The Salary Needed To Afford Rent in 10 of the Largest US Cities ---Good grief!!!!!!

[DFW]

46. If I ever move back to the USA permanently

My wife and I would probably want to live in or near Boston. She is European and hates living someplace where you need a car to get anywhere. Here in our little suburb of Düsseldorf, we can easily walk to the center of town, to the local hospitals, to trains and buses, and to a huge park with a 1000 year old castle and miles of walking trails. Plus, it is a 15-20 car ride to an intercontinental airport with nonstops to NYC, Boston, SFO, LAX, Chicago and a few Florida airports, as well as all of Europe and North Africa, Japan, the Middle East, HK and China.

I see what houses go for Stateside, but the value of our house here would cover a big chunk of that if we ever sell it. The Düsseldorf area has for years had ads in the Saturday real estate section saying "Japanese firm looking for houses in the Düsseldorf area for its executives, price no object (we feel SF's pain)." We still contend with the problems of any urban area in the West these days--high taxes that hit their max rate starting around €100,000 gross income (just over 50%, all in, here in Germany plus a 19% tax on everything you buy) inefficient, uncaring bureaucracy, official tolerance of petty and organized crime, corrupt officials, and creeping environmental damage.

Our elder daughter decided to settle in Manhattan in NYC, where she finished her education and found a decent job, although it's more like slave wages for NYC. For the longest time, she was sharing the rent with two other young women her age in a modest 3 room apartment that rented out for about $3600 a month. We finally scraped together enough money to buy her an apartment there, though it's more like a hole in the wall, but she saves a fortune on rent, and used to walk to work (her employer just moved downtown). Her younger sister moved back here to Germany when the job market in her field sucked upon her graduation from law school in the USA (2010). She lucked into an amazing job with the Frankfurt arm of an American law firm, and now makes more than I do. She's all set. They needed someone who was fully bilingual in English and German, had an EU work permit (they are both dual citizens due to their parents' different nationalities), and had a US bar exam. She said, "here I am," and hasn't looked back. She would have preferred to stay in New York, but making a fortune in Frankfurt with instant financial security appealed more to her than waiting on tables (and a decent job) in New York.

The USA, (as with parts of Germany to a far lesser extent) seems blessed/cursed with having a large number of attractive urban areas that appeal to big money from outside. However, here in Germany, we read about Russian gazillionaires buying up penthouse condos in Manhattan for $40 million and upward that they only use part-time. FORTY fucking million? The only billionaire with a place in Manhattan I know (Peter Norton) lives in a place nowhere near that kind of price range, and he can afford whatever the hell he wants to. But he's not out to impress anyone, and doesn't NEED to. I mean we see articles about insane villas and estates bought and sold by entertainment stars for a quarter of that and still marvel at the sums bantered around.

One thing I have to question, though. The AVERAGE rent? Does this mean they took in the places that rent for $12000 a month and averaged them in with dilapidated places in need of fixing holes in the roof? I have visited a few U.S. cities this past summer, and there certainly seemed to be as much diversity as ever there. They would be boring, dull places indeed if they were populated only by white yuppies, and from coast to coast, from Boston to San Francisco, we saw no such city.


At this point, I wouldn't want to go hunting for a place to rent in ANY desirable urban area, and I come from a generation prior to the one dealing with crushing student debt. For that matter, nor would I want to be the owner of a big apartment building on any of those areas trying to collect the rent from any resident falling on financial hard times. I'm sure the costs of maintenance and property taxes would swamp anyone who couldn't collect the rent from their tenants. If you play your cards right, it has to be a game you can get rich with, but I'm not sure I'd want the stress and the additional white hair necessary to get there.