavy ones) are better set up for integrating new rich neighbors than others.
Why would a rich guy moving someplace raise the prices for everyone else? Simple, because the people working there will charge the rich guy more!
The only reason gentrification exists is because local businesses see the influx of rich people as an opportunity to raise prices, not to simply have more customers. A mom and pop kebab place might become fancier to serve the rich guys, even though the owner could have totally kept their original business model without pricing out the locals.
In the end, it's always the same old: "for someone to buy there must be someone to sell, for someone to sell there must be someone to buy". At every step of the gebtrification process there are people who could stop it, but don't
> the owner could have totally kept their original business model without pricing out the locals
Their costs are increasing like everyone else's, especially if they're leasing the building. They may have no choice but to raise prices, even if they don't make the place fancier.
Agreed. I knew someone who chased high-paying contract positions around the country. His wife managed the house at their midwest home base, while he rented a cheap apartment wherever he was working and flew home every weekend. That was well before the pandemic made remote work common.
This arrangement doesn't work for every couple. I doubt whether it will ever become common, but who knows whether it will become more so.
I don't see how it ever _could_ become common, just from the sheer amount of time and energy it takes to move one single person around this much--no way that can scale.
These seemed like a humble brag by upper class jet-setters who get to crow about the "commute" and sacrifices they are making while patting themselves on the back for saving a buck.
I was cackling at this part. How could anyone in Texas say that with a straight face after the big ice storm two years ago? The climate is changing everywhere. The idea that you can move away from the climate is simply deluded.
>“By the time I get to bed it’s going to be close to a 24-hour day,” says Frank Croasdale of some of the crazier days he commutes to his physical-therapy practice in Redondo Beach, Calif., from his home in Austin, Texas. Still, the arrangement “is a win-win.”
..."except for the environment of course", I was thinking when reading that.
Around 2001, the dotcom startup I worked for was bought by a Bay Area company, and I commuted weekly from Portland to San Jose for a year on what we called the 'nerd bird'. There were a lot of us in those days, working for many different companies. I remember I found a way to get cheap first class upgrades, since I hated flying and could get a stiff drink or two before takeoff.
I think the final example is an important piece. Ms Fry, the Morgan Stanley exec, realizes that her position is tenuous, in that it would be nigh on impossible to replace her current gig money-wise while living in Indiana. I think a lot of people have made adjustments based on an assumption of stability in employment. I think employers are fine with this because it gives the employer more leverage in the relationship.
He and his family moved to Austin in 2021 from Southern California, eager to live somewhere slightly less expensive and vulnerable to climate change, he says.
I know the article isn't about this, but seriously? Move into a place that has a snowpocalypse every year because it won't winterize its grid and almost certainly won't take steps to mitigate any future climate problems? If you're worried about climate change I can't think of a worse place to move to short of a barrier island or on top of a glacier.
The "snowpocalypse" does not refer to disruptive snowfall that interrupted local transportation. It refers to the impact on power generation that caused blackouts that extended for ~5+ days and killed hundreds [1,2].
To be clear, the latest ice storm in Austin was close to one of the worst ice storms on record (exceeding the 'snowpocalypse' reference, at least locally, in amount of ice by more than double). This caused local power outages for many days, for many people, while it was ~30 degrees outside. Not quite as long as the 2021 event, and not quite as brutally cold, but it was definitely flashbacks for many folks.
In some respects, it was worse locally, as it caused a significantly higher amount of downed trees, and, as a result, much more damaged infrastructure (there were MANY videos posted of transformers exploding thanks to downed lines/downed trees). What it didn't damage/affect (compared to 2021), was the power generation aspect. So, if your lines were fine, you had power, unlike 2021.
The 2021 storm deserves attention but it is hilarious how much people online want to call that out, but don't talk about PG&E starting fires, don't talk about LA eventually running out of water, don't talk about Houston getting hit by an eventual cat 5 which will cause an economic and environmental catastrophe.
There are different ways climate change will fuck this country, and at least Texas is okay on water for now. Still I'd think Michigan would be a safer bet.
