I know people who moved away from Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, but they’re all in big tech and very well compensated. Their employers allowed them to work remotely during Covid, but now they’re either being called back into the home office (despite working perfectly well remotely for over a year) or are being told they’ll have to take a pay cut if they stay in a place with a lower cost of living.
More people are in the situation you describe, though. Moving is expensive and requires savings most corporate employees don’t have. They’re doing their remote work in the same homes they used to commute to and from.
It’s less that buying something is more expensive than what you have. Cause practically everyone’s house, like doubled in value in 18months.
It’s that you won’t be able to find anywhere to move to, and whatever property value increase you’ve got will just get eaten up in the process.
So unless you can move in with family or something like that. For an indeterminate amount of time. You can’t take advantage. I know many people who were either looking to buy, or even planning to sell. And ended up stuck. Anyone who puts an offer on a house since 2020 just gets outbid by a bank or property management company.
A few people I know who had taken that move in with somebody step already. Either still there or gave up and went back to renting.
We’re in a Victorian/Edwardian neighborhood in the middle of the city of Detroit. It’s a 4-bed, 2500+ sq foot, lovely 3 storey brick monster. I’ve been looking at real estate sites & seeing larger houses in expen$ive burbs on the lower east side (i.e., the Grosse Pointes) w/lower prices than what ours would go for. Houses there also sell far more slowly: houses here sell within a week or two!
Real estate in the city proper is nuts at the mo, w/everything absurdly priced. Who knows how long that will last, along w/the rich ppl who will suddenly realize their city taxes provide very little in the way of services…
Give me time. That’s what the current home garage scheduled repairs are aimed at facilitating. After the current list of repairs, I’m thinking we might keep it around for Jr. Kidd to drive in just over 3 years from now. A newly minted driver easily could end it forever.
We’re about 3 weeks away from that scenario (legally, if not feasibly). The upcoming driver keeps breathlessly announcing the latest PoS he’s found for $5000-7000.
Just for fun we went to check out this 20-year-old Forester* like we used to own (until it ate its own valves). The clutch pedal was like using a stair machine – it reminded me, and my dad, of his old anecdote where the farm kid, at the end of the summer, had this tree-trunk left leg from pushing the clutch on the tractor all season.
The biggest issue with Suby’s are their boxer engines that are notorious for wearing out head gaskets. If you can find one from a Suby specialist dealer make sure you ask when the head gasket was replaced. Usually they need changing at around the 70k mile mark.
Otherwise they are remarkable reliable cars and I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
You sound like our young driver My '15 Crosstrek is newer than that, else I’d have already been mercilessly harangued about it.
(I guess compounding the problem, is that there are 2 head gaskets, and heads, on a boxer engine)
From that article:
A precise torque procedure pins the gasket flush with both metal surfaces to firmly seal everything in place. Head gaskets are supposed to last the life of an engine and should only require replacement with major repair work.
During & right after college, I had an '84 Chrysler Laser that went thru 3 head gaskets (and I think 2 if not 3 cylinder heads) in the 2.5 years that I drove it (it was about 6 years old when I got it). I think after the 2nd gasket we found out that the head bolts were supposed to be torqued only up to a certain point, else they’d stretch and not hold the head & gasket how they should be. In hindsight I don’t know why that woudn’t/shouldn’t be the case for any car, or were Chrysler’s bolts especially crapulent?
That car was very nice, for the very brief intervals when it did not have one major malfunction or another. But even ~30 years after that experience, I will never buy a Chrysler product again, I don’t care who owns the company now.
It’s a specific year range, and generation or two of engine that’s got that issue, mostly. Although it was long lived down to how infrequently Subaru seriously updates their cars.
If memory serves it was the 99-09 version of the 4 cylinder with the major problem, and less frequently on 4 and 6 cylinders up to 2014. Almost entirely in Outbacks and Foresters.
It’s not quite as clean as usually needing it around 70k, or making sure it’s already done before you buy. From what my mechanic was telling me a car that had a head gasket issue, and has already had a replacement. Is likely to need another at some point.
While a car that’s made it to like 85k without a sign of trouble, is likely to never need one.
You’re also very unlikely to find an independent mechanic who will do the replacement. Since it’s not a profitable job. My guy refers people to the dealer, even though he’s known as the good spot for Subarus.
My car is a 15, and shockingly not showing any sign of trouble at 160k miles. 130k packed onto it in just 4 years. As popular as they are in my industry (the entire alcohol wholesale industry runs on Subarus), and my area (North East). I haven’t met anyone with a post 2015 car that’s had a head gasket go. My former neighbor who has a 2014, has had it done twice.
I’ve got an 05 and 07 with 185k and 200k with no issues. Both are turbos, though, so I can’t speak for the naturally-aspirated engines from personal experience.
One annoyance that the 05 has is leaky valve covers. They don’t affect performance or reliability, but the boxer layout means they would be an expensive fix because they can’t be repaired in-place. There’s just not enough clearance from the valve covers to the wheel arches.
If I’m remembering it right, and I am thinking back many years to advice from the mechanic and looking into how to avoid it.
It mostly skipped Turbos and the 6 cylinders until the 2010-2014 refreshes and related new versions of the engines. From what I gather the WRX/STI guys were pretty pissed about it cropping up on their side of the pond.
This is a wise choice. I know several people who have had a Chrysler product more or less blow up at exactly 50k miles. You’d have to be a bit of a gambler to purchase one of their products, IMO.
Another big issue is how long will it take to get another car? And would you even be able to get a car you want?
Lotta people can’t just sit and wait two months for a new car to be delivered. It seems like the only way to get one faster is to buy literally whatever they have on the lot, at whatever the asking price is.
My '15 Crosstrek is newer than that, else I’d have already been mercilessly harangued about it.
