Maybe because renting forever is ultimately cheaper than buying a house, especially if you aren't able to save at a rate that you can buy a house at a reasonable time.
What most people also don't take into consideration are the opportunity costs of buying a house and paying a mortgage for the next twenty or thirty years. If instead of buying you rent and invest the money you would otherwise pay for the house there is a good chance you will be much better off in the long run.
That's great for you, but it doesn't tell us much about whether it's better to own or rent on average. Your testimony is like someone saying they bought one stock that's up 20%, so stocks must be better than bonds.
There are other homeowners who have lost money, and some others who are doing even better than you. Individual stories don't tell us about aggregates.
I think this has come up before when that video was posted here but when you consider buying vs renting you really need to do the calculations for your specific situation that should be the only take away from that video. Taken as general advice that you should always rent and never buy it's pretty horrible just as the opposite is horrible advice in general.
I'm not well versed in SF, but whats going on there is whats going on in Chicago. Due to a few factors like migration back into the city and gentrification, rent values have gone up pretty high in Chicago and much higher in SF. Renters are seeing rates that they simply cannot afford in the long run. Meanwhile, homeowners are seeing the value of their homes go up. Its a win for the owners and a loss for the renters.
The decision to own isn't a static one. Its a relationship between what a house costs and what renting costs and when its appropriate to make the move. On top of that, one needs to worry about what happens in 20-30 years. I'll be retired with a paid off home and a low property tax load due to a senior exemption. Lifelong renters will still need to pay full rent until their dying day. This can affect when or even if you retire.
Rent for my 1 bedroom/1 bath, 1000 sq ft. loft in SF: $3200
Mortgage for my 2 bed/1 bath, 1200 sq ft. home in Oak: $1900*
We had to pay ~$70k in closing costs, so it isn't /easy/ to just go and buy something, but one possible lesson is that if you spend your whole life renting you are subject to the whims of your landlord (especially if you don't have rent control) and could end up paying a lot more for a place to live then you would if you had bought. Of course, the buy to rent numbers alternate back and forth depending on market conditions, so that doesn't hold true all the time.
* - Lots of confounding variables here though. SF vs. Oakland, $650 a month for property taxes aren't accounted for in the monthly mortgage cost. But we have a 40'x 50' yard, a garage, no shared walls, easier parking, etc. So it's an individual choice, but even all in my house is much cheaper than an equivalent rental unit in SF (maybe even if you factor in a new roof every 20 years, other maintanence, etc...at least in these market conditions.)
Well my own personal perspective is that I'd like to live somewhere that I can do gardening, grow veg[1] and sometimes go for a walk and see some wildlife. I'd also like to live in a place where the average age isn't 40 years older than I am so that I could have some kind of social life without driving for miles (ideally I don't want to drive at all). Which is all very unrealistic, and I'll probably end up living in the middle of nowhere with no social life if I ever have enough money to afford a house.
I don't think it's good for the social makeup of small towns and villages. Healthy communities need people of all ages, not just retirees.
[1] this is kinda possible in a city, but usually costs a fortune. I used to live near allotments in Edinburgh but they were super expensive to rent.
That's essentially my situation as well (I live in the US). I'd like a few acres, live near a national forest, and work a tech job that isn't at the only company within the nearest 500 miles. :-S
Check out northern Colorado. Between Denver, Fort Collins, and Boulder there is a fair bit of tech, cost of living is decently low(outside of Boulder), and you can live right next to a national forest.
This is harder now, but as cities develop, I think we'll see this become easier as open space is emphasized and communal gardens are popularized even more.
This is possible in second tier cities in the states. My wife and I bought a house in oakland at the end of 2012 and do exactly what you say. We're building a permaculture garden in our yard (which is only 40'x50' in back, 50'x20' in front), we can bike to almost anything we need or want, public transit is good, and the area is filled with people in the 25-45 age range (I'm 35). We bought so it was pretty expensive up front (though our mortgage payment is only $1900 a month + $650 in taxes), but there are plenty of rental opportunities as well. Total commute time to my job in SF is 35 minutes (10 bike, 25 bart).
