[forinti]

I've gained a taste for a yt channel that shows depopulated towns across the US.

It seems to me that local governments must also have tons of properties to sell or give away. The real issue is that these are in places where people don't usually want to live.

[xvedejas]

Not simply "don't want to live here", usually also "can't, there are no opportunities for income here". I know lots of people optimistic that remote work would upend this, but even the few still-fully-remote workers I know need to live in areas where they or their family can find non-remote jobs if ever necessary.

[kyralis]

It's not even just wanting jobs for family; it's wanting to be around services that I think people don't always consider. Sure, you could plan on doing everything yourself if that's truly your hobby, but most remote workers will want to be able to call a plumber or an electrician when something goes wrong, and even finding tradesmen in those locations can sometimes be challenging.

[ecshafer]

The clawing back of remote jobs is pretty astounding. More places are 3 days a week I guess. But the idea of living out in the country with no one around, but with your remote job is nearly fantasy. You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc.

[Ancapistani]

> You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc

I’ve been remote-only since 2017. In that time I’ve had interruptions in employment three times - it’s not nearly as bleak as this makes it sound.

[echelon]

> You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc.

There are plenty of remote first employers. And that's not going to change now.

[dmurray]

Or...that you would be comfortable relocating if you did lose your job, helped by the buffer of savings you accumulated by not having to pay for your house?

[coryrc]

Lets say housing appreciates +50% everywhere.

Your podunk home went up $50k.

HCOL home went up $500k.

Better deal would be to hold the expensive house.

[panny]

Now let's say the price collapses by 50%. You're stuck and can't sell in a "frozen" housing market... like how the housing market has been since May 2022. And the problem is structural. And it's only going to get worse as interest rates continue to rise to battle inflation. Here's a nice explainer.

https://youtu.be/qROG2uXPChY?t=608

[AnthonyMouse]

The assumption for a couple of generations has been that housing costs will always increase over time as a percent of wages. The problem with that is that it's unsustainable. The next generation has to be able to afford it in order to buy it, and they also need to buy food and utilities etc., which also cost more when real estate does. Investors can't save you either when the next generation can't afford the rent they would have to charge to turn a profit.

But in order for housing to be a good investment, it has to have competitive returns with other investments, i.e. it needs to increase by at least as much as GDP per capita. Meanwhile median wages have been increasing slower than GDP per capita, which as above is the long-term cap on housing prices. In other words, housing can't long-term sustainably beat other market investments unless wages do, which they haven't, in which case people would get better returns by putting their money in stocks etc.

Worse, years of ZIRP inflated housing prices beyond any sustainable level even with the scarcity being maintained by existing zoning restrictions, i.e. the "eventually it's not sustainable" point is already in the past.

The result is that in order for housing to be a good investment going forward from now, there would first have to be a major housing crash so that "investors" (i.e. home buyers) could buy low instead of buying high. Which thereby implies that it wouldn't be a good long-term investment at current prices. And by major housing crash, notice what "enormous housing bubble that crashed the world economy" looks like on this chart in 2007 and compare it to what things look like since then, especially since 2020:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

A lot of people haven't realized that the party is over and are expecting housing to still be a good investment.

[coryrc]

That's the bank's problem.

[dmurray]

Aside from all the other objections from this: broadly speaking, if you lose your job and can't get another one, the economy will be bad and house prices will fall.

Not true for absolutely everyone, and as an individual you may feel you can't take this bet even though it's good in aggregate. A great social security system would allow you to take this bet without paying out too much to people who always made bad choices.

[zamadatix]

If there are no good doctors, dentists, schools, stores, and so in within reasonable distance then life kind of sucks even if you aren't concerned about money/other jobs.

If those things are within a reasonable distance, then so are jobs (well, as about as much as "normal" at least).

[tristor]

I think something important to consider as well is quality of basic services. I've been permanently remote since 2015, and I've moved three times since then. But as a remote worker, I spend most my time in my home and that means it needs high quality water, high quality air, high quality internet, and high quality electrical services. If I cannot get all of these, it's a non-starter. I have absolutely zero faith in getting all of these services of sufficiently high quality for the majority of homes listed on this site, and in many cases I would expect /none/ of these services to be sufficiently high quality. Most of these houses are located in places I would never live, they are essentially negative value locations (in very real terms, not just monetarily).

All that said, I live in one of the lowest cost of living major metros in the US, and I bought a house in an acceptably decent neighborhood w/ high quality water, electrical, and air, and 5 gigabit symmetric fiber service for under $300k. You don't need to spend millions to find an acceptable place to live when you work remotely, but that doesn't mean you want to live in a HUD foreclosure in some of the worst most blighted neighborhoods in the country where you can't rely on even basic services and are going to be immediately a target of violent crime.

[gensym]

Also, IME, places with no employers tend to be populated primarily by addicts, disability fraudsters, and other criminals.

[ryandrake]

...or the elderly, retired, legitimately disabled, or just people temporarily down on their luck.

[gensym]

I get what you're saying and I see that how my comment could be interpreted. I wish I had worded it better.

The most vibrant places in the world (again, IME) have a diversity of abilities, backgrounds, ages, and economic status.

There's another type of place - the sort of place I had in mind - that doesn't. That attracts people who are trying to get away from law and any sort of social contract. Some of those places look attractive on the surface. That's the sort of place I'm talking about. They're probably not as common as they seem to be to me.

[brewdad]

Neither of which tends to lend itself to an interesting place to live.

[andriy_koval]

> Not simply "don't want to live here", usually also "can't, there are no opportunities for income here".

also likely very underdeveloped infra

[rd]

Peter Santenello does a great job of this.