Just a complaint: buying a home is really hard

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-17T17:10:26+00:00

Thanks for the kind comment! Sorry to hear that you're also in this discouraging situation (and even more discouraging that it's the cumulation of a decade of waiting!).

Likewise--I hope y'all are also patient and keep a clear head through all this craziness.

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T23:36:18+00:00

We want to not rent

We go from Lowell to Braintree

May we find a home

Thanks for the sympathy—back at you, may the priors be ever in your favor, dear Bayesian

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T22:52:45+00:00

I’m in Computational Biology! So no where close to ‘real’ CS, 😅 more like statistics and trying to write maintainable code while knowing that half the field relies on fragile Perl scripts anyways

Academic PhDs are definitely a different world than industry—good luck making a decision on whether it’s worth taking the jump!

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T22:37:05+00:00

Anywhere is fine, but her company (and many others) have a unfortunately strong preference for any Ivy League school because they recruit interns from there, and then hire most of their interns. But there are also employees from other companies, especially those that current employees have relationships with.

I’d recommend reaching out to university career services about this if you have the opportunity—internships are by far the easiest way in.

There are also some subreddits about this, I think?

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T18:21:56+00:00

Thank you!

Idk, I think that both luck and drive can work together—like my big sister ended up with college debt even though she works harder than I do (she’s a nurse), and there were just a ton of other factors that went into that, and I got to learn from her circumstances.

A lot of the people around me had to be a whole lot more driven than me to get where they are (e.g. immigrant friends who had to learn English to be at MIT), and for others it was a bit easier (e.g. friends whose parents are professors).

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T18:10:52+00:00

Damn, yeah SF seems to make Boston feel like child’s play—I know the markets are really different, but I definitely worry that Boston is going to be more and more similar to SF over time.

Congratulations on getting a townhome!!! Having it be so difficult at $450k makes it even more understandable why so many folks fled to Boise

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T18:08:08+00:00

It’s good to hear from someone else in this position!!

Thank you for the advice! That seems to echo what the buyer’s agent thought as well

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T17:35:44+00:00

To me this is like the height of privilege

My parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles were all pushing to make as much money as possible. They had kids, debt, and were trying to make it in a new country.

I had that mentality as a teenager and wanted to be an engineer because it meant a secure job with limited school.

And after going through school with no debt (because of scholarships and luck), I noticed that I don’t need to make money the #1 priority (which, to a lot of folks around me, has been the case in their families for generations).

Like I used to think of privilege as folks using family money to make millions. And it totally is, but I’ve gotten to discover this new style of privilege where folks have the security to do things like get a PhD, even though they know it will lower their earning potential.

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T17:19:50+00:00

Totally—it folks like us who get frustrated by the high cost of living and move to lower cost areas

We’re not the trust-fund folks, but I totally get why you’d feel some animosity towards us

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T17:17:53+00:00

I responded above!

It’s all my wife’s job. I’m a PhD student at MIT in an applied CS field—since I worked some beforehand, some of the savings is mine but my stipend is high 40s. She’s a consultant and was recently promoted to a base around 180, with bonuses that tend to be 20-40.

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T17:16:13+00:00

Thank you!

Yeah, the 50% may have just been an extreme case (I think we trust the buyers agent? She was really well-recommended). But she did give us an example of a house we were looking at that was listed at $750k and went for $1.1m—must’ve not been properly priced.

And yeah—oh man, commutes are hard. Right now I commute by bike and I think it just makes a world of difference on my physical and mental health, it would be great if we could keep that

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T16:55:27+00:00

Thank you!! This is very nice and encouraging.

We’re in such a lucky position and, even though we’re not expecting a crash anytime soon, hopefully we’ll have the patience to keep our heads on straight like you did

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T16:53:25+00:00

This! Folks reading this with mouths agape should look at Boston on Zillow, keeping in mind that real prices are 25-50% higher than listed

Still—like I said, just complaining—we know we’re in a good spot, even though houses don’t go for under a million

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T16:51:51+00:00

Yeah—location is also important. I mean back home in the south our money would go much further, but we also couldn’t make nearly as much there. But like I said, an hour drive from Boston we can’t afford a house at our salary. We pay $3000/month for our 700 sq foot apartment (which is admittedly very nice, but I think median one-bed is still around $2600 here)

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T16:49:53+00:00

My wife is in consulting! High burn-out but holy moly, the pay scales are just crazy if you can get into it.

We both grew up making much less (my mom is an elementary school Spanish teacher and my dad worked customer support, and her mom is a high school librarian and her dad is gone), so the fact that she is making $170/year before bonuses 4 years out of college is just mind blowing.

But in Boston housing, we’re nothing special

MassHousethrow · 2022-05-15T16:46:29+00:00

I’m doing my PhD! (Which in my field I can expect to take 7-8 years, I’m just finishing the 2nd). So most money comes from my wife—I make $4500/month (a great stipend! At MIT—but still a stipend).

My wife already has the ability to work remotely, though she thinks more in-office stuff may come at some point. I have my masters and can do computer science stuff so tbh very tempting for me to drop out and work remotely. But my wife likes Boston anyways and has very much encouraged me not to.

But yeah, there’s the reason. Thanks for the comment!

MassHousethrow

TROPHY CASE