Most second tier cities aren't as close to a major city as oakland is to SF, but you can find what you are looking for if you are willing to live the slightly less cosmopolitan life of SF/LA/Chi/NYC/DC/etc.
Of course, I have no idea how this translate to the UK!
Yeah, I look at my residence as a depreciating asset that consumes time and money. We'll see how the so-called investment aspect works out for people once interest rates start returning to historical norms.
I think people have the wrong idea viewing a home solely as an investment. It is indeed a form of investment that you get the benefit of living in. Sure if you look at the amount of money I put into a home vs the amount of money I could invest in S&P 500 it is then a terrible investment. But there is a tangible result here where I am able to live in a home and do whatever I want to my home while as a small side effect I have an investment.
I've owned a house. Or rather, I've had a mortgage on a house. I spend a bunch of money each month. After some number of years, I owned some fraction of the house.
I've rented. I spent a bunch of money each month. After some number of years, I owned precisely nothing.
So that's how it's an investment. On the other hand, what I'm primarily buying is a place to sleep each night, not an investment. So in that way, it's not.
You can usually sell a house for more than you put into it. Mortgage and rent are usually comparable (I find rent is usually more). Rent is not an investment at all, as you'll get absolutely nothing back when you leave. Even for worst cases like buying at peak, paying for maintenance, selling low, interest costs as much as the house, etc the result is you still get a big check back; a lousy investment is one thing, knowing you won't get anything out of it but momentary use is another.
And methinks the biggest "investment" value of all: when you own it outright (may I recommend you suck it up, get humble, and pay cash up front), it's yours and nobody can evict you. Knowing you'll have a safe place to sleep is huge. Yeah, property taxes exist (far less than rent, which you're paying in your rent anyway), and eminent domain may screw things up (unlikely if you choose wisely), but it's far better than risking receipt of a notice saying "sorry, but we've sold the building which will be demolished next month".
If nothing else, buy a $10,000 property somewhere (see zillow.com) and DIY build a $20,000 small house on it (lots of options available, search "tiny house"), cash as you go. If I'd have a do-over, I'd go that route no question.
I'm not suggesting that purchasing real estate as an investment is a good idea, just pointing out the absurdity of the OP's comment that no house would be a good investment at $900k.
I'd love to own a house in the country eventually.
The problem with moving to a city for the excitement and the job opportunities is that it's very hard to save the money for the down payment when you're spending > 30% of your take home income on rent.
The wife and I are moving to Baltimore this fall. The 45 minute Amtrak ride to work will be more convenient than commuting in from Great Falls, Vienna, or Reston, which can easily take an hour+ each way, despite being only ~10 miles from the city.
Just do it properly. Build a fort, put a moat around it, only invite people you like, make sure there's a throne room, and any time you leave, do it from a horse-powered carriage carrying all of your essentials with you.
To stay relevant to young people suburbs need to transform themselves from sprawling, car oriented strip malls to compact, walkable, transit oriented, complete small cities and towns.
Agreed. There's plenty of people leaving around Greater London who only commute for work. A place like Wimbledon might be a solid 40 minutes trip out of London (at the end of a tube line) but if you live there, there's everything you want nearby and you don't have to go anywhere else to find a nice little town that you can walk about and enjoy yourself in.
A suburb that isn't a place where you can actually live - there's a name for that in french, we call them cités dortoirs - dormitory towns. No one wants to live there.
There's towns like that in the U.S. I used my car about once a month in the New York suburbs 20 miles north of Manhattan. All those little towns are on the train line, and have walkable downtowns where you can get whatever you need.
Not having to drive back home from bars and restaurants is a big deal too. In the city I can meet up with some friends, get a meal and have a few drinks, then still get home safely. No designated drivers required.
Your reasoning about why your friends don't want to drive may be anecdotal, but we do know for a fact that car companies are indeed struggling to get young people to buy cars.
