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Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
And they yell at me around this place for going off track. Sheesh............... :popcorn:
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
Please explain how housing costs are not important in cost of living.

If houses cost way more, then so do apartments.

I just looked up (craigslist) a one bedroom apartment in LA ($1600 - 564 sq ft decent area) and one in Dallas ($700 - 750 sq ft, much nicer)

Explain how this is not relevant in cost of living?
 
E

equippaint

Active Member
ddarlak said:
Please explain how housing costs are not important in cost of living.

If houses cost way more, then so do apartments.

I just looked up (craigslist) a one bedroom apartment in LA ($1600 - 564 sq ft decent area) and one in Dallas ($700 - 750 sq ft, much nicer)

Explain how this is not relevant in cost of living?
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I don't know for sure but I would say that it is because financing a house is a choice and it is not a cost that is easily compared. It doesn't have to be a monthly payment if you have the cash and size, location etc is discretionary. Also, when purchasing real estate, that is considered an investment so if you buy a 1 mil house, when you sell it you should get your 1 mil back plus inflation at a minimum. If you got a loan then your financing expenses would be an investment cost rather than a COL. This is why in business, rent is an expense, real purchase goes on the balance sheet and is not an expense but interest is.
Now, Im not saying a house is a good investment, I actually think it is terrible if you have to finance. I'm also not saying that it is or isn't calculated into COL figures. What is missed in this "how much does it cost" debate are the intangibles of where you live, like cultural experiences, education levels, hobbys, family etc etc. This is a personal lesson that I have learned after moving from the DC area back down south. Like many others, I'm here for the weather. There is a reason the NE and California are highly populated and not everything in life comes down to a dollar bill.
 
ddarlak

ddarlak

Go Bills!
equippaint said:
I don't know for sure but I would say that it is because financing a house is a choice and it is not a cost that is easily compared. It doesn't have to be a monthly payment if you have the cash and size, location etc is discretionary. Also, when purchasing real estate, that is considered an investment so if you buy a 1 mil house, when you sell it you should get your 1 mil back plus inflation at a minimum. If you got a loan then your financing expenses would be an investment cost rather than a COL. This is why in business, rent is an expense, real purchase goes on the balance sheet and is not an expense but interest is.
Now, Im not saying a house is a good investment, I actually think it is terrible if you have to finance. I'm also not saying that it is or isn't calculated into COL figures. What is missed in this "how much does it cost" debate are the intangibles of where you live, like cultural experiences, education levels, hobbys, family etc etc. This is a personal lesson that I have learned after moving from the DC area back down south. Like many others, I'm here for the weather. There is a reason the NE and California are highly populated and not everything in life comes down to a dollar bill.
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you quoted me and then proceeded to ignore the fact that i said if houses are expensive then so are apartments, i even provided statistics to back up my claim.
 
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equippaint

Active Member
ddarlak said:
you quoted me and then proceeded to ignore the fact that i said if houses are expensive then so are apartments, i even provided statistics to back up my claim.
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House = apartment = housing, it's freaking semantics. I didn't ignore anything but apparently in your butthurt rush to reply you missed my very first sentence where I said: "I don't know for sure". You asked a question and I posed an explanation, not the gospel. A search on google shows that housing is calculated in COL so none of this matters.
 
C

ColorCrest

All around shop helper.
Of course housing plays a part in the cost of living but housing in and of itself does not EQUATE to the cost of living. Housing is only a certain part of a very long list in the macro or microeconomics formula and the formula itself is not standard. From my previous office I could look down the street to see both Google and Zillow office buildings. They do not use the same exact formula to calculate their versions of a COL. Researchers can buy data sets from each of them to form yet another calculation and COL of their own. Thus so many different COL figures are easily found.

I understand people often use expressions such as “the cost of living is many times more.” However, this entire thread in the newbie forum created by Mark H., Mark is asking specifically about calculations, multipliers, etc. For our discussion, because prices for signs are about the same in both CA and TX, it should be obvious the cost of living between the two is not “many times” more. The actual multiplier, especially for the sake of sign pricing, is really rather low.

Partly because newbies such as Mark H. have been shown really poor examples of product pricing that amount to no better than throwing darts is why so much American small business has become a bazaar-type marketplace.

The newbie forum is a very important place.

More to follow from my new office, a chair on the beach. It's Friday today.
 
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