Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
No, this is absolutely wrong.
Chicago professional salaries aren’t much different from NYC or London, really. The price to income ratio is just much, much lower.
London and NYC just have a lot more established affluence and buyer interest from people who aren’t local.
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It's cool you can talk about London as you live there, but what you say about NYC is wrong. Sure, there are some professions that aren't much different, but on average NYC wages are definitely higher than Chicago which leads to higher housing costs. These have nothing to do with affluence. Your $100K job in Chicago could easily pay over $150K in NYC. The only difference is that on $100K you could afford to live in a fairly new luxury high rise in downtown Chicago. In Manhattan, you'd need to be making closer to $200K for something similar. Your money goes a lot further in Chicago.
I was making decent money in Chicago and lived in a luxury high rise. I make a bit more in NYC, and while I could afford a $4000 per month place, it would not be as comfortable with things like money saving as what I had in Chicago. There's a lot of ppl making more money than me here, but not anywhere close to the rich category.
Perhaps you'd like to join me on my current apartment search in NYC (mainly Manhattan) and understand how much more expensive normal, everyday housing is. Most buildings aren't marketed or geared towards people of affluence at all. Stuff is just expensive here due to higher wages. When I got a job here, they automatically tacked on $30K per year due to COL adjustments ..and that was comparing msa to msa, not city to city. This wasn't enough actually, given COL and I would have ended up making less money on a $30K salary bump. Luckily I was able to negotiate for a bit more.
For normal "professionals", the differences are pretty big percentage wise. If you have lived in NYC in the last 5 years with an actual job that you're speaking of, and know wages in other cities, you'd understand exactly what I'm talking about.