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by keiferski 4774 days ago
It still boggles my mind that people pay $2k-3k per month for a tiny apartment in NYC or SF. You buy a decent house in Pittsburgh for what 2-3 years of rent in SF will get you. I'm sure Chattanooga is similar to Pittsburgh in terms of what 100k buys.

I love NYC, and SF is startup mecca, but on paper it just makes me question whether it's worth it.
5 comments
gdulli 4774 days ago
How could it boggle your mind that different people have different values? I'm happy to pay a premium to live in Boston and not Pittsburgh. That's a very easy decision for me to make, on paper and in practice.

Aside from preferring Boston, volume of living space is also unimportant to me. I like renting. I don't take up much space and don't see the value in claiming a bigger footprint than I need. But I couldn't feel confused that others disagree, unless I felt my values were somehow correct or absolute.

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BCM43 4774 days ago
From my experience the NYC jobs pay more than the ones in other places, so if you're not working remote it can make sense. Also, I like NYC as a city way more than Pittsburgh.
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keiferski 4774 days ago
Yeah, I figure that the salaries are more to offset. And NYC is definitely a much better place than Pittsburgh.

The question is really: if I can own a house in Pittsburgh and visit NYC for 3-4 months a year, and still spend less than renting in NYC, does it make sense at all to live in NYC?

But never mind me, I'll probably end up in New York regardless :)

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btrautsc 4774 days ago
Bought a bungalow here on very lean startup salary. Mortgage significantly less than avg rent in SoMa/ Mountain View. Small yard for my dogs, great school if/when have kids. Less than 1 mile from a ton of restaurants, bars/taverns, whole foods.

Great life for a mid-20's person and still get to travel often.

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ardit33 4774 days ago
Don't want to diss you or anything, but as a European I find bungalows (usually in track row hosing) depressing. Also, less than a mile is not really close. To me close is something that is within a block, that I can just walk within 5 mins.

I live in NYC now, (east village), and there are about 100s of restaurant's, shops, bars, cafes just within 5 minutes walk. The diversity is ridiculous. (I don't think anywhere in the world you find so many kinds of nationalities and cousines in one place).

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btrautsc 4774 days ago
No diss taken, Sir. We may be thinking of the same type of house, perhaps not? But no matter.

I love NYC, and have visited 3x this year. It is an amazing place. I'd say that Chattanooga will not be comparable in almost any metric - # of X, density, variety.

I think for many living in American cities other than NYC, SF, downtown Chicago/ Boston/ DC/ ATL/ Seattle/ a few others - being able to live, walk, eat, get groceries is fairly unusual. Especially for a relative low cost with decent-to-high quality of housing.

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owenjones 4774 days ago
It still boggles my mind that people pay $500-800 per month for an apartment in Pittsburgh or Chattanooga. You buy a decent house in somewhere else for what 2-3 years of rent in Pitt will get you.
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dominotw 4774 days ago
You get paid more to offset the high rent in these cities.
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VLM 4774 days ago
Not even close. Especially if your marginal tax rate is like 40% or more by the time you add all the taxes up.
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