For me, I'd say the core reason is that driving is inherently stressful. The whole time you're on the road, you're one mistake - yours or somebody else's - away from potentially huge property damage and massive injuries. Then you have worries about parking, getting broken into, driving drunk, servicing, etc. Seems easier to just walk.
+1 on that. I bought a car last year, and my car (at $22k) is costing way more than the expected cost of gas over a 10 year lifetime (~$12k). Gas prices aren't actually the blocker, when you take the long view.
Driving, on the other hand. I grew up (and learned to drive in a city the (geographic) size of San Jose, with 700k people in the entire metro area. Living in the bay area now, I don't understand why people have cars. I can't drive to work in SF ($30/day parking is almost half what my rent is). I can't even drive, well, anywhere. Bay Bridge and 101 are both stop-and-go every time I get on them. People drive like maniacs, tailgate me, cut me off. Routinely break traffic law, creating dangerous situations I can't deal with. And then, at least in SF, the pedestrians and cyclists are ballsy motherfuckers, and it's too hard for me to track them all. Every time I go driving, I have a panic attack over either someone on the road who is going to kill me, or a pedestrian I'm going to accidentally kill.
Or, I can hop on BART and walk the rest of the way. Just go in, sit (or stand, whatever), wait 20 minutes, and BAM HOLYSHIT LOOK THERE I AM.
I can understand the convenience of driving, but I sure as shit can't figure out why so many people enjoy driving in a major city.
This is an experiment that Sunnyvale is trying to pull off. They are creating a fairly tight down town with housing, shops, and easy access to mass transit; all walkable. I don't believe they have a "real" grocery client there yet (there is a Target but its not like a Safeway or Trader Joe's) but that would probably be the right move. I'm watching the project closely to see how effective it is.
The ones near the tracks are, the ones in the original development (across from Macys and Target and the store to be built later) are allegedly going to be more affordable. Of course the original builder went bankrupt in the mortgage crisis.
If we look at the actual population growth trends, the suburbs are experiencing plenty of growth, not a decline, even if cities are doing well too (especially compared to the 70s/80s). In the New York City metro area, 29% of the population growth took place in NYC proper, as opposed to the rest in the suburban counties. One demographic of 20-somethings and a few interviewed people does not offset the rest of the population.
There are plenty of people moving into suburbs today and they make up most of the fastest-growing areas of the US. The pattern of growth barely seems to have shifted, and doesn't match the rhetoric of suburbs in decline.
http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/00406-cities-and-census-ci...
I think this is a change in the New York area mostly. Back in the 70s-mid 80s NYC was a much more dangerous place and living in the suburbs was cheap. Young people in the city then moved to the suburbs to escape rents and high crime. However now the suburbs like Westchester, Long Island have become very expensive with very high taxes.
Since these suburbs are comparatively wealthy the citizens fight against high density development. So if you are a young person that grew up on Long Island you have the choice of paying $1400 to live in someone's illegal basement apartment, living in one of the few decent complexes for $2000+ or move to NYC. It is easy to see why moving to NYC is very attractive then. When you are single or a couple it is good to live in the city as there are plentiful jobs and entertainment options.
So I think that there is not a massive landslide of people leaving the suburbs I think it is just that people are having children much later, the city is now safe, and there are no cheap options for singles/childless couples in the suburbs in the NYC metro area. People still move from NYC to the suburbs. And in cheaper metro areas the suburbs are growing very fast because they are much like the situation that existed in NYC in the 70s-mid 80s
> New York suburbs are not the only ones getting somewhat grayer. In three Maryland suburbs outside Washington, Chevy Chase lost 34 percent of its 25- to 34-year-olds, Bethesda 19.2 percent and Potomac 27 percent. The declines were comparable for Kenilworth, Winnetka and Glencoe outside Chicago...
