Better culture is very subjective! As I said, many cities are larger than SF or Seattle. On net they have more stuff going on. But if you're super "into" the hyper woke coastal city thing, one might not like them as much. But IMO even one is into that sort of thing, there are plenty of places that give you a taste of that while not being as crazy expensive. Austin is an obvious one. Several cities in the midwest are turning into that a bit, like Madison.
IMO if something doesn't work for you, you can always think through the issue and find an alternative! Personally I want to get OUT of Seattle because it's gone too far that way. I was fine with it when it was quirky, filled with silly hippies and grunge sorts, and run by Bill Clinton from the 90s style liberals. It had it's pros and cons, but I could deal with the cons. But the level of crazy has just stepped up too far for my liking here. I'm pretty libertarian, so I will be peeved by different parts of government/political culture no matter where I go, but at least in a red state they're not trying to destroy my financial life by a death of 1,000 cuts.
I learned so much from this post. Thanks everybody. Vaughn's reply above especially is making me wonder. I'm not tied by anything in this city other than my job, and since I got my green card after moving from Canada's east-coast 5 years ago (where my family resides), I have almost no particular attachment to this city. I am focusing on building wealth while I'm relatively young, and sounds like Seattle is just a harder place to follow the real estate strategy to achieve my financial goals. Tech jobs can be found all over the country, and perhaps taking a pay cut isn't such a bad idea if I can trade that for better culture, lower crime rates, better real estate opportunities, etc.
Meeting up with a different friend involved in real estate to give me a different perspective, but so far I'm definitely holding to my guns.
I'm glad I got you thinking. That's the most important thing. You don't want to keep your thinking in a narrow box. After living in Seattle for years, and really loving it, it was hard for me to accept that the place had simply completely changed into something I was faaaaar less fond of. Seattle will never be the great place it was when I moved here ever again. That the financial aspects also made zero sense was icing on the cake in terms of me deciding to leave. Why would I want to live in a place where I needed to scrimp, save, and barely squeak by to buy a place, when in most of the country I could buy a 5,000 square foot house in the nicest neighborhood in town right now??? Not that I WILL buy a place like that of course, I'm too much of a tight wad and want to invest too heavily for that! However what that means is buying a nice 4 bedroom in a decent neighborhood in such places, which is a solid "lifestyle," will still leave me with tons of income to invest.
But you have to decide the lifestyle you want, what trade offs you're willing to make for what things. Don't mind hyper liberal politics or snow? Maybe Chicago would be alright for you. Hate liberal politics and snow? Maybe you should look in Texas or the south. Like flashy areas? Miami is half the cost for property as Seattle. Discovered you could maybe deal with a metro that's a bit smaller? Well maybe Spokane, Boise, or a ton of cities in the Midwest might do the trick for you. Once you can think through what you want/don't want, then start kind of check listing all that stuff in your head (or a spreadsheet if you want to get OCD!) then you can decide what places might be good for you.
Other than being almost 100% positive I will be WAY happier once I move from here, one of the things that really helped me being okay with bailing out of here is that YOU CAN ALWAYS MOVE AGAIN. If you find you can't stand the place where you moved to, just try somewhere else. You'll have likely made some sound investments that you can either hold onto or sell, and just move on. Maybe the next place will be perfect for you. There's been a kind of "super cycle" with these major cities that has made them very, very unlivable. They're less affordable than any other time in history by the numbers. White collar workers with high incomes have never had to struggle like this ever before, even in "cool" coastal cities. This is a new thing the last couple decades. I think a lot of younger people like you and I are figuring this out, and bailing.
Anyway, just keep thinking and hopefully the perfect plan/place will pop into your head!
So I've lived in Seattle proper for 15 years (Ballard), and Washington even longer than that. I passed on buying a place about 6-7 years ago (oops!). A few years ago I stepped up my hustle to buy property. Then as time went on an prices kept skyrocketing I realized Seattle, and many other trendy metros, were in bubble territory. There was no way I wanted to invest here, and due to the direction of the city I eventually decided I don't even want to live here anymore anyway. I got tired of making 6 figures and not really getting much of a lifestyle out of it. The crime, taxes, vibe of the city, and general direction of this place is a mess. If you're newer around here then you have no idea just how nice a place Seattle used to be across the board.
