FranLab is getting evicted

[sokoloff]

I have no idea why people pay so much extra to live in the crowded areas, all while complaining about the cost and while there are tons of great places to live near by.

"Crowded" areas are better places to live.  They are more efficient and have more things to do.

Places with lots of accessible things to do (that you like doing) are better places to live. Places where you have to share a wall or ceiling/floor with inconsiderate (to include unaware) people are worse places to live.

I'm in a low-density part of Cambridge, MA. It's a great compromise in that I have a mile walk to Harvard Sq, a three mile walk to MIT, yet I have ample street parking, a fenced yard to let the dog and kids play in, we have a small vegetable garden, and no walls shared with any neighbors. The main downside is that if I had to buy it today, it's a 2-comma price twice over (and I probably couldn't afford it; I bought it in 2007 at less than half of its current value).

bought my USA home in April 2021: 15years, 2.1%. 

Couplead with no penalty overpayments, you are all set!

Why would anyone want to overpay a 2.1% mortgage right now?

[james_s]

"Crowded" areas are better places to live.  They are more efficient and have more things to do.  I used to live in the suburbs...It was awful.  You have to drive to *everything* and all the good stuff is far away. 

More things to do like what? I like to tinker with electronics, work on cars, fly model airplanes and hike in solitude, with the exception of the first one I can't do any of those things in a city. To each their own but I think urban cities are hell, I absolutely hate them. I dream of being able to retire some day and have 10-20 acres of property in a sparsely populated rural area all to myself. Whenever I'm in Eastern Washington I can feel my stress fade away as I get away from the crowds and traffic and onto quiet rural roads.

Cities are better places for YOU to live because you like that sort of thing, I'm afraid I'll never understand why but I'm glad some people do. They are certainly not better places for me to live though, there is ONE reason I live near a city and that is because that's where the good jobs are and I find suburbs with single family homes to be an acceptable compromise, I can venture into the city if I really have to but most of the stuff I really need is nearby and most importantly I can get away to some wilderness with less than an hour drive. As soon as I don't have to work I'm out.

[Bud]

By overpayment I meant paying extra on top of the scheduled payments. The money you pay on top go directly to reducing your principal borrowed amount, which means you reduce interest payments, and interest payments ARE the killer because they compound.

[sokoloff]

By overpayment I meant paying extra on top of the scheduled payments. The money you pay on top go directly to reducing your principal borrowed amount, which means you reduce interest payments, and interest payments ARE the killer because they compound.

A US buyer can buyer $10K/person/yr of I-bonds (backed by full faith of credit of the US gov't) that are paying 6.89% right now.

That's what I meant when I asked why anyone would pay down a 2.1% mortgage when they have significantly better risk-free investments available.

[unknownparticle]

Also, I recall reading somewhere, that the entire world population could be accommodated in Texas, with room to spare!!

That would put the entire state of Texas at a density roughly 10% more than New York City (around 30K/mi² needed, vs around 27K/mi² for NYC).

Finding a way to feed and water all of a Texas-sized denser-than-NYC would be a challenge, of course.

That sounds absolutely horrid. Texas would be a third world shit hole crawling with disease and trash. You may be able to fit that many people on paper, but the real world conditions would be intolerable and I would rather be dead than to have to live in close proximity to that many people.

I was only using that as an indication of just how much uninhabited land there is in the world. Not for a second suggesting it could be a reality!!
Who the hell wants to live in Texas anyway?!!!

[james_s]

I was only using that as an indication of just how much uninhabited land there is in the world. Not for a second suggesting it could be a reality!!
Who the hell wants to live in Texas anyway?!!!

I've been to Texas before, it's actually quite nice. A bit flat and dusty for my liking and a bit too hot, but most of the people I encountered were friendly and there's lots of space and that's nice.

[tom66]

Too flat.  If I was going to live anywhere in the US it would be Washington (state), Colorado or North California.  Mountains and trees - absolutely gorgeous.  Just... maybe avoid the fire seasons.