These are all very expensive suburbs. They are "graying" because it takes more time to accumulate the money to live there. The same is happening to my town. A better comparison would be suburbs that younger people can afford vs. cities. I'd bet you find the same trend, but these examples are not informative.
Bethesda's not cheap, but most of DC proper is more expensive, and anecdotally (as a DC resident), most DC-resident friends of mine could afford to live in the nicer DC suburbs if they wanted to, but choose to live in the city instead. The population that's the focus of this article isn't deciding between downtown and some Hagerstown or whatnot.
I think DC is actually a bad example of this, in the sense that people whose kids reach school age leave very quickly. A quick look at the demographic data of the public school population shows that the newcomers aren't adding to the public school population.
Either they don't have school age kids, or they are putting their kids in private school.
Well said. I also have a feeling that many of the younger people who are staying in these well-heeled suburbs are either living with their parents or have been given their childhood homes as their parents move away in retirement.
Not only do the NYC suburbs have an expensive cost of entry (rentals are nearly non-existent in many of them) they also have high ongoing carrying costs.
If you have more than one school age child, you may come out ahead versus paying for private school, but for those without school age children you are paying a lot of money for not much in return. It is for this reason many people are waiting until their children are actually ready to start school before moving out into the suburbs. That can easily be mid to late 30s for the demographic that can afford these suburbs in the first place.
Let's not forget that the article is ignoring the fact that the demographic shift isn't that people with kids are choosing to stay in the city. Its that people are waiting longer to have kids, so they are waiting longer to move to the suburbs.
Not saying that there aren't an increasing number of people choosing to stay in the city with kids. I'm one of them. I have two kids and live in a high-rise. But the fact of the matter is that we are a rarity in my neighborhood. Everyone else my age in the building has zero kids.
> They are "graying" because it takes more time to accumulate the money to live there.
The article mentions that this is part of the effect ("late arrivals" because people have kids later, and having kids and deciding to move out of the city to the suburbs often go hand in hand.)
But they are also "graying" because the US as a whole is; the 25-34yo population segment of interest here is smaller than it was in 2000.
Just bought a house, but in the city, not the suburbs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that non-corded electric mowers exist. My mower weighs next to nothing, is whisper quiet, and one charge lasts me several cuts. Granted, its a small yard, but the hassle of moving heavy equipment, mixing gas and oil, dealing with loud noise, dealing with exhaust, pull start pain, etc are long gone.
Now I'm just waiting on the affordable electric car. Gas, even in the best of circumstances, is just too much of a hassle and requires much more complex machines than electric.
They just need to be sharpened too frequently and heaven forbid you put off mowing for a while or have a few rainy days in a row. The resistance is pretty strong if the grass is remotely tall.
Of course, this could all be a case of me getting old and lazy, which I suspect it mostly is.
I've never used an old reel mower for comparison, but last year I bought a Fiskars reel mower for my smallish townhouse yard and am quite pleased with it. I haven't had to sharpen the blades yet, though I might at the end of this year's mowing season. And it could be an interesting task, given their helical structure.
You're definitely right about the tall grass; thankfully this mower's height is easily adjustable so I can make two passes if need be.
The cut is much nicer than a regular lawn mower, I get a little extra exercise a few times a week, and I find that it actually takes me less time to finish--reel mowers work best at a faster pace than a gas-powered push mower. I have only my very limited experience, but I think some of the reputation of reel mowers being inconvenient may be undeserved when looking at the ones made in the past decade.
Really? Because my electric is hugely more heavy than an equivalent gas mower. Granted, that's mostly battery, and probably lead/somethingorother at that. Not that it matters much, because it's self-propelled, but weight is not one of its features.
Not that I'd give up my electric mower. It's like my Nissan Leaf, only for cutting grass: push the switch and it runs w/o having to fiddle with gasoline. Quiet. Won't run as long as gas-powered, but gets me where I need to go.
Interesting how peoples' experiences differ. I did mowing/lawn care work through high school and college, and loved having hours and hours in the sun to just think. I have two (unpublished) novels that I was able to plot and write thanks to that job.
