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America's Most Affordable Cities For Tech Workers: Seattle, Austin, and Pittsburgh (prnewswire.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the perks-of-Pennsylvania dept.

"Seattle tech workers who own their homes can expect to have about $2,000 more in disposable income each month than tech workers in the Bay Area," according to a new study from LinkedIn and Zillow. An anonymous reader writes: "For technology workers who rent, Seattle, Austin and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania came out on top among the housing markets analyzed, with the Bay Area at #4..." the two companies reported. "Salaries for other industries don't hold up as well in the San Francisco area, though. Even highly-paid finance workers keep only about 32 percent of their incomes after paying for housing and taxes. In Charlotte or Chicago, they can pocket a median of 61 percent."

The Bay Area's high housing prices are apparently offset by the high salaries paid there to tech workers, according to the study. Even so, both home owners and renters pay roughly half the median income for housing on the west coast, "while a rental in the middle of the country costs more like 25 percent of the median income."
The report also identified the best cities for health workers -- Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Boston -- as well as for finance workers, who do best in Charlotte, Chicago and Dallas. The top 15 cities for tech workers also included those same cities except Chicago and Phoenix, while also including known tech hotspots like Denver, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. But surprisingly the top 15 best cities for tech workers also included Detroit, Nashville, St. Paul (Minnesota) and Tampa, Florida.

27 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Silicon Valley sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Silicon Valley is pretty much a wasteland now. A lot of the real innovation is taking place elsewhere in the country. Silicon Valley is full of companies built on advertising, which is a bubble that's bound to collapse. I can't see why anyone would want to move to Silicon Valley when there are far better options available now, including all of the cities listed in the summary and many others.

  2. Wrong about Austin by mattwarden · · Score: 5, Funny

    Article is wrong about Austin. It's very expensive. And there are no jobs for tech workers. And it's dirty. With marauding gangs of looters. Many reports of paranormal activity. High risk of pandemic or terrorist attack. No housing supply.

    And no Uber!

    No, no. You don't want to move to Austin. Don't even bother checking it out.

    1. Re: Wrong about Austin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      And don't forget that Texas college girls are universally unattractive.

    2. Re: Wrong about Austin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also, there's no bars or nightlife. And no weed either. Nosiree, there's definitely no weed.

    3. Re:Wrong about Austin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My bet is - it gave him a good house, and a nice place to live, and he doesn't want it invaded by hipsters and techies.

    4. Re:Wrong about Austin by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      Article is wrong about Austin. It's very expensive. And there are no jobs for tech workers. And it's dirty. With marauding gangs of looters. Many reports of paranormal activity. High risk of pandemic or terrorist attack. No housing supply.

      I thought South by Southwest was over already.

    5. Re:Wrong about Austin by plopez · · Score: 2

      Why would I want to move to TX? Any state that slaughters its own citizens is a horrible place to live.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    6. Re:Wrong about Austin by mattwarden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thank you. I forgot to mention that one. Don't move here unless you want to be slaughtered by the state government.

    7. Re:Wrong about Austin by nbritton · · Score: 2

      I concur, traffic is worse then Chicago, also the summers can reach 120 and North Korea is targeting Austin...

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

      Don't move here, don't even come to visit... traffic is already a bitch.

    8. Re:Wrong about Austin by buss_error · · Score: 4, Funny

      All kidding aside, I had to drive through Austin during SXSW... Took almost 4 hours. A family member lives in Austin, about 2 miles from the grocery store. It takes an hour each way by car on days of "normal" traffic, longer if there's a traffic jam. Much faster to walk to the store. And this is Texas. We don't walk up the isle to get married - we drive.

      --
      Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
  3. It's one of the things that bother's me by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    about the H1-Bs (and I know I'm being petty, but hey, I'm getting my ass kicked here financially). They're a captive audience for the renters. There's no way they're gonna buy a home while they're here on work visas. So they drive up my rent substantially. Maybe if I made enough to afford a down payment on a home but, well, with my wages depressed like this that ain't happening...

    --
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    1. Re:It's one of the things that bother's me by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Informative

      Come to Canada, guess what happens when they can buy houses(or family who can do it for them)? The price of housing goes through the roof, and now you can't afford a house or rent. It gets compounded because of the outside real estate investment that goes on too. Vancouver is one of the worst places for this double-whammy, and then there's the whole "empty house" problem(8.8% in Vancouver). Watch Seattle(and Toronto, Ontario), since Vancouver put in a foreign buyers tax they've started buying up there as well.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
  4. Personal opinion: Pittsburgh is the best by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Low cost housing, many distinct old ethnic neighborhoods and restaurants, good school districts. Rails-to-trails have created many wonderful biking walking trails. Will feel all the four seasons. Only negatives are the narrow single laned roads. Very pictureque and beautiful, as long as you don't have to go anywhere in a hurry, it is great.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Personal opinion: Pittsburgh is the best by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Low cost housing, many distinct old ethnic neighborhoods and restaurants, good school districts. Rails-to-trails have created many wonderful biking walking trails. Will feel all the four seasons. Only negatives are the narrow single laned roads. Very pictureque and beautiful, as long as you don't have to go anywhere in a hurry, it is great.