[langwadt]

By overpayment I meant paying extra on top of the scheduled payments. The money you pay on top go directly to reducing your principal borrowed amount, which means you reduce interest payments, and interest payments ARE the killer because they compound.

sure, but inflation is ~10% at the moment

[james_s]

Too flat.  If I was going to live anywhere in the US it would be Washington (state), Colorado or North California.  Mountains and trees - absolutely gorgeous.  Just... maybe avoid the fire seasons.

Washington state is beautiful, I've spent my whole life here and it has everything. There is the ocean, lakes, mountains, valleys, forests, deserts, all within a few hours drive. Colorado, Northern California and Oregon are similar. Unfortunately everyone else thinks so too and these places are all getting overrun. Fire season on this side of the mountains is a relatively new phenomenon, it's been happening for a long time in the eastern half of the state though.

[EEVblog]

Cities are better places for YOU to live because you like that sort of thing, I'm afraid I'll never understand why but I'm glad some people do. They are certainly not better places for me to live though, there is ONE reason I live near a city and that is because that's where the good jobs are and I find suburbs with single family homes to be an acceptable compromise, I can venture into the city if I really have to but most of the stuff I really need is nearby and most importantly I can get away to some wilderness with less than an hour drive. As soon as I don't have to work I'm out.

I rarely go into Sydney CBD. As for the inner city stuff, it's just awful.
Tried to go to a kids birthday party last weekend and FAILED. From Baulkham Hills to Newtown, decided to go over the bridge, big mistake. 1hr 15min after leaving we weren't even on the harbour bridge yet, complete gridlock, kids decided to just turn around and go home. It would have been an extra 30min at least to get to Newtown, and then god knows how long to find a place to park in some crowded one way back street and then walk to the pub venue on the main road. Well over 2 hour one way to get if we kept going, to get 25km as the crow flies.
Just freaking awful. Inner city sucks arse, and I dred every time I have to go anywhere near it by car.
Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

[PlainName]

Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

But that's like the other chap says: in the suburbs you need a car to get anywhere, whereas in town you just hop on a bus or walk (and can get home when pissed).

If you're in the suburbs you will hate having to go into the city and see the suburb stuff as just fine. But, conversely, someone in the city will struggle to travel to the suburbs yet have no problem around town.

[nctnico]

Cities are better places for YOU to live because you like that sort of thing, I'm afraid I'll never understand why but I'm glad some people do. They are certainly not better places for me to live though, there is ONE reason I live near a city and that is because that's where the good jobs are and I find suburbs with single family homes to be an acceptable compromise, I can venture into the city if I really have to but most of the stuff I really need is nearby and most importantly I can get away to some wilderness with less than an hour drive. As soon as I don't have to work I'm out.

I rarely go into Sydney CBD. As for the inner city stuff, it's just awful.
Tried to go to a kids birthday party last weekend and FAILED. From Baulkham Hills to Newtown, decided to go over the bridge, big mistake. 1hr 15min after leaving we weren't even on the harbour bridge yet, complete gridlock, kids decided to just turn around and go home. It would have been an extra 30min at least to get to Newtown, and then god knows how long to find a place to park in some crowded one way back street and then walk to the pub venue on the main road. Well over 2 hour one way to get if we kept going, to get 25km as the crow flies.
Just freaking awful. Inner city sucks arse, and I dred every time I have to go anywhere near it by car.

I agree. When I need to go to a city center I prefer go by train /metro or by bicycle. Unfortunately going by car is not always avoidable. Driving through cities like Paris or Rome is no fun. Using Google maps for navigation helps though; you at least get routed away from the worst congestion.

