Yep, every time I sign a check for Bay Area rent, I consider how I'm in the wrong industry, since the land owners have to do very little to continue to extract rent from their one-time-purchase of land (I know, tax is a thing too, but pales in comparison to the returns they must be getting on the land).
I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with a tiny 2-bedroom house that needs major repairs is absurd to me. I'd much rather live in an office while paying off a house in Fiji, then move into that in 20 years and work a lot less.
Another alternative is living in an RV. I've considered this, and since Bay Area rent can pay off a really really really nice RV in ~5 years, it's s viable option. The biggest hiccup is where to park it; national parks would be awesome, but they're not free, Internet access is spotty, and it'd be a long commute every day. Even working remotely, month-to-month RV park communities can be over $500 a month, so that doesn't quite feel like you're beating the game of rent-seeking by property owners as much as I'd like. RVs also require maintenance and probably won't last as long as a house, but even if you get 20 years out of it, or buy it used and sell it where the depreciation is much less per month than rent would have been, you can come out ahead.
There are people who stealth camp on the city streets in conversion vans or smaller Class C RVs. They never park in the same place twice, and once it gets dark, have to be careful to not give themselves away (interior lights, movement, etc).
Here's a plan I often thought about for living in the big city while skipping out on paying rent for an apartment:
Spend about 10k for a used casita travel trailer. The trailer fits in an area the size of a compact car. Rent/buy a parking spot and setup the trailer. In the big city you can get gym membership to cover sewage and showers. For internet you can easily purchase some sort of cellular or wifi service. Almost everything I need would be covered.
It's not for everyone but for myself, I have no qualms about small spaces, so I'd totally execute this plan if it wasn't for the complication of accessing the power grid. There's really no easy way to get a power line up into the trailer if it's in some parking garage. Perhaps solar? but that leads to other complications.
The Victorian era had the concept of "retire with competence". basically means building up a portfolio that one could live of the interest/rent/dividends from.
Problem is that it could barely work as long as the nation was a globe spanning empire.
I'm not super interested in buying a house here, since >half a million for a tiny spot of land in the suburbs with a tiny 2-bedroom house that needs major repairs is absurd to me. I'd much rather live in an office while paying off a house in Fiji, then move into that in 20 years and work a lot less.
Another alternative is living in an RV. I've considered this, and since Bay Area rent can pay off a really really really nice RV in ~5 years, it's s viable option. The biggest hiccup is where to park it; national parks would be awesome, but they're not free, Internet access is spotty, and it'd be a long commute every day. Even working remotely, month-to-month RV park communities can be over $500 a month, so that doesn't quite feel like you're beating the game of rent-seeking by property owners as much as I'd like. RVs also require maintenance and probably won't last as long as a house, but even if you get 20 years out of it, or buy it used and sell it where the depreciation is much less per month than rent would have been, you can come out ahead.