I've cut grass all of my life, starting with about 3 acres (not a typo) of grass growing up. I'll gladly trade 30 minutes of easy work once a week for being able to sit out back of the house without staring directly into a neighbor's window.
But to each their own. If you don't like cutting grass, there are people who will do it for you for a reasonable amount of money.
I'm surprised this article attributes the "exodus" to high housing costs in the suburbs. This may be true in select areas, but as a whole, I think housing is much more expensive near city centers.
As a wise man once said, "The rent is too damn high." I love living in the city, but pouring tens of thousands into rent each year isn't a smart long-term investment. To me and most of the people I know, urban housing costs are a reason to leave the city, not to move there.
Yeah. I grew up in the DC suburbs, and even with a kid there's no way I'm moving back. I'd rather live in a smaller, cheaper city than spend all day in the car.
"...she now pays $3,500 in rent, but she has a four-bedroom, 2,400-square-foot bungalow with its own laundry and a balcony overlooking the beach."
UK: That is less than half what I pay for a 2 bedroom house a couple of miles out of the centre of a provincial city. This house is what people in the US would call 'rent controlled'. Commercial rents twice to three times as much. Housing cost is ridiculous in UK but no-one seems to want to acknowledge that.
Those 500 square feet railway apartments. What are they like? I wouldn't mind one of those!
Whew - I didn't think the UK had gone up THAT much ;)
The £800/month isn't out of line with a lot of US rents either - that's around $1300/month. You'd get a lot of room for that in some areas, but in others like NYC, that's almost nothing.
Really? I pay £1800 a month for a privately rented three bedroom house 20 minutes from central London. Friends of mine pay maybe £2000 for a similar sized place in zone 2 North London.
Young adults don't spend time in their houses. I'd rather have a 2 bedroom apartment within walking distance of several restaurants and bars than a house in the suburbs, even if they were the same rent.
The suburbs are made for single families - a shrinking demographic, even among homeowners.
I've personally found a great alternative to living in major cities is not the suburbs but smaller cities. I grew up in the Northeast and now live in a smaller city in the West (pop ~250,000). I can get to SF in a few hours, but locally I still have most of the things I'd want from a city: great restaurants, art, fun tech community, music, easy to access airport etc. I also have many of the perks of living in a smaller community: very little traffic, incredibly affordable cost of living, get to know the owners of most restaurants/businesses I frequent etc.
The crazy thing is that living in a house 10 minutes from the center of downtown I pay a fraction of what my friends and relatives back East do to live in a suburb so far away from the metro area they live near that they visit it only once or twice a year.
Especially with more and more remote work becoming available, if you're getting sick of living in a major metro area I highly recommend checking the diverse range of smaller cities across the US, imho it is a vastly superior experience to living in an expensive suburb.
Here me out! I live in the Chicago suburbs; I commute to the West Loop every day. Traffic! High costs! And so forth.
This weekend, I was in Des Moines for a wedding. I met people in their historic East Village. Great bar scene, great craft brew scene. Everyone was friendly! Everyone bicycles around! I would actually consider picking up from Chicago and living in Des Moines, as it seems to be the midwest version of AshvilleNC or perhaps Ann Arbor, but before Ann Arbor blew up and got expensive.
I would have never thought I'd say, "Des Moines is pretty fucking awesome, and I could live here."
You should check out Lexington, KY as well, if you like Des Moines. It's a similar sized city and a similar distance from Chicago. It's got a lot of culture and history. It's also quite close to other cities, so you kind of get to collect on the benefits of living in a larger metro. Not sure it's quite as cheap as Des Moines though.