[MikeK]

I rarely go into Sydney CBD. As for the inner city stuff, it's just awful.
Tried to go to a kids birthday party last weekend and FAILED. From Baulkham Hills to Newtown, decided to go over the bridge, big mistake. 1hr 15min after leaving we weren't even on the harbour bridge yet, complete gridlock, kids decided to just turn around and go home. It would have been an extra 30min at least to get to Newtown, and then god knows how long to find a place to park in some crowded one way back street and then walk to the pub venue on the main road. Well over 2 hour one way to get if we kept going, to get 25km as the crow flies.
Just freaking awful. Inner city sucks arse, and I dred every time I have to go anywhere near it by car.
Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

So, cities "suck" because of all the suburbanites driving in their cars.  I think you're missing the irony there.  It's the cars that suck.  Cities generate more revenue per acre than the sprawling suburbs.  Suburbs are a poor use of land.  Cities need to be designed around walking, biking, and mass transit.  Suburbs are great if you're white and wealthy.

[james_s]

So, cities "suck" because of all the suburbanites driving in their cars.  I think you're missing the irony there.  It's the cars that suck.  Cities generate more revenue per acre than the sprawling suburbs.  Suburbs are a poor use of land.  Cities need to be designed around walking, biking, and mass transit.  Suburbs are great if you're white and wealthy.

No, cities suck because they are an unlivable hellscape, concrete jungles crowded, expensive and infested with crime, vagrants, filth and snobby hipsters. There's no open space and nothing to do that I like doing. My office is in downtown Seattle and I absolutely hate going there unless I have to. I love cars, I like working on them, I like driving them, even if I lived in the city I'd still need a car to actually go anywhere outside of the city. It's cold and wet here 6 months out of the year during which time bikes are useless and walking is unpleasant at best. Since it's more expensive generally to live in cities than suburbs I have no idea why you'd say that suburbs are for the wealthy, and I don't know what race has to do with anything either, frankly I think it's quite racist to even bring it up. If you want to live in a city that's fine, but there is absolutely no way in hell I could ever tolerate it, I spend as little time as possible downtown, I hate it there.

[james_s]

Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

But that's like the other chap says: in the suburbs you need a car to get anywhere, whereas in town you just hop on a bus or walk (and can get home when pissed).

If you're in the suburbs you will hate having to go into the city and see the suburb stuff as just fine. But, conversely, someone in the city will struggle to travel to the suburbs yet have no problem around town.

Yeah except when the bus route gets cancelled due to staffing or mechanical issues, or you miss the last bus, or there's a homeless guy that reeks of pee smoking crack on the bus or harassing people, all things I have encountered. I bus into the office when I go and pre-pandemic it worked ok, but only because I live near a park & ride. Now routes get cancelled often enough that transit is getting impractical. Seattle is very anti-car but they can't seem to run a transit system either. Some people get by without a car but I can't, I'm frequently moving heavy stuff around, equipment, materials, even groceries that are impractical to carry, a car is mandatory. Can't get on a bus with a model airplane to go to a flying field, can't take firearms on the bus, can't take a stack of 2x4's.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I rarely go into Sydney CBD. As for the inner city stuff, it's just awful.
Tried to go to a kids birthday party last weekend and FAILED. From Baulkham Hills to Newtown, decided to go over the bridge, big mistake. 1hr 15min after leaving we weren't even on the harbour bridge yet, complete gridlock, kids decided to just turn around and go home. It would have been an extra 30min at least to get to Newtown, and then god knows how long to find a place to park in some crowded one way back street and then walk to the pub venue on the main road. Well over 2 hour one way to get if we kept going, to get 25km as the crow flies.
Just freaking awful. Inner city sucks arse, and I dred every time I have to go anywhere near it by car.
Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

So, cities "suck" because of all the suburbanites driving in their cars.  I think you're missing the irony there.  It's the cars that suck.  Cities generate more revenue per acre than the sprawling suburbs.  Suburbs are a poor use of land.  Cities need to be designed around walking, biking, and mass transit.  Suburbs are great if you're white and wealthy.

As someone who for many years until recently did a every week day morning and afternoon run very similar to the one Dave mentioned, I can honestly say it's the on-going relentless civic fuckery that has caused this problem. We've normalized toll roads here, and taxes and tariffs for everything else, yet the somersault feats of excuses provided not to keep up infrastructure from the decision making boffins is somewhere between corrupt and criminal.

