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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (492470)	6/9/2022 8:02:55 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 544177

Now that brings back some memories. In 1985 I graduated from Stanford with an MSEE, got a job in Redwood City, and I was making a little under $35K/yr starting salary. So that is about $17.5/hr. I lived in Mt View and then Sunnyvale that year, and IIRC, houses could be had for about $200K at the lower end in both places, but as your chart shows, interest was >12% at the time. So in the last few years around here, minimum wage is close to $15/hr, homes were around $200K, but interest was 2.5-3%. So on minimum wage here, flipping burgers whatever, housing was more affordable in 2020 than it was in the BA in 1985 with a MSEE working in tech. So I think I'm quite correct to point out that $15/hr in more rural areas, coupled with still low interest, helped to drive the recent real estate inflation. Part of the spike this year however (IMHO) is people desperately trying to lock in a home before interest rates rose to much.