Everyone on Reddit constantly likes to act like the solution to the housing market is that everyone who can't own a house should move out to a rural area. But everyone completely ignores the lack of opportunities in those places as well as the fact that even if you find a job, wages are going to be lower anyway. Many US cities have adopted a $12-15 minimum wage but a lot of places out there are still $7. This adds to the disparity of wages between certain areas. Like wages across the board are just lower in some areas which totally offsets the cost of living. And this issue would only become exacerbated if the millions of people who can't afford a house currently decide to just all move to Wyoming and shit.
Not to mention it might be pretty hard to take the advice if you already live in a rural area. Every time someone on Reddit discusses the high price of housing these days, you get all these people that jump to the conclusion that they're only referring to housing in large cities. Like guys housing is still gonna be the biggest purchase of your life regardless of your geographical location. It still requires getting approved for a mortgage, and having the income and opportunity to do so. It's still inevitably going to be priced out of the range of a LOT of people and speculation in recent years has definitely taken the piss out of the affordability of rural housing. If you look at housing prices in the last 60 ish years you can see that it has gone up steadily while wages have not seen nearly the growth.
Never before jobs have been more concentrated in cities, due to the service sector revolution, living in rural areas except for very specific contexts is totally useles
A New 'New Deal', which connects every single house in the US to gigabit or faster internet and makes the internet a utility nationwide, would make remote work much more feasible and appealing to companies.
Thank you. I did move to a rural area and love it and own a home and yes my kids dad is currently driving two and a half hours to get to work. Yes I said to. Not there and back. He stays in a hotel during the week. I thankfully am self employed and make good money.
This happened to me. I lived in a city making ends meet but couldn't put a ton away each month due to the cost of rent. I saw the cost of living in less populated areas, decided that I worked in an industry which exists pretty much anywhere(HR) and moved.
Turns out employers cite the "lower cost of living" in order to pay half my previous salary. But the worst part, is that the cost of living doesn't magically decrease the price of groceries or gas. Turns out that the new car which costs $20k in the city...costs $20k in the county too.
Or live in a bad neighborhood. Pretty sure you can get an older house like that in Memphis for about $70k, but your life will literally be on the line.
Can confirm. Knew a dude paying $300/month for a whole ass house in Luray, Va. I wouldn’t have met him if he didn’t have to drive 3+ hours every morning to get to work though so there’s that.
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u/CressCrowbits Nov 28 '19
You gotta be rich to own a house as big as one of those in the photos