[tom66]

So, cities "suck" because of all the suburbanites driving in their cars.  I think you're missing the irony there.  It's the cars that suck.  Cities generate more revenue per acre than the sprawling suburbs.  Suburbs are a poor use of land.  Cities need to be designed around walking, biking, and mass transit.  Suburbs are great if you're white and wealthy.

Yep, the reality is the cities subsidise the suburban sprawl, and allow it to exist.  Suburbs aren't self-sustaining.  There's isn't enough property tax or business tax to pay for their infrastructure (in most cases - unusually rich suburbs may be the exception), so the only option for the city is to continue growing the suburban area so that they can get developers and property tax to pay for the new road or new school that they need to support it. 

And for those complaining about traffic in cities, please read up on induced demand.  It's literally impossible to build enough car infrastructure in areas like this, because the desire to use a car outweighs all else.  If you build more infrastructure, you will get more traffic,  because you made it more convenient to use a car than the train.

Cities should be using public transport for the majority (>80%) of their citizens' transport needs.  And there's nothing wrong with using public transport, but it can't really survive in parallel with massive car infrastructure, one thing or another has to give.

This doesn't mean you can't own a car or live in suburbia, but eventually, you're going to have to pay more tax to sustain that low-density lifestyle, as cities are slowly going broke trying to maintain it off the backs of the more productive city centre.

[sokoloff]

I don’t know the UK city/town financial arrangements work, but in the US, city and surrounding towns/counties are generally independent.

Arlington and Lexington (two suburban towns near Boston) run their own roads, schools, parks, etc. If they build a new neighborhood, that doesn’t impose costs or obligations on the neighboring city of Cambridge or next-neighbor city of Boston. Boston isn’t going broke because of the suburbs. The suburb towns also aren’t going broke. (Arlington is nice, but is by no means exceptionally wealthy.)

If the cities are solvent and residents of the city are happy, everything sounds good. If the suburbs are solvent and residents there are happy, same.

[EEVblog]

Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

But that's like the other chap says: in the suburbs you need a car to get anywhere, whereas in town you just hop on a bus or walk (and can get home when pissed).

Try living in the Sydney inner city locations and taking your kids to school or a party without a car, good luck. FYI hardly anyone actually lives in what is considered Sydney "city", (we call it the CBD, or Central Business Disctrict). By hardly any, I mean 16,600 people in the last census.
If you are single or a couple, then yeah, sure, don't bother with a car.

[tom66]

I rarely go into Sydney CBD. As for the inner city stuff, it's just awful.
Tried to go to a kids birthday party last weekend and FAILED. From Baulkham Hills to Newtown, decided to go over the bridge, big mistake. 1hr 15min after leaving we weren't even on the harbour bridge yet, complete gridlock, kids decided to just turn around and go home. It would have been an extra 30min at least to get to Newtown, and then god knows how long to find a place to park in some crowded one way back street and then walk to the pub venue on the main road. Well over 2 hour one way to get if we kept going, to get 25km as the crow flies.
Just freaking awful. Inner city sucks arse, and I dred every time I have to go anywhere near it by car.
Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

I'm not familiar with Sydney, so apologies if this is a silly question but I put those two destinations into Google and it showed you could get there on two buses in 1 hour.   Even if you had to take a cab on one or both ends to complete the journey would that not be more practical than ending up in gridlock?  (Of course, the bus could get stuck in traffic too, but most good cities have bus lanes for a reason.  If these aren't part of Sydney's transport network, that's a total fail.)

Every time I have visited London I have taken public transport when anywhere near the city.  It is impractical to drive through it most times, even on Sundays - and using the circular gyratory known as the M25 is itself a special hell.  (So much so that Terry Pratchett used it as basis for one of his storytelling devices.)

[EEVblog]

So, cities "suck" because of all the suburbanites driving in their cars.  I think you're missing the irony there.  It's the cars that suck.  Cities generate more revenue per acre than the sprawling suburbs.  Suburbs are a poor use of land.  Cities need to be designed around walking, biking, and mass transit.  Suburbs are great if you're white and wealthy.

