My family definitely got the short end of most of these factors in the midwest.
* Very few high paying companies in the area and they were less likely to move due to owning.
* They made about 3.3k/year in appreciation for 20 years. That's on the order of a 13 hour per month side gig.
* Any gains definitely erased by the amount of labor they put into things such as mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, having the washing machine hose disconnect and leak water down into the basement. All of these little things added up to many man hours across.
The problem isn't isolated though. We're at the point where people living in tech hubs are buying houses in Ohio every couple of months, simply because they can.
(owning) housing also isn't necessarily cheap relative to the jobs available in these areas.
> buying houses in Ohio every couple of months, simply because they can
I doubt that, and even if they are I'm not sure it's a wise choice. Housing is cheap here compared to other areas, but it's not that cheap (unless you're buying stuff I'm not sure you'd want to buy anyway).
You're doubting what? That there are people doing this?
It's not hard on a bay area L4+ salary to have a spare 40-50k several times a year (20% of a 200-250k property), especially if you are snowballing with profits from multiple other properties.
> You're doubting what? That there are people doing this?
> buying houses in Ohio every couple of months, simply because they can
Yes I am absolutely doubting this.
> Snowballing with profits from multiple other properties
Like, as in buying properties in Ohio then managing them? If it's in SF I can kind of see it since you can go to the property on short notice, but if you're in SF you aren't buying and maintaining rental properties in Ohio unless you have family here or someone to help out on the ground or unless you seriously enjoy throwing money in the trash. It's far too much work and rental property management companies don't really help except to find tenants. It's hard enough work when you're actually in the same ___location.
I'm sure there exists people who do it (I don't think I've doubted that it's possible or that somebody somewhere does it) but I'd challenge it as a smart investment choice for sure.
If you want to clarify here because I think that there's some ambiguity between your comment and the OP comment I responded to, please do and I'd love to chat about that.
> buying and maintaining rental properties in Ohio unless you have family here or someone to help out on the ground
I have an extended family member that at his peak time owned about 90 homes in NE Ohio. He lived there his entire life, knew everyone and knew their parents too.
A distant landlord from California will get eaten alive, with the help of the local government. You need to move mountains to get things done when you live in a neighboring town, let alone a coastal state.
I'll go ahead and fire off a recommendation to find a muay thai gym that has dedicated conditioning classes and some cool people. I wish I would have discovered it 10 years earlier when I started running cross country.
Running, for me, was the Runescape of sports. Very grindy, with very little room for me to use my mind.
If we're going to start counting 2nd and 3rd degree connections, why not count people that are home playing video games on a Microsoft console instead of driving somewhere?
that makes sense. I prefer renting for various reasons. unfortunately this means I ride scooters with an (optimistic) top speed of 15 mph. no way I'm going to try and ride on a four-lane, 30 mph road on one of those things.
The nuisance -> regulation flow is precisely why I became an early adopter and dropped ~$2500 on a fast one .
I wanted to have my fun before the hordes ruin it. If everyone had a scooter that could go over 35mph, it would be chaos.
To those that enjoy hooligan style fun, the time to get an electric scooter is now, before the laws catch up to the reality and make e-kick scooters just another point a to b experience. That said, have the hooligan fun in a way that doesn't accelerate the adoption of laws.
In my city at least, all motorized vehicles are prohibited from riding on the sidewalk and they do write tickets for it (and confiscate the scooter). It seems way less fun when you're sucking exhaust in traffic.
The laws are coming faster in some places than others and the presence of rentals is actually bad in terms of keeping attention on scooters down.
I figured I'd have 1-2 good summers in my current city before the laws caught up. So far they've only kicked us out of the main walking street, which sucks since it's actually perfect for scooters, but whatever. This is one of those moments where I wish I felt like a partner to government rather than a subject.
I haven't been hassled or seen someone hassled for sidewalk riding. I make sure to treat pedestrians like Gods though and opt to get off and walk my scooter before causing chaos, confusion, or even the optics of impatience.
Look at the full lineup offered by Dualtron, if you'd like top of the line.
I chose the Dualtron Spider, as it was made to be only 44lb while able to go 38mph, do wheelies, has full suspension for the skate park and so on.
If you are willing to deal with more weight, there are other Dualtron options that are probably built a bit better (44lb was a hard limit for legality in Singapore), but the spider is still an amazing machine.
Browsing the electric scooters subreddit is also useful. They link out to this sheet:
It's not a sound system. It's round the clock house help in a country like India. A driver (instead of working your way through mind numbing traffic every day, twice a day), a chef, a maid, etc.
It's buying real estate to secure your family's future for generations instead of living hand to mouth.
It's sending your kids to good schools or doctors in the West as opposed to hoping to scrape together enough cash to educate or send them to doctors at all.
It would be really hard for a first world person to understand how big the chasm is in less privileged parts of the world.
You do not want to be on the wrong side of the wealth divide.
Just adding more to your point. People in the US and western hemisphere in general how many things that are just nature to them are not available to us here in India.
Case in point air and water. Just air and water. Like try breathing the dusty, polluted air. Or drinking water which gives you and your family throat infection every two months, and outbreaks of dengue killing family and friends every 6 months or so.
I'd literally do anything at this point just to breath good air. And that's just starting with the most fundamental requirement of life itself.
* Very few high paying companies in the area and they were less likely to move due to owning.
* They made about 3.3k/year in appreciation for 20 years. That's on the order of a 13 hour per month side gig.
* Any gains definitely erased by the amount of labor they put into things such as mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, having the washing machine hose disconnect and leak water down into the basement. All of these little things added up to many man hours across.