My great alternative was leaving the west at 19, and trying out different cities overseas. Now 33, I've had multi-month to multi-year stints in five different cities in mainland China (~100,000 - 24 million), Bangkok, London, Los Angeles and Taipei. Like you, I've found that the smaller ones appeal more to me, with maybe bi-weekly trips to a larger city. With kids on the way, after an exploratory trip for the serious consideration of buying some forest in New Zealand, my wife and I now look forward to checking out France. If I had invested in a mortgage, there's no way I'd be this mobile, with such rich experience. I've never owned a car, or driven one (legally), but for one slab of my self-managed 'weekend' spent five hours yesterday on a motorbike riding through some of the most spectacular scenery I've yet found, the upper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpan_River ... no regrets with this path, life is fantastic!
My wife and I moved out of a 3rd ring suburb into the City (a first ring suburb) here in Minneapolis and have been very happy so far. Most of my friends have either done the same or plan to in the near future. I lived my whole life in a quintessential suburban city and had my fill. Suburbs have everything you need and nothing you want. You can go months without ever leaving. Now, enjoying stuff in the city is no longer a long trek. I expect this trend to continue.
In the suburbs, there's no sense of community or character, nothing unique that distinguishes one suburb from another. It's truly a shame that the vast majority of the American population have been and will be deprived of a childhood that includes a chance to walk to school, take the train to a museum, and play with other kids in the neighborhood.
Suburbs also play a central role in making car ownership absolutely necessary in order to perform even the most basic daily tasks. This, if you think about, amounts to discrimination against the elderly, children, and anyone who is not able to drive or afford a car.
Ill never understand the "allure" of living in the burbs other than having space. Cookie cutter houses in cookie cutter developments separated by long stretches of mini-highways and strip malls. Everything is brand new and completely sterile.
This seems like it's just a byproduct of people waiting longer to have kids (or not having kids at all). I know if I didn't have kids I would prefer to live in an urban area vs a suburb.
Am I wrong? Are people that live in dense cities having kids? (And if so, how they make it work? The city seems terribly inconvenient for raising kids.)
For me personally, not having to use my car often is the single biggest appeal of city life. I love walking to dinner, coffee, a friend's place, and bars.
There are a lot of us with kids in the cities, though. Many of us think the schools are good enough and don't want the super-stressful "good" schools of the suburbs for our kids. If my kid can read, write, and get into a good college, plus have the varied experiences of living in a city that's the best of all worlds.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadThere are other homeowners who have lost money, and some others who are doing even better than you. Individual stories don't tell us about aggregates.
It's pretty easy to get a rough idea of what is better in your area using a rent vs buy calculator the New York Times has a good one... http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...
The decision to own isn't a static one. Its a relationship between what a house costs and what renting costs and when its appropriate to make the move. On top of that, one needs to worry about what happens in 20-30 years. I'll be retired with a paid off home and a low property tax load due to a senior exemption. Lifelong renters will still need to pay full rent until their dying day. This can affect when or even if you retire.
We had to pay ~$70k in closing costs, so it isn't /easy/ to just go and buy something, but one possible lesson is that if you spend your whole life renting you are subject to the whims of your landlord (especially if you don't have rent control) and could end up paying a lot more for a place to live then you would if you had bought. Of course, the buy to rent numbers alternate back and forth depending on market conditions, so that doesn't hold true all the time.
* - Lots of confounding variables here though. SF vs. Oakland, $650 a month for property taxes aren't accounted for in the monthly mortgage cost. But we have a 40'x 50' yard, a garage, no shared walls, easier parking, etc. So it's an individual choice, but even all in my house is much cheaper than an equivalent rental unit in SF (maybe even if you factor in a new roof every 20 years, other maintanence, etc...at least in these market conditions.)
I don't think it's good for the social makeup of small towns and villages. Healthy communities need people of all ages, not just retirees.
[1] this is kinda possible in a city, but usually costs a fortune. I used to live near allotments in Edinburgh but they were super expensive to rent.
Most second tier cities aren't as close to a major city as oakland is to SF, but you can find what you are looking for if you are willing to live the slightly less cosmopolitan life of SF/LA/Chi/NYC/DC/etc.
Of course, I have no idea how this translate to the UK!