Since it's more expensive generally to live in cities than suburbs I have no idea why you'd say that suburbs are for the wealthy

Yep, that's just silly here in Sydney for example.
All the rich bastards live near the city and the harbour. The suburbs are for the poor people. The further the suburb from Sydney CBD the less expensive it gets.
The rich person joke in Sydney is that they will never venture any further west than Leichhardt, that's where the poor people live.
Here is a handy map. Rich people inside the circle, poorer people outside. But because it's Sydney, anything next to anything water is Richie Rich.

[EEVblog]

I rarely go into Sydney CBD. As for the inner city stuff, it's just awful.
Tried to go to a kids birthday party last weekend and FAILED. From Baulkham Hills to Newtown, decided to go over the bridge, big mistake. 1hr 15min after leaving we weren't even on the harbour bridge yet, complete gridlock, kids decided to just turn around and go home. It would have been an extra 30min at least to get to Newtown, and then god knows how long to find a place to park in some crowded one way back street and then walk to the pub venue on the main road. Well over 2 hour one way to get if we kept going, to get 25km as the crow flies.
Just freaking awful. Inner city sucks arse, and I dred every time I have to go anywhere near it by car.
Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

I'm not familiar with Sydney, so apologies if this is a silly question but I put those two destinations into Google and it showed you could get there on two buses in 1 hour.   Even if you had to take a cab on one or both ends to complete the journey would that not be more practical than ending up in gridlock?

With hindsight the Metro (train) would have been easier. Or the other way on the M4.
It's actually very quick to get from our place to the city by car, say, the Opera House, about 25min in good traffic. But in peak times the traffic sucks arse, and there are always roadworks or other things that delay everything.
But it all depends on the destination and the circumstances. I went to a show last month at the Paddo RSL, Oxford Street, Paddington. Impossible to park nearby, you wouldn't even think about. Closest parking option was 1km away. Not a problem for me, but someone I was with had bad knees and couldn't walk that. Only option was an Uber from their place in north sydney straight to the venue.

[unknownparticle]

I'm probably strange but my ideal location to live is an underground ex nuclear bunker!!  Utterly sound proof, no interfering neighbors, no parking problems, can do anything you want and no one to complain, loads of space, weather can't bother you,  no one knows you are there, perfect!   

[PlainName]

weather can't bother you

I wonder how well they are coping with last night's "month's rain in an hour" deluge that left many roads as actual rivers.

[nctnico]

Venues in the suburbs are all easy to get to and have parking on site.

But that's like the other chap says: in the suburbs you need a car to get anywhere, whereas in town you just hop on a bus or walk (and can get home when pissed).

If you're in the suburbs you will hate having to go into the city and see the suburb stuff as just fine. But, conversely, someone in the city will struggle to travel to the suburbs yet have no problem around town.

Yeah except when the bus route gets cancelled due to staffing or mechanical issues, or you miss the last bus, or there's a homeless guy that reeks of pee smoking crack on the bus or harassing people, all things I have encountered. I bus into the office when I go and pre-pandemic it worked ok, but only because I live near a park & ride. Now routes get cancelled often enough that transit is getting impractical. Seattle is very anti-car but they can't seem to run a transit system either. Some people get by without a car but I can't, I'm frequently moving heavy stuff around, equipment, materials, even groceries that are impractical to carry, a car is mandatory. Can't get on a bus with a model airplane to go to a flying field, can't take firearms on the bus, can't take a stack of 2x4's.

You really should look into getting a bicycle. I have no problem transporting all kinds of stuff on a bicycle. Actually, transporting long items is much easier. If push comes to shove you can use a bracket or a trailer. Last summer I was in Biarittz and saw many people using a bracket to carry their surf board along the side of their bike or moped.

Use an electric bike and you don't have to peddle that hard. With the right outfit, cold weather and rain aren't an issue; you'll be warm. Wool is a key ingredient. I'm cycling year round nowadays. When the road is icy, I put ty-raps on the rear tire for extra grip. Works excellent.