Wasn't it PG who said to look out for disruptive forces in your startup that are not commonly thought of to be in the same industry, that the disruption of planes for business meetings might just be Zoom and remote work instead? Given that, I wonder why these people are super commuting at all.
The WFH trend hasn't been environmentally friendly afaics. I work with a bunch of people that used to live in small houses close to the office, now have big houses out in suburbs or resort towns, then do a bigger commute the few days a week they do go to the office. Family used to walk and take public transport now they have 2+ cars.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadIf you can leverage the overpriced west coast but live in low COL area somewhere else, good for you.
I would look at Louisville, Kentucky or Charleston or Baltimore or some other area.
I guess governments will have to address this somehow.
My grandparents lived a couple of miles from the city where Grandpa worked, but then when he retired they moved maybe 30 miles out where things were cheaper. I knew other folks whose parents or grandparents retired to Florida to take advantage of a lower cost-of-living and no income tax. That's just what people did - why pay a premium to live near the jobs if you aren't working?
More recently I've read complaints about folks from richer areas (often California) moving to cheaper areas, driving up the cost of living, straining local services, etc. Some of them are retirees, although remote work has added to the issue, leading to "go back to California" sentiment in Portland, Boise, etc. I've heard similar stories about expats driving up rents in Mexico City and Portugal, making those areas unaffordable for locals.
So I've got a healthy 401(k) balance and will be retiring one of these days. What are the rules for where I can retire if I want to move somewhere my dollars will go further? Is it still thought of as OK at all to exploit another area's lower cost-of-living in this way? Does it depend on the degree, like it'd be fine if I move to a nearby suburb that is 10% cheaper but not if I move to Thailand? Does it depend on economic conditions in an area, like how many existing residents are being priced out?
I think it is only a few terminally online people that object to this. In real life locals object to people coming in and buying second homes or renting out airbnbs, not new people moving into the area permanently.
The reality of the matter is that the insane population growth of the 20th Century led to some pretty haphazard development (e.g. CDMX’s never ending sprawl).
This has made areas with livability amenities (e.g., walkable safe neighborhoods) relatively rare all things considered.
For various reasons, certain areas with good amenities remained isolated from broader real estate markets (e.g., living in CDMX would seem laughable to an American in the 1980s based on crime statistics alone).
Because of COVID, a lot of those areas are now a part of larger real estate markets.
The people who live there now realize that they can’t afford the prices that the larger market brings, so acting in self interest, they try to remain isolated from the market.
(In the vein if SF experiencing the worlds problems a decade before anywhere else) This is basically the story of SF’s Mission district over the past 20 years and why you’d see ridiculous things like people protesting new development because it had floor to ceiling windows.
It’s a weird phenomenon, but one that most people on this forum can’t really relate to.
Which, to be honest, is not totally unjustified, these places are wonderful and people whose families have lived there for generations are finding themselves pushed out by the rising property values caused by the migration of people out of the rich cities and into their communities.
It's unfortunately a feature of our system- if you don't have money you don't get to live in good places. People are just justifiably unhappy with that particular feature acting on them.
I know a guy who moves from CA to Idaho.
He complains people don't maintain their houses nicely enough.
He complains the dirt roads aren't graded well enough.
He complains that the super market doesn't have what he wants.
He complains that the way they do excavation is wrong (he's a septic guy by trade).
At literally every turn he complains that the locals are doing it wrong.
I've told him that the problem probably isn't the locals. (And I concur with what the other guy said about rising property values destroying communities.)
My parents now live in a red flyover state and complain about foreign Californians making everything too expensive and changing the local culture. To put it in perspective, my parents who are complaining have lived ~3x longer in California than they have in their new red state.
I love them, but not all of the people complaining about Californians are the people it would make much sense to get complaints from.
If your goal isn't to live like a colonial master, make sure your execution doesn't look like an attempt at colonialism. That principle should get you 99% of the way there.
People don't care that you're there. They care that you are making boutique $15 sandwich shop(s) a viable business where they were not previously causing rent to go up driving the burger joint they loved out of business or whatever.
Ideally you've retire to Arizona or Florida or some other traditional retirement or tourism destination with an economy has had an influx of money for a long time and reached equilibrium. In lieu of that the next best thing is assimilating and living like the locals.