The fact is that all these trendy metros were overpriced and due for a correction BEFORE covid came along. See, MATH, fundamentals ALWAYS predict pricing beyond the immediate short term euphoria irrational people have during booms. Without fail. And that means there was only room to drop, no upside potential. At best Seattle could have flat lined in prices for several years while inflation ate away at it's real value. At worst it could have dropped 20-30% or more. But no more 10% appreciation for the near future was possible. I have lots of math and facts to show why, but this isn't the place for it! That is all still true, AND we have a major recession on our hands. If I were you I wouldn't buy a darn thing period, anywhere, let alone in a place like Seattle right now. Seattle will probably be more expensive 30 years from now, but buying in right at a point where there's no potential for immediate appreciation, in a negative cash flow market... It just doesn't make sense. All the investors saying otherwise for trendy metros in the last couple years are going to be the ones who lose their rear ends as this current economic situation plays itself out.
If you really insist on investing here, BRRRing, room renting, etc is the only way you'll get close to coming out here. BRRR doesn't have to mean a massive project, you can always try to find the holy grail of BRRRing that really just needs paint, flooring replaced, etc. It's work still of course, but it isn't horribly complicated to do the simple things.
Even if you want to continue to live in this area, bear in mind investing in Everett, Tacoma, etc are the way to go. You don't have to live there for 20 years man! Moving to Everett for a year or two, then moving out and renting your old unit should leave you able to move along to the next property just fine. Assuming you don't lose several hundred grand in paper equity because prices crash due to the recession we're in.
But personally, I'd suggest rethinking your life long term... These big cities aren't all they're cracked up to be. And even if you REALLY think they are, and can't possibly live in a place with less than X million people, realize there are cities far larger than Seattle, with far more "stuff" to do overall than here/SF/NYC that ARE NOT insanely over priced. Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, etc are all far larger and cheaper. Many in between cities that are millions of people and a lot less expensive too.
I myself have decided to move to the Spokane/CDA area as I've lived in the NW most of my life. There's enough city stuff in Spokane to get me by (They have ramen, sushi, $20 hamburgers etc if those are musts for anybody), but no traffic, an upward trajectory instead of downward in many ways (crime is down, wage/job growth up, etc), and of course the ID side doesn't have insane government policies that seek to destroy your financial life. But everybody has to make that call for themselves.
So a couple suggestions. One, save money. Cash is always king, and if you have your own cash you can avoid having to pay out the nose to a hard money lender potentially.
Two, one of the great ways to sneak into your first few deals is by being an owner-occupant. You can generally put less down, and in many cases you could even get a rehab loan for a property that needs work. This is often called a "live in flip." Even better is if you can find a duplex or quadplex to do this with. That way you can go the BRRR route, have cash flow showing on the other units which makes it easier for you to do the same thing on the next property. That type of thing is often called house hacking.
Finally, there's owner financing. I've been looking to move to the area you're in, so have been watching properties... There are multiple properties in that general area right now that explicitly list owner financing as an option, and probably plenty more people that could be talked into it if you put together a good offer. I expect if lending becomes tough, and selling properties in general is hard, that there will be an increase in owner financing as well. It happened during the Great Recession because people were desperate to sell.
You should look into those concepts,and save cash. Those are probably going to be good places to start. Given the economic mess going on right now, you may not be able to get financed without more cash down, but things will turn around eventually.
Maybe out of date now after only 3 days, but interesting stuff coming out of recent Goldman meeting. https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/03/16/the-private-goldman-sachs-coronavirus-meeting-thats-setting-the-internet-on-fire/#174dbacc50dd
They have been caught flatfooted before, but they are pretty smart and certainly connected (hi Steve M....)
Honestly, those are pretty much the same opinions I have on this thing from the available information!
The shutdowns are temporary. And most of the big problems are all in peoples heads. The stock market SHOULD NOT be tanking like it is. So while I might be a little less optimistic about how quickly it will return, and that it will fully recover (It shouldn't it was over valued at the start!), I'd bet by 2021 things will be back to business as usual. Which is to say things will be stable and growing again. I do think a lot of asset values will remain lower than they were at this peak though for some time, because they were all overvalued! We were overdue for the reset, and while a pandemic isn't my chosen reason to kick it off, I think now that it has there's next zero zero chance of things recovering to exactly where they were at the peak within a short span of time.
@Kevin Lefeuvre
Just had my first tenant tel me they aren’t working until April 6th and won’t be getting a paycheck for the next two weeks that they aren’t working.
How many think this $1000 check the government is giving out will be used to pay for rent?
Assuming these are people with "jobs" working for somebody else, above board, basically anybody can apply for unemployment because of temporary layoff, permanent job loss, etc etc etc. That's under normal circumstances, but basically everywhere has made it even easier for now because of the virus.
