It seems like you just have different priorities, which is fine. Other people may prefer being able to walk to a bar instead of having to take an Uber, or being able to meet up with friends without having to make it a planned-for event, and so on. The thought of optimizing my life around loading side tables seems bananas to me, but it isn't to you, and that's cool.
Rather interesting (disingenuous) take away from my comment, ahah.
That aside... is that not what I mostly said in my first comment? I totally agree. I don't enjoy bars. If you do and want to pay the premium for that, totally fine by me.
There's a premium to be paid either way. If you live out in the burbs, the premium is that transportation costs are usually much higher (you generally need one car per adult, and you drive quite a bit). Sometimes there's also a premium in terms of time, depending on commute or how often you want to go to events or things located in the city.
When our family of three was living on the outskirts of Munich, our local transportation costs were low, since we used transit + bikes (including an electric cargo bike) to get around. It was much cheaper than even having one car like we did/do in the states.
Well sure, there are costs to transportation. Only in the most extreme circumstances could you make them close to equal tho, all other factors staying the same.
How do you figure? Only way this seems plausible is if you constantly opt to buy two brand new cars as soon as you finish paying them off, for the rest of your life.
In my searching for a place, you're looking at a 1.5-2k premium for a comparable place _in_ the city vs 20-30 minutes out of it. That's roughly $20k a year in just rent alone, which is the price of a decent car.
> In my searching for a place, you're looking at a 1.5-2k premium for a comparable place _in_ the city vs 20-30 minutes out of it.
This is like looking at potential living costs in Tokyo by calculating how much it would cost for 2+ cars and a big single family home with two large yards while eating peanut butter and drinking root beer every day.
This is a common fallacy that people engage in when comparing urban vs suburban areas. The suburban advantages can be had in urban areas for a large price (e.g. big house, multiple cars to the extent that this is an advantage), whereas urban advantages are more often things that you can't buy in the suburbs for any price, like walkability or decent transit or cooler local events/stores/restaurants. Thus, you end up comparing an urban area with suburban advantages versus a suburban area without urban advantages. That's obviously not fair, so the logical thing to do is to look at how people actually behave, how they actually spend.
I agree with what you're saying. There are things exclusive to each location.
I guess that's why I say "all things the same" because well, for us at least, we spend a lot of time at home. I wasn't even factoring a yard and garage etc. Just normal square footage and general "quality" of the place.
All things not being equal tho, I totally agree with you :)
That's the premium you would have to pay for a comparable place, but a comparable place is actually not that comparable. Urban lifestyle is fundamentally different from suburban lifestyle, focusing more on doing things outside your home. A better comparison would be based on what urban people in your social class are paying for housing.
Much in the same way, it's not reasonable to compare suburban and rural costs of living by assuming similar homes. For example, beachfront properties tend to be quite expensive in the suburbia, and private lakes even more so.
>but a comparable place is actually not that comparable
I can agree with this. I mean like you say though, its a location premium. All things being equal, a beach house will cost more than a normal house. All things being equal, 1000sqft in the city will be more than 1000sqft out of the city. To some, being able to walk to a restaurant is priceless. Other's could care less. At the end of the day, there's a premium for proximity.
