Ask HN: Curious, who can afford to buy in SF?

6 points by rubicon33 •

I've worked in tech now for 15 years, generally "high paying". I lived in SF for the first 4 of this years, between 2014-2018 and remember hearing all about how it was us tech workers who were responsible for high home prices.

Fast forward 15 years and despite moving out of the city, and saving as much as I could, I still don't see how I could afford to live in SF.

Honestly it boggles the mind a little bit. I'm motivated, worked supposedly in the right industry, and would love to live there, but it makes zero financial sense whatsoever. WHO can afford these 1.5 - 3.0 ---> 15+ million dollar homes?

At times I wonder, have I just absolutely failed at working in tech? Should I have been pulling $500k a year or something for the last 10 years? I never did work for FANG so maybe thats it? I mean is that it? Work for FANG and you can afford SF? Or what am I missing? 15 years of working and saving and I still couldn't live there.

Trick is to have a partner who is also on a six-figure salary and not have any kids.

AKA DINK: Dual-Income No Kids.

I mean is that really what's driving this? Is it FANG couples or something? I mean if you load up Zillow or Redfin, its hard to believe that all these 1.5+ million dollar homes are driven by DINK couples alone... Its just so astounding.

I've love to hear from anyone ACTUALLY BUYING in this market. Yet, nobody who is in that category ever responds. It's quite strange really, it feels artificial, or like I'm just outside this class of people.

Who are they?

The median tenure in San Francisco is over 16 years, so most people didn't pay anything close to current prices.

I mean I was living and working in SF from like 2013-20217 and this sentiment of "who the F is actually buying homes here" was true for me then too. I worked in tech, downtown, at a big (not FANG) tech company... and nobody I knew owned a home, or was buying one, and yes we talked about it!

I'm not American, but this question is so relatable to me in my country. Lol.

Why do you want to be in SF? If you're not working at one of the large high-tech companies ("FAANG"-type), have you been working at startups?

I want to be in SF because I love being in dense cities. It's way more fun, and exciting than suburbs.

And you've got your heart set on SF or are you open to other cities that are more cosmopolitan, more diverse, and even more dense?

open to other cities for sure... I only list SF because it's the closest to home. But yea I've considered other cities. I've traveled extensively to Europe and love the cities there so many someday in the future, I'd consider looking into moving there.

> Why do you want to be in SF?

I don't know if you've seen this talk by Paul Graham about why you should move to Silicon Valley

https://youtu.be/QHJkUw31YX8?si=Q75nzax9uk401D6v

I am currently in the market for a property in SF within your listed price range, and ready to make a likely cash offer when the right property comes on the market, I hope by end of year. Also about 15 years of experience. So I suppose I would be the audience you might be interested in hearing from.

It might be helpful to talk a bit about your numbers over your 15 years career: yearly total comp at grant, yearly effective total comp at vest, amount saved per year, growth of invested savings in IRR or average.

With those numbers it’ll be fairly easy to assess if you (1) have been underpaid, (2) have joined companies that didn’t benefit from growth, (3) overspent, or (4) invested your savings too conservatively.

You don’t even need to share them, any AI tool would be able to give you the answer you’re looking for.

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