I've owned a house. Or rather, I've had a mortgage on a house. I spend a bunch of money each month. After some number of years, I owned some fraction of the house.
I've rented. I spent a bunch of money each month. After some number of years, I owned precisely nothing.
So that's how it's an investment. On the other hand, what I'm primarily buying is a place to sleep each night, not an investment. So in that way, it's not.
And methinks the biggest "investment" value of all: when you own it outright (may I recommend you suck it up, get humble, and pay cash up front), it's yours and nobody can evict you. Knowing you'll have a safe place to sleep is huge. Yeah, property taxes exist (far less than rent, which you're paying in your rent anyway), and eminent domain may screw things up (unlikely if you choose wisely), but it's far better than risking receipt of a notice saying "sorry, but we've sold the building which will be demolished next month".
If nothing else, buy a $10,000 property somewhere (see zillow.com) and DIY build a $20,000 small house on it (lots of options available, search "tiny house"), cash as you go. If I'd have a do-over, I'd go that route no question.
Most young adults are none of these.
The problem with moving to a city for the excitement and the job opportunities is that it's very hard to save the money for the down payment when you're spending > 30% of your take home income on rent.
Castle doctrine that.
A suburb that isn't a place where you can actually live - there's a name for that in french, we call them cités dortoirs - dormitory towns. No one wants to live there.
They often cite gas prices as the primary reason. Gas is already expensive, and the young people I know expect prices to go much, much higher.
Some of them also mention exercise as a reason.
Driving, on the other hand. I grew up (and learned to drive in a city the (geographic) size of San Jose, with 700k people in the entire metro area. Living in the bay area now, I don't understand why people have cars. I can't drive to work in SF ($30/day parking is almost half what my rent is). I can't even drive, well, anywhere. Bay Bridge and 101 are both stop-and-go every time I get on them. People drive like maniacs, tailgate me, cut me off. Routinely break traffic law, creating dangerous situations I can't deal with. And then, at least in SF, the pedestrians and cyclists are ballsy motherfuckers, and it's too hard for me to track them all. Every time I go driving, I have a panic attack over either someone on the road who is going to kill me, or a pedestrian I'm going to accidentally kill.
Or, I can hop on BART and walk the rest of the way. Just go in, sit (or stand, whatever), wait 20 minutes, and BAM HOLYSHIT LOOK THERE I AM.
I can understand the convenience of driving, but I sure as shit can't figure out why so many people enjoy driving in a major city.
There are plenty of people moving into suburbs today and they make up most of the fastest-growing areas of the US. The pattern of growth barely seems to have shifted, and doesn't match the rhetoric of suburbs in decline. http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/00406-cities-and-census-ci...
Since these suburbs are comparatively wealthy the citizens fight against high density development. So if you are a young person that grew up on Long Island you have the choice of paying $1400 to live in someone's illegal basement apartment, living in one of the few decent complexes for $2000+ or move to NYC. It is easy to see why moving to NYC is very attractive then. When you are single or a couple it is good to live in the city as there are plentiful jobs and entertainment options.
So I think that there is not a massive landslide of people leaving the suburbs I think it is just that people are having children much later, the city is now safe, and there are no cheap options for singles/childless couples in the suburbs in the NYC metro area. People still move from NYC to the suburbs. And in cheaper metro areas the suburbs are growing very fast because they are much like the situation that existed in NYC in the 70s-mid 80s
These are all very expensive suburbs. They are "graying" because it takes more time to accumulate the money to live there. The same is happening to my town. A better comparison would be suburbs that younger people can afford vs. cities. I'd bet you find the same trend, but these examples are not informative.
Either they don't have school age kids, or they are putting their kids in private school.
Other cities won't have this issue though.
If you have more than one school age child, you may come out ahead versus paying for private school, but for those without school age children you are paying a lot of money for not much in return. It is for this reason many people are waiting until their children are actually ready to start school before moving out into the suburbs. That can easily be mid to late 30s for the demographic that can afford these suburbs in the first place.
