Funny you mentioned that.

1980 Home Avg =$ 68,700........Car avg = $7,200........10.5%
2013 Home Avg =$289,500........Car avg = $31,352.......10.8%

Quick source: The Changing Prices of stuff in 80 years comparison of prices over the last 80yrs

Those are averages not medians and obviously a house in downtown Detroit isn't the same as downtown LA.

I haven't checked hard but wages or likely a better measure, household income, hasn't kept up.

They're still expensive by any measure (to your point...).

Not yet. I've considered it, but I keep going back and forth. Right now, my main focus is autox, and I'm doing more dumb shit for that. I think that once I pull the soft top out and acquire a hard top, installing and removing a bolt in roll bar will become trivial.

Truth. I drove past it when I went down last for an interview. But right now I'm not all that far from the one in Ohio. I had an emergency and needed an item NOW, so i ordered online and picked up in store. Ohio sales tax buttfucked me vs the free shipping. But it was an emergency.

I just sold my snowblower to a guy the other day. I asked for $225 on CL and ended up selling for $150. I felt bad because the thing is so awful; it ran great, but would plug with snow if you looked at it wrong. I would get a max of 10 sq. ft. uncovered with it before I'd give up and go to the manual shovel. Fucking hated that thing.

Every once in a while I'd take 22/30 over to PIT. The drive past Weirton represented all that was wrong in US industry to me. Good luck with the move south.

Cars, no matter where you buy them are the same price. The same can not be said for houses. Why people pay so much for housing is beyond me.

Tell that to someone who lives in Europe. And I'm not just referring to the tax.

Or to someone who is shopping for a rust-free NA in Michigan or Illinois, but wants to pay the California / Arizona price for it. You can double the value of a 20 year old car in the southwest just by putting it on a truck and shipping it to the mid-east.


Mostly because of the proximity of said house to desirable things, and the distance from said house to undesirable things.

Example of desirable things would be:

• Public transportation
• Urban centers (job markets)
• Good weather
• Highly-ranked schools
• Trader Joe's

Examples of undesirable things would be:

• Rail lines frequently traveled by freight trains at night
• Neighborhoods known for high rates of violence and property crime
• Factories which emit noxious odors or pollutants
• The approach or departure paths of a major airport
• Detroit

The cost to construct a house in San Jose, CA is about the same as to construct one in Oakland Stockton, CA. But the value of the former house will be 5-10x greater than that of the latter.

The Google and other various tech monies pouring into the bay combined with the ridiculous rental market in the immediate area has started the gentrification of Oakland in a big way.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1450462375

True. Revised for Stockton, CA, where you can still get a 1br house for $100k.

Because Stockton.

We'll i'll take the occasional snowfall in order to have endless fresh water, clean air, extremely healthy job market in my field, and a low tax / low cost of living.
Not living in a rat infested overpopulated concrete zoo is also an added bonus.
I'll take my chances of dodging the stray bullets, I've had good luck doing so for 24 years already.

The value of the house will be about the same. The value of the land it sits on, OTOH...

--Ian

I'm a software engineer, the bay area is order of magnitude better for my career than anywhere else in the world.

--Ian

Nobody ever talks about Georgia as being deer-infested, or California as being condor-infested. But you put a few million rats into an area the size of NYC, and suddenly they're an "infestation."

I'll have you know that fewer than 50% of the restaurants in my neighborhood have received an infraction from the city health department for the presence of rats or mice in the kitchen area in the past two years. Less than half! That means that the majority of all restaurants on the upper east side are rat-free!

:beer:

Oakland has always had rich neighborhoods. It's nothing to do with technology.

I miss living in Oakland. Gorgeous city--in the hills.

But no arguments for the overpopulated concrete zoo part? I don't mind the cute little rats, its the inability to see the sky, the smell, the people, the claustrophobia. I've been in new york twice. Both times I left hating it even more.

I guess I just don't see it that way.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Whenever I'm in a place that's all flat and there's nobody around, I feel kind of isolated / depressed / marooned. I'm talking cities and small towns here, not places that, while wide open and sparsely populated, are inherently beautiful like the Sonoran desert, the Grand Canyon, etc.

Being in NYC (or other vibrant, major cities) gives me a sense of life and vitality.



I'll take this:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1450466569

Over this:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1450466569

Any day.

Ahh, see I dislike other people for the most part. So I would much prefer #2.

Sometimes I wish I had chosen a profession that would allow me to live somewhere that had a population of <300.

:likecat:
:beer:

I lived in a town in Arkansas for 2 years with a main street that looked like this. At least 75% of the store fronts were closed and looked like they had been bombed. Fucking awful.

I spend enough time with people between 7am and 5pm Monday-Friday.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1450545030

The ass-hole per square mile ratio is so high in the city that when I'm not forced to be around them, I don't want to even consider their existence. They can keep their damned cities. I want a 4-wheeler and a log cabin. I want to piss off my back porch every morning. I want to go fuck in the middle of the woods, 1984 style, and know that if anyone is close enough to see or hear me, they're trespassing.

The license for one hotdog cart could probably be swapped for the entire main street, with cash left in reserve.

2fast4me.

Just spent over 5 hours in the hospital because my brother tried to kill himself. He failed, miserably, as in almost everything he does.

I already feel I have a different outlook on life. And I fear it will mean a lot more confrontation for those that are willfully ignorant. i.e. liberals.