{"id":100277,"date":"2017-06-24T21:46:24","date_gmt":"2017-06-25T05:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gnxp.nofe.me\/?p=188618"},"modified":"2017-06-24T21:46:24","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T05:46:24","slug":"we-need-more-housing-for-the-upper-upper-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2017\/06\/24\/we-need-more-housing-for-the-upper-upper-middle-class\/","title":{"rendered":"We need more housing for the upper upper middle class"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
$1.5 million dollar house in Palo Alto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When people talk about real estate affordability and gentrification often the focus is on housing for the poor.<\/b> Myself, I don’t think this is the issue. People with means wouldn’t move into poor neighborhoods if there was housing they could afford elsewhere.<\/b><\/p>\n

Most of the “multi-million dollar” houses in Palo Alto are not mansions. Many are not really worth that much because of the house; it’s just the land. These are modest homes which really are appropriate for middle class buyers. In fact they were often built with middle class buyers in mind.<\/p>\n

But in places like Palo Alto they are now for two types of people: long-term residents (who also likely don’t pay much property tax), and those with very high incomes and\/or wealth due to selling companies.<\/p>\n

From an article published last year<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The average price of the Palo Alto homes that went on the market today is just over $3 million. With a 20 percent down payment and the state\u2019s average 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 3.77 percent, the average monthly payment on those homes would be a little over $14,000, two-thirds of the monthly income for a quarter-million dollar household<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard to imagine that two married Google engineers in their twenties could afford a house in Palo Alto. It’s beyond their means. But these homes are not luxurious in and of themselves. They’re all that the upper upper middle class have access to nearby.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In Silicon Valley they love to reimagine stuff. But only some people like the demi-god Elon Musk are focusing on concrete things, like cars and rockets. They need to re-imagine housing<\/strong>. There’s no reason the people coding the future should live in post-war ranch homes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When people talk about real estate affordability and gentrification often the focus is on housing for the poor. Myself, I don’t think this is the issue. People with means wouldn’t move into poor neighborhoods if there was housing they could afford elsewhere. Most of the “multi-million dollar” houses in Palo Alto are not mansions. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2721],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100311,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100277\/revisions\/100311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}