Did you get the address?
2654 Fillmore
Guess how much?
$3.6 million.
[swipe, swipe, swipe]
Close! $3.9 million. But the kitchen is updated, and it has a roof-deck AND a backyard.
I’m driving home from Crissy Field straight uphill with the smell of wet sand wafting off my dog. I’m headed back to SF from a hike in the East Bay with dirt-stained ankles. I’ve gone to Santa Cruz for a day of sunshine and wandering. With my husband. With a friend. With a coworker. It doesn’t matter where I am—I’m on Redfin.
The app is open, and condos, houses, and mansions pop up, complete with all the information a housing obsessive needs. Square footage, beds and baths, year built—even the estimated mortgage I can’t afford and the elementary school I will send my nonexistent children to. Not on Redfin and currently for sale? No problem. A quick Google search pulls up the last time it was sold and, if I’m lucky, old interior photos from a myriad of real estate websites. At the very least I’ll get a Zestimate.
While many Bay Area residents are swiping right to get laid, I’m swiping on built-in breakfast banquettes and his-and-her sinks.
It’s reached a sports-like-competition level in my marriage, with my husband spouting off addresses faster than I can type them, quickly wagering to see who will make a better guess as to what astronomical value the home in question is selling for.
It doesn’t matter if we even want to live in the city or the town in question. I Googled a house nestled into a hill that we passed in Sausalito recently, just past the bridge with a big red “For Sale” sign hanging out in front of the garage. I don’t even really like the town of Sausalito, but for those ocean views, it can’t be that bad.
While many Bay Area residents are swiping right to get laid, I’m swiping on built-in breakfast banquettes and his-and-her sinks.
It was comforting when I found out that I’m not alone. Apparently, being a real estate voyeur isn’t that uncommon these days. Friends approaching their mid-30s who also spent the last decade filling their lives with passport stamps and avocado toast instead of “settling down” and “building a life” also Google addresses for sport and ponder whether life would really be all that better with a walk-in closet and a backyard.
You hear the whispers everywhere. The millionaires are coming. But so is the next recession, right?
Yet most of us can’t even fill our kitchen cabinets. If we’re married, we likely opted for a honeymoon fund instead of china and crystal. Sure, I have a few cherished books and a childhood stuffed animal, but for the most part, everything in my mostly IKEA-furnished rental is replaceable, and nothing is particularly “special.” If someone robbed me tomorrow, I’d simply shrug my shoulders and file an insurance claim. And head back to IKEA.
The age of the forever home is dead, and the aforementioned Swedish overlord is rejoicing. In my parent’s generation, a newly minted couple was expected to buy a house big enough to fill with nicknacks and multiple children and live there for at least 30 years. There’s privilege in that, in the security and ability to purchase a home, and it’s one that many of us today can’t even consider or are simply brushing off. At least in San Francisco and San Jose, the numbers are actually starting to back up our apathy and trepidation.
I’m not sure if I’ll stay in San Francisco. Who is, really, aside from the token natives and rich tech executives? Given the looming housing bubble and the daunting homelessness crisis, living here long-term is like willfully signing up for a life on the proverbial hamster wheel.
You hear the whispers everywhere. At your local Sightglass, on Twitter, on Union Street. Uber and Lyft IPO’d. The millionaires are coming. But so is the next recession, right? The bubble is the eerie feeling you can’t shake — the ghost lurking within the walls just waiting to jump out and scare the crap out of everyone. Not to mention make you house-poor.
If you want to buy a home in San Francisco, you’ll need an annual salary of at least $172,153 to keep up with your mortgage, according to Curbed. And right now, only 18% of households in the Bay Area have enough to afford to buy a median-priced home (which has hit $1.38 million in San Francisco). That’s not to mention the 42.6% of houses that sell for more than the asking price.
Maybe I’m caught in a generational shift. Or maybe it really is impossible for the other 82% of us in the Bay Area to bother to dream beyond swiping. The paradox of choice encourages our nomadic urban lifestyle, and choosing our forever city or town seems daunting in and of itself. I can’t even commit to a favorite burrito place in the Mission, let alone a singular home in a singular neighborhood in a singular block in town.
Type in “Denver” or “Austin” or “Charlotte” into the Redfin app, and you’ll quickly slip into a fantasy of $500,000 homes and poop-free streets.
If the decision paralysis doesn’t get you, the cash will. As lucky millennials from the class of ’09, statistically, we’re worse off than most. And I didn’t even grow up in one of those households with a dad who told you to save your pennies and that renting is “throwing away money.” I wasn’t taught much about money growing up, so it’s a wonder I’m not swimming in a pool of debt bigger than the one in the backyard of my future dream home. But when I see said dream home, those familiar adages that have dripped down from baby boomers of yore echo in my head.
Depending on the day, the quagmire of engaging in endless mortgage calculations either delivers a crushing blow to those voices or boosts my delusional fairy tale. The handy-dandy slider should probably go farther to the left than I let it, but I’ll probably get a raise soon, right? And it’s a “bikers paradise,” so I’ll probably save so much on commuting. Do you really need to pay HOA fees?
Just when all those statistics get depressing, the internet reminds us we’re only one click away from exploring other options. Type in “Denver” or “Austin” or “Charlotte” into the Redfin app, and you’ll quickly slip into a fantasy of $500,000 homes and poop-free streets.
But I’m not ready to leave. Between the multimillion-dollar Victorians and luxury condos, I’ve found a comfortably overpriced, old rental apartment that feels like all the home I’ll ever need.
Not everyone is that lucky riding the San Francisco real estate roller coaster, but either way, that gleaming red app gives a much needed dopamine rush when you’re antiquing in Calistoga, lusting after an old wooden armoire that will never, ever fit through your front door.
Maybe I should just move to Calistoga? Or Mendocino. Or Pittsburgh. What was that address again?