Not saying that there aren't an increasing number of people choosing to stay in the city with kids. I'm one of them. I have two kids and live in a high-rise. But the fact of the matter is that we are a rarity in my neighborhood. Everyone else my age in the building has zero kids.
The article mentions that this is part of the effect ("late arrivals" because people have kids later, and having kids and deciding to move out of the city to the suburbs often go hand in hand.)
But they are also "graying" because the US as a whole is; the 25-34yo population segment of interest here is smaller than it was in 2000.
Now I'm just waiting on the affordable electric car. Gas, even in the best of circumstances, is just too much of a hassle and requires much more complex machines than electric.
Of course, this could all be a case of me getting old and lazy, which I suspect it mostly is.
You're definitely right about the tall grass; thankfully this mower's height is easily adjustable so I can make two passes if need be.
The cut is much nicer than a regular lawn mower, I get a little extra exercise a few times a week, and I find that it actually takes me less time to finish--reel mowers work best at a faster pace than a gas-powered push mower. I have only my very limited experience, but I think some of the reputation of reel mowers being inconvenient may be undeserved when looking at the ones made in the past decade.
Really? Because my electric is hugely more heavy than an equivalent gas mower. Granted, that's mostly battery, and probably lead/somethingorother at that. Not that it matters much, because it's self-propelled, but weight is not one of its features.
Not that I'd give up my electric mower. It's like my Nissan Leaf, only for cutting grass: push the switch and it runs w/o having to fiddle with gasoline. Quiet. Won't run as long as gas-powered, but gets me where I need to go.
But to each their own. If you don't like cutting grass, there are people who will do it for you for a reasonable amount of money.
As a wise man once said, "The rent is too damn high." I love living in the city, but pouring tens of thousands into rent each year isn't a smart long-term investment. To me and most of the people I know, urban housing costs are a reason to leave the city, not to move there.
UK: That is less than half what I pay for a 2 bedroom house a couple of miles out of the centre of a provincial city. This house is what people in the US would call 'rent controlled'. Commercial rents twice to three times as much. Housing cost is ridiculous in UK but no-one seems to want to acknowledge that.
Those 500 square feet railway apartments. What are they like? I wouldn't mind one of those!
You pay > $7000/month for rent? 4200 pounds per month?
UK outer-inner city rent around £800 per month (£7200 per year) plus about £1k property taxes for two bed apartment in new development.
Whew - I didn't think the UK had gone up THAT much ;)
The £800/month isn't out of line with a lot of US rents either - that's around $1300/month. You'd get a lot of room for that in some areas, but in others like NYC, that's almost nothing.
The suburbs are made for single families - a shrinking demographic, even among homeowners.
The crazy thing is that living in a house 10 minutes from the center of downtown I pay a fraction of what my friends and relatives back East do to live in a suburb so far away from the metro area they live near that they visit it only once or twice a year.
Especially with more and more remote work becoming available, if you're getting sick of living in a major metro area I highly recommend checking the diverse range of smaller cities across the US, imho it is a vastly superior experience to living in an expensive suburb.
Here me out! I live in the Chicago suburbs; I commute to the West Loop every day. Traffic! High costs! And so forth.
This weekend, I was in Des Moines for a wedding. I met people in their historic East Village. Great bar scene, great craft brew scene. Everyone was friendly! Everyone bicycles around! I would actually consider picking up from Chicago and living in Des Moines, as it seems to be the midwest version of AshvilleNC or perhaps Ann Arbor, but before Ann Arbor blew up and got expensive.
I would have never thought I'd say, "Des Moines is pretty fucking awesome, and I could live here."
Suburbs also play a central role in making car ownership absolutely necessary in order to perform even the most basic daily tasks. This, if you think about, amounts to discrimination against the elderly, children, and anyone who is not able to drive or afford a car.
Am I wrong? Are people that live in dense cities having kids? (And if so, how they make it work? The city seems terribly inconvenient for raising kids.)