How do People in the Bay Area buy 2-3 million houses

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same way 'people' in NYC are able to buy 2-3 million condos. Start off with a larger base income with all the lawyers and financiers present, otherwise the rest of the buyers are independently wealthy or the top 5% in their respective fields like fashion, publicity etc.

There's also the fact that 65% of the people living in New York City rent. That's roughly 5 million people renting for their entire lives. 1/5th of those renters have a household income over $150,000.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/realestate/rent-increases-2017.html

https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/new-york-high-income-renters/

All that to say - I believe people are vastly overlooking the fact that the broad majority of Bay Area dwellers or NYC dwellers just can't afford to buy at all.

Every person I know who is living in NY and hadn’t bought, can’t afford to do so. Even those making 500k plus. They live such fancy and high consumption lifestyles that they are unable to save the 20-50 percent needed for a downpayment. They act as though renting is easier:better deal but we know that’s not why they are still renting.

Yes. And the NYC renter's market is CUT-THROAT. $5K month for a tiny 1,100 3 bdrm, walk-up, no view, window a/cs and bars with deposit, first month's, and last month's rent is doing excellent and you're splitting that with 2 other women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in SF. They are house-poor. It means they sank all their money into their house, so can't afford to do anything else.

+1 Many are slaves to their mortgages. We moved out of their a few years ago because we didn't want that.

[Anonymous]

^there not their.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With 300-400k HHI. People here think you could only afford a 1 million house with that income. Why is there such a disparity?

they are not on 300-400k HHI

an engineering manager in early 30s at Airbnb can make near $1M in total compensation

300-400k HHI is like entry level package for people working at facebook/google

Airbnb is not public yet. Not profitable. How does it afford paying that kind of salary?

[Anonymous]

Airbnb pulled in over $1 billion last quarter:

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2018/11/19/airbnb-1-billion-dollars-revenue-q3-2018-ipo.html

They don't own inventory....think about the margins.

[Anonymous]

Tech Stock options. It helps to be a “messenger bag millionaire.”

[Anonymous]

BTW, I noticed that those 2-3 million dollar homes have house poor owners. The houses are really shabby on the exterior. Things that any DC area resident would have fixed, they let go.