This doctor is a great example of it. He makes more than an Austin doctor, he probably is buying or renting at the top end of the market and driving up prices.
I live in Portland, Oregon. Pretty much every who lives here has had a conversation with a Californian transplant who raves about how cheap the housing is, when most people will never dream of owning a home here.
The only thing I've really experienced is the price of real estate/rents causing businesses to charge more, but that's still fundamentally tied to housing/real estate.
In regards to transplants moving to my area
Rich people generally want to pay the least amount of money for lawn service like everyone else. Can you point to actual real life examples where something like lawn care became unaffordable due to rich transplants?
There are 'rich' boutique services everywhere. You haven't established how selling a $15 sandwich somehow makes running a cheap burger joint untenable.
Again, any real examples of this? Lawn care supply is not finite. As demand goes up, more people will enter that profession.
>r the sandwich shop, there's only so much commercial real estate available, so $15 sandwich shops increase demand for real estate in that location, raising rents, and making the cheap burger joints either raise prices to pay rent, or go under to make room for more boutique restaurants.
That's not really true. Cheaper food options are almost always more profitable than high-end places.
The whole argument seems like nonsense that sounds like it might be true if you haven't thought about it very long.
Yes, I am. That's not an excuse for anyone to ignore their effect on it.
>You've provided two hypotheticals that I've never seen borne out in reality.
The second example was taken from what I saw in my youth when an infrastructure project made my region noticeably more suitable as a retirement destination.
>There are 'rich' boutique services everywhere.
No there are not. For example there are three non-chain Mexican restaurants in Bangor Maine and none of them are upscale. I use this example because I was recently in Bangor and reviewed their menus on my phone before choosing which one to eat at.
So your whole understanding of the topic comes from your childlike understanding of something in your youth?
>No there are not. For example there are three non-chain Mexican restaurants in Bangor Maine and none of them are upscale. I use this example because I was recently in Bangor and reviewed their menus on my phone before choosing which one to eat at.
I mean, you have to be just being silly at this point.
Nova Scotia's still welcoming.
The only reason gentrification exists is because local businesses see the influx of rich people as an opportunity to raise prices, not to simply have more customers. A mom and pop kebab place might become fancier to serve the rich guys, even though the owner could have totally kept their original business model without pricing out the locals.
In the end, it's always the same old: "for someone to buy there must be someone to sell, for someone to sell there must be someone to buy". At every step of the gebtrification process there are people who could stop it, but don't
Their costs are increasing like everyone else's, especially if they're leasing the building. They may have no choice but to raise prices, even if they don't make the place fancier.
This arrangement doesn't work for every couple. I doubt whether it will ever become common, but who knows whether it will become more so.
> commutes by plane
hmmm
Among the many issues with this statement: It takes food security for granted.
https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
>“By the time I get to bed it’s going to be close to a 24-hour day,” says Frank Croasdale of some of the crazier days he commutes to his physical-therapy practice in Redondo Beach, Calif., from his home in Austin, Texas. Still, the arrangement “is a win-win.”
..."except for the environment of course", I was thinking when reading that.
Around 2001, the dotcom startup I worked for was bought by a Bay Area company, and I commuted weekly from Portland to San Jose for a year on what we called the 'nerd bird'. There were a lot of us in those days, working for many different companies. I remember I found a way to get cheap first class upgrades, since I hated flying and could get a stiff drink or two before takeoff.
I know the article isn't about this, but seriously? Move into a place that has a snowpocalypse every year because it won't winterize its grid and almost certainly won't take steps to mitigate any future climate problems? If you're worried about climate change I can't think of a worse place to move to short of a barrier island or on top of a glacier.
[1] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-envi...
[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/02/texas-winter-storm-f...
In some respects, it was worse locally, as it caused a significantly higher amount of downed trees, and, as a result, much more damaged infrastructure (there were MANY videos posted of transformers exploding thanks to downed lines/downed trees). What it didn't damage/affect (compared to 2021), was the power generation aspect. So, if your lines were fine, you had power, unlike 2021.
There are different ways climate change will fuck this country, and at least Texas is okay on water for now. Still I'd think Michigan would be a safer bet.