In truth, unemployment won't be enough for most people to stay solvent completely, because it doesn't totally replace wages... BUT that combined with some of the other stuff going on will probably allow most people to squeak by. Any landlord needs to tell their tenants to get on top of all that stuff ASAP, because it will almost certainly take time to process and cash to actually make it in their hands.
If this goes on for a long time, then who knows how bad it might be. But in these early days most people should be able to make rent one more time at least before there are real excuses that are valid.
Cancer is still a terrible comparison. We can just stop with the comparisons because we are in completely different ball fields. If you are trusting in politicians and/or your top resources are social media/tv then I can see why you are freaking out. We can go way down the rabbit hole here but This is where I see the problem and where I become frustrated. I have no idea who to trust. One group of folks says one thing and another group of folks says another. We will differ here but I have a hard time believing most of what I hear on tv and from social media. I feel they will do whatever is needed to get the masses to follow.
I personally have chosen to trust Tom Hanks. He is a guy you would trust, right? Poor guy spent years alone on an island and survived. He has no reason to lie to anyone. He got it, is now better and is telling everyone not to freak out. Be Prepared, and be smart, yes but, freak out, no. I am extremely concerned for the economy and people who may lose their jobs. That is more concerning to me than the virus itself.
As a side note, I am one of the folks that is said to be more susceptible to dying from the virus as I have had diabetes for 30 years so I most certainly am aware and do not want to take chances. Maybe being in the field, being educated, and having common sense inspires confidence (I am not saying that you are none of the previous). That or I am completely ignorant lol. Time will tell.
I think we may agree a lot more than you think! I think you think I'm coming at this from a freaking out lemming angle... I'm not.
I am most definitely NOT trusting politicians or the media! I probably trust politicians (of all stripes) and the media less than anybody you have ever met. I absolutely agree with you on the "Who do we trust?" thing. The answer in NOBODY. Not knee jerk trust anyway. I've known this for eons, many people have only come to realize how slanted the media/political elite is in the last few years. There are a few individuals out there in the world I trust on certain issues, or trust to at least be trying to tell the truth. Mostly you can conditionally trust things politicians/etc say when it would be in their interests to be telling the truth... The rest of the time DOUBT THEM until you can verify!
I was paying attention to this MONTHS before the US media paid it any mind. I heard about this and was following it before they even NAMED the virus in December. I'm a news/politics junkie, and very independent minded. Both (All? LOL) sides are morons. I'm more or less a somewhat real world, pragmatic, libertarian. I made up my own mind based on the few bits of info that can be considered "facts" and conjecture from a variety of sources that passed my "This makes logical sense as a theory" filter.
I don't think, by and large, the hard numbers are being outright made up. From the hard numbers this has the possibility of being a major disaster. I'm math brained, and the math speaks to the reality of this situation IMO. I don't care what some politician says, I need only see the infection rates and death rates to know this is a BAD thing if we don't contain/slow the spread. That's basically the beginning, middle, and end of it for me. The math is why I don't think death rate is 3.4% or any of the higher rates, because we know testing is low. Logic + math tells us it must be much higher. But it does spread, and it does kill plenty enough to be a disaster.
As for Tom Hanks... I don't trust him either! He is just a Hollywood moron. He has bad political opinions, talks about stuff like he knows everything (when he doesn't) just like all the stars do... I'm sure he's a nice guy, but not a source I care much about for opinions. BUT he is more or less right in this instance: Most people won't die, and there's no reason to be freaking out.
As I said, I don't consider many of the isolation orders and other steps to be panicking. I think they're reasonable. The Bay Area, IMO, with their latest round of BS seems to be overstepping reasonable bounds though. And people need to push back on overreach as much as they need to be pushing back on not enough action being taken.
The economic fallout may well be worse than the virus itself... But again, if that ends up being the case that means WE WON. Because if we didn't take fairly drastic actions the deaths and mayhem would be FAR worse than the economic harm we will cause. We DO need to balance these factors, I'm not for any crazy action for any reason, but we're going to have to sacrifice some short term economic stuff to save ourselves bigger trouble later on.
So I think other than our interpretation of what is what with this thing, we perhaps agree more than we might have thought :)
I have a super amazing announcement... I'm going to get one of the rare, highly sought after, very exclusive Covid-19 tests at noon today! I finally managed to work my way through a Gordian Knot of unintelligible, contradictory information, and actually talk to a doctor who could authorize a test... And he was basically like "Oh yeah, your situation, you should definitely be tested."
So tested I will be. I may get to be the first BP member with an official diagnosis :/ At least if I come back negative I can end my not really optional, but technically not legally required, self quarantine.
