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I wouldn't use their cite because Red Fin has a way better site. Redfin's price estimates have also been far more accurate in my experience.

It's pretty easy to give a more accurate estimate when you only target large cities and don't bother with listings anywhere else... Redfin coverage map - note that a state becomes dark grey if they cover even a single major city in that state and ignored every other place in the state. My city has around 275,000 people and has 0 properties for viewing on Redfin.

https://www.redfin.com/city/31...

San Francisco is full of crappy little houses that sell for $1 million because there is so much demand for so little supply.

I love how that listing describes less than 1050 sq ft as "spacious".

San Francisco is full of crappy little houses that sell for $1 million because there is so much demand for so little supply. The obvious thing to do in such a situation, of course, is to let people build higher. The owner of this house is selling for $1 million, but they would much prefer to build a 10-unit tower on the spot and sell each of the units for $500k. They would make an extra $4 million minus building costs, and the buyers would get the same footage for half the price. Since much of San Francisco is walking distance to a rail line, this wouldn't create unsolvable parking problems. It would be a win-win situation for everyone.

But because San Francisco (and the whole Bay Area) think that everyone should have a veto on what everyone else does with their property, rebuilding doesn't happen, demand continues to rise, and the city becomes affordable only by the rich.

Mentioning that fact will probably reduce its value, however if they never find out then there's no harm at all, and even if they do, there's still no harm, other than maybe it bothers the buyer's religious view, but nonetheless all 50 states in the US have laws preventing civil suits against people who don't mention this (or other immaterial facts, like whether a previous resident had AIDS.)

Oh my, you must NOT have read the National Association of Realtor's Code of Ethics.

REALTORS® shall avoid exaggeration, misrepresentation, or concealment of pertinent facts relating to the property or the transaction. REALTORS® shall not,
however, be obligated to discover latent defects in the property, to advise on matters outside the scope of their real estate license, or to disclose facts which are confidential under the scope of agency or non-agency relationships as defined by state law.

But Disclosures are a fact of law, and while there are limits, your representation of the facts seem to be in error. There may be states that do not require a disclosure, but California, South Dakota, and Alaska do have some requirements.

So you're off by 3, if not more. And the code of ethics generally frowns on non-disclosure, for a reason.

There may be states that legally allow you to keep such information from potential buyers, but that doesn't make it right. It just means that the law is at risk of subversion.

Personally I dislike the tendency to walk around disclosures and push a caveat emptor approach, especially when it comes to hazards like lead paint and asbestos.

It's craven and greedy.

You're right, but guess what? This tech CEO thinks Amazon is just fine (I bet Redfin is an awful place to work too): https://www.redfin.com/blog/20...

His arguments: 1) It's okay to abuse people who are paid. 2) Other people have it even worse so stop complaining.

He's complaining about tiny, 12-foot townhouses replacing the older houses... or do you like the human equivalent of cow farms?

Here's the house that a few of the townhomes pictured in TFA replaced:

https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seat...

A single family home built in 1922, and was 1540 sq ft (that's 770 sq ft upstairs, with a 770 sq ft unfinished basement) - and boasted 3 beds and 2 baths.

On that same lot, from the photo & the builder's site, it appears that they've built THREE homes on the same lot:
http://sagehomesnw.liveeditaur...

Each of it appears that they're building 2 townhomes, each of which have upwards of 2000 sq ft of finished space.

Tell us again how they're replacing massive, spacious mansions with cattle pens, again?

I could move 100 miles south of Mountain View (150 miles south of San Francisco) and get something similar:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/Soledad/1870-Palm-Ave-93960/home/14920952

The bars on the window make it look like it might be in a high crime area. It would only be an hour and forty minute commute (in no traffic).

It wasn't the website, it was the backend that had problems.

I remember they had started with Ruby on Rails which is notorious for being able to get you up fast and then failing to scale.

They then offloaded parts of the infrastructure to Scala of all things.

http://blog.redfin.com/devblog/2010/05/how_and_why_twitter_uses_scala.html

Scala is interesting and has some good paradigms built in to the language for the things Twitter needs to do. Not sure if it is really fundamentally better than Java though - after all it runs on the same JVM.

Anyway if I was starting something like this out and I already knew Java I would go with Java. There are enough large sites running it, and there are a lot of people out there who know it so I would feel some confidence that I could do what I needed to do.

Plus I like static typing.

I didn't mean for my post to be dismissive or disparaging of either Asia or Eastern Europe. The folks I've worked with from Russia, Ukraine, and India have been pretty skilled (with some exceptions). The rates of programmers from these regions are typically half (or less) of programmers in my region.

The biggest difference I can see between your cost-of-living values and mine is property. I live in Los Angeles. The house next door (about 95 square meters) was listed a few years ago for $1m USD -- that's about $10,000/m2 -- but prices have dropped a lot in the past 4 years. A variety of homes listed online in my area range from $2750/m2 to $7500/m2 depending on the neighborhood. Perhaps I should have included rural parts of the US in the regions I complained about. Software Developer wages in Arkansas are half what they are in California. Property values are much lower too.

Your other numbers seem pretty accurate. Chicken $3-4/kg, Electricity $0.145/kWh, Gas $1.1/l

I asked him in his blog, so we'll see...
http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2010/09/silicon_valley_is_americas_wealth_engine_not_its_job_engine.html#comments

Matt from Redfin here... For those curious we blogged about how the White House came to be for sale on Redfin, No, No, the White House is Not For Sale.

Yes they have

Traditionally, three times annual income is considered a good guideline for affordability. At $100k that puts you into a $300k house -- maybe $350k if you stretch. 3x is the max though.

If you bought a $250k house on a $100k salary then I would say that you were being financially responsible.

A 1400 sqft house 45-minutes from campus is asking around $320k today..

Although they might be overpriced based on recent sales in the same area. This 1600 sqft house sold in April for $288k..

Traditionally, three times annual income is considered a good guideline for affordability. At $100k that puts you into a $300k house -- maybe $350k if you stretch. 3x is the max though.

If you bought a $250k house on a $100k salary then I would say that you were being financially responsible.

A 1400 sqft house 45-minutes from campus is asking around $320k today..

Although they might be overpriced based on recent sales in the same area. This 1600 sqft house sold in April for $288k..

Here is a pretty typical middle class home:

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Redmond/7014-143rd-Pl-NE-98052/home/517209

I would have once classified that as lower middle class, but now that is more upper middle class.

Short answer is that it makes no sense to stretch to buy something like that when I can rent for less than half the expense.

http://www.redfin.com/

Take a look for yourself. Seattle prices have fallen around 6% from one year ago. The median is still well above $400k. Prices within 30 minutes of Microsoft cost anywhere from $300-800/sqft.

Here's a comparison that I saw a while back on the dev blog for redfin.com.

Redfin did a decent writeup at the beginning of the year when they were deciding what technology to use. It was helpful to read when I was making the decision for the company I work for. Some of the things they point out have changed/been fixed, but it's still a good overview.

http://www.redfin.com/ provides satellite images of the Seattle area, for looking up houses for sale. It also features streets/parks/etc overlays, and real-time zooming. It's flash-based though, so different tech from the way Google's doing this...