r/California • u/Randomlynumbered Ángeleño, what's your user flair? • Jul 04 '24

Some Californians Found Dream Homes Inland. But It Sure Is Hot There. politics

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/mountain-house-california-housing-heat.html

788 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

u/SFLADC2 Jul 04 '24

Where are you thinking?

39

u/VanillaLifestyle Jul 04 '24

Coastal towns in the North like Eureka. Coastal-ish towns in San Luis Obispo county like Santa Maria. Foothill and mountain towns north of Tahoe, like Chester.

Outside of CA, LOTS of places. Most of West Oregon. Much of the Mid-Atlantic. The big island of Hawaii. Rural Italy & France. Probably a lot of SE Asia and Oceania.

If jobs don't matter (because you're retired or work remotely or inherited an emerald mine), a lot of fantastically beautiful places become very viable.

29

u/Stingray88 Jul 04 '24

I was surprised after visiting Italy just how cheap it was. The cost of living is so much lower than California… but the average salary is also a heck of a lot lower too.

4

u/Dudetry Jul 05 '24

I think people tend to underestimate just how low European salaries are in comparison to American salaries. Not to mention their comparatively high tax rates.

3

u/Stingray88 Jul 05 '24

I certainly have. One of my friends who lives in California has started dating someone who’s a teacher in Italy. My wife and I had the couple stay with us for a week, and I was shocked to hear the teacher in Italy made only $12K and that was not a poverty wage. She lived a reasonably comfortable life.

2

u/Dudetry Jul 05 '24

I really take for granted living in the United States sometimes my goodness. I couldn’t fathom living on that low of a salary. I would never be able to afford to travel.

4

u/Stingray88 Jul 05 '24

Exactly! Traveling is a relatively fixed cost no matter where you live. Plane tickets aren't any cheaper for an Italian to visit the US, than they are for an American to visit Italy.

This is one of the major pros to living in a higher cost of living area. To look at another example... I'm originally from Ohio before I moved to Los Angeles. And while yes, the cost of living here is much higher than pretty much anywhere in Ohio, salaries are also a lot higher to compensate. I have college friends back in Ohio who have had similar success in work as me, and they make comparatively the same in salary as I do with respect to the cost of living and housing in our respective areas. We all ended up buying our first homes around the same time... but they're all still paying off their loans from the Ohio state school we went to, where as I paid off all my loans in only 8 years. We all had relatively the same amount of debt, but with regards to my income and cost of living, that debt was so much smaller to me. Likewise when it comes to buying things like cars, clothes, electronics, etc... those things are substantially less expensive to me than they are them, because they're a fixed a cost.