The Federal government says anyone showing symptoms needs to self quarantine. Even if you test negative today, you could test positive tomorrow. Even if you don't have COVID-19, if it not allergies, it is a contagious sickness of some type. The point is even people with the flu need to stay in quarantine. That is what the White House said in one of the daily briefings.
I hope you are ok. It is very discouraging that getting tested is so hard. So much fear and anxiety could be removed is testing was available to anyone who wanted to be tested. It would also give us a better understanding of real infection and death rates. I know several sick people who told me they don't have COVID-19, but they were not tested. I am not sure how anyone knows without testing since the symptoms can be different for different people. The scary part is half or more the infected people may not show any symptoms, so you have people carelessly going out spreading the disease without even knowing they are sick.
Yup, I have been self quarantined for several days already. Once I figured out I was sick I did that as per the guidance, and also started nearly right off trying to figure out how to be tested. It was a total pain. Even last week I probably would have been turned down outright because they've been changing their criteria for who qualifies so quickly. There's supposed to be 1 million or so tests available by this weeks end, so we should be OKAY on testing going forward... If you can figure out where to even be tested!
As far as things go, if I am confirmed I want to know largely so I can give people I may have infected a heads up to watch out for symptoms... But honestly, I will probably go above and beyond the minimum government requirements if I have covid too. Why? Because there are tons of reports of people having virus loads that could probably spread the virus still LONG after the current guidelines are up. If I have a cold or flu or whatever, I'll just ride out being sick, and do the minimum days. I have low chances of getting a false negative since I'm already waaay symptomatic. That type of thing is more people with no symptoms... Although in theory I could have caught a cold, then caught covid that hasn't got to detectable levels yet... But if that's the case I should have a 2nd dip in my health at some point too... There's really no way to be positive no matter what :/
I'm sure I'll be fine health wise. Increased testing should help with the spread AND the fear. So that's one good thing this week!
I completely understand what an analogy is and how they work. Your analogy is a terrible comparison. They only similarity is that if neither is addressed they will get bad. They otherwise are very unlike each other in regards to cause, or treatment. The bottom line is that I don’t like your attitude towards or assumptions of people who may have different feelings than your own. We are both in the Seattle area. I would love to meet you for coffee one day. That is of course after quarantine is broken, you wash your hands, and I leave the bar after picking my nose and eating community pretzels.
LOL Well, I wasn't being snarky when I thanked you for working in health, I was trying to be civil. As I said 95% of people posting things like you have been doing irresponsible stuff, if you aren't then awesome! I have no beef with you.
My analogy wasn't trying to be precise, or something to be dissected from 100 different angles, it was trying to illustrate ONLY that one simple point: If you deal with it, it's not a big deal... If you don't, you're screwed. I don't usually try to make off the cuff analogies on random forum posts match up in every conceivable way with precise minutiae, or be medically accurate. Would you have preferred I used cancer that is ignored? Any medical analogy I could have used is flawed in some day... But the treatment method is irrelevant to the point I was making, and gangrene happened to be the first thing that popped into my head.
I'm not going out of my way to be a total jerk here or anything, to you or anybody else... But the entire point of forums is kind of to throw out your ideas, and debate a subject, right? Which usually includes asserting ones belief that their own opinion is correct? Right? Well, that's what we've all been doing. I personally don't believe in the idea that all opinions are valid... Some "opinions" are right, and some are wrong. In truth, your more lax opinion might NOT be wrong. Perhaps I, and most top level medical people in the world, are all freaking out irrationally. That is 100% possible. But I'm going with my gut, the large amount of info I have read from reputable sources, most politicians in the world, and most top level medical people in the world... Which means I'm concerned, but not what I would consider freaking out. I think I'm right, and will continue to say so. You are free to do the same! Time will tell.
Fortunately I'm one of those "crazy" people that was actually prepared for a natural disaster with several months worth of food, medical supplies (I already had masks!), a water filter than can purify infected pond water, and many other things that are useful in dicey situations. I would have guessed it was a massive earthquake that might make that stuff useful living here, but if it's a virus, so be it. So I'm really not very worried at all. I'll be fine.
As for the coffee, maybe someday! Who knows, we might become best friends after meeting in real life!
I have a super amazing announcement... I'm going to get one of the rare, highly sought after, very exclusive Covid-19 tests at noon today! I finally managed to work my way through a Gordian Knot of unintelligible, contradictory information, and actually talk to a doctor who could authorize a test... And he was basically like "Oh yeah, your situation, you should definitely be tested."
So tested I will be. I may get to be the first BP member with an official diagnosis :/ At least if I come back negative I can end my not really optional, but technically not legally required, self quarantine.