      It's an amazing place. The old smokey city is long gone, and in it's place a jewel was forged.

      My favorite way to come into the burgh is through the Fort Pitt Tunnel. You enter the tunnelfrom the south, with nothing but trees and a mountainside. Then when you exit - its like the Wizard of Oz, a city sprung up suddenly from nowhere, all scrubbed clean and pretty. In recent years they took to painting all of the bridges yellow - sounds odd, but looks cool, and yellow and black are the city's colors.

      And if you run out of things to do there, it's your fault.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  5. Q: How many Austinites... by Nova+Express · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...does it take to change a light bulb?

    A: Eight. One to change the bulb, and seven to talk about how much better the light bulbs were at the Armadillo World Headquarters...

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

    1. Re:Q: How many Austinites... by mattwarden · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't get it. Everyone here was born in Cali or the Midwest, and they couldn't pick an armadillo out of a lineup.

    2. Re:Q: How many Austinites... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Armadillo is that city in the North Texas Panhandle, it's where they serve 48 oz steaks.

      I saw it on Man vs. Common Sense.

    3. Re:Q: How many Austinites... by mattwarden · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's Amarillo. I've been to that steakhouse. Quite a spectacle

  6. Pittsburgh is fine ... by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Pittsburgh is a great place unless you want to see the horizon. With all those rolling hills the most you can really see in any direction is about a 1/2 mile. After growing up in a place where I could see the horizon I actually felt a bit claustrophobic in Pittsburgh.

    And it ranks just behind Seattle for cloudy days, so don;t plan on seeing much in the way of sunlight.

    https://www.currentresults.com...

    At the opposite end of the spectrum I loved living and working in Salt Lake City for the vistas and the sunshine (other things not so much)

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  7. Austin's rents keep rising... by Nova+Express · · Score: 2

    ...but yeah, even with that, $250,000 will still buy you a nice house in the Austin area. Good look finding anything like that anywhere near Silicon Valley...

    Just one of the many, many advantages Texas has over California.

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

  8. But How Much is That in... by pipingguy · · Score: 4, Funny

    "about $2,000 more in disposable income each month"

    That's, like, almost 5 new MacBook Pros every year! If you don't count all the adaptors you'd need.

  9. Re:Funny, that's not what I've heard about Seattle by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    depends, if you want to live in a modest older house without a bunch of updates, and live more than a bike ride from your work, its not that bad... if you want to live in a fresh HGTV mcmansion then yes its very expensive (but again not like the bay area CA expensive)

    Please define "not that bad".

    I work at UW, but live an hour away (by train + light rail). A friend who lives in Seattle was recently telling me about her $1600/month rent for what is basically a studio, within walking distance of UW. Is that considered inexpensive nowadays?

    We bought our house (where I am commuting from now) in the 1990s, so it's been that long since I rented in Seattle - so my question is actually intended to be serious. But my house payment is less than half that. :-D

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  10. News stories say that is true. More detail: by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Informative

    News stories I've found indicate what you said is correct:

    Seattle: Together with abusive companies and bad city management, Seattle is a miserable place.

    Houses in Seattle are expensive: Seattle bumps Boston as the most expensive U.S. housing market that's not in California.

    Rent is expensive: Seattle rent is 5th most expensive in U.S.

    Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

    Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

    Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012)

    Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

    Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

    Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

  11. how about just about any Midwestern city? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh ... by "tech workers" you meant "people who work for big name tech companies".

  12. Pittsburgh, that high tech mecca? by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 2

    If you're going to list Pittsburgh as a city for tech workers, you might as well list Detroit too. And it's very cheap.

    And yes, Quicken Loans has quite a few tech workers there.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  13. Re:Funny, that's not what I've heard about Seattle by subanark · · Score: 2

    It's all relative to how much you make. I pay $1600 rent to live 15 minute walk from work (1 bedroom) and still manage to have 20K left over every year in my entry level job (that includes generous contributions to retirement). If I had a family, I probably would take that $1000 house rental that is an hour drive away.

    Protip: leave for work at 6:30, you can beat traffic that way.

  14. Optimally by kilodelta · · Score: 2

    I work in Boston, live in Providence. Best of both worlds - salaries higher, costs lower in home city.