Here's Why You Don't Deserve The Same Raise... In Pictures
Cost of living... illustrated.
These houses cost the same in two markets that moved to $180K. Still think you deserve the same salary?
UPDATE: A lot of people complained about this article. Read the responses here.
UPDATE: For Dallas, I’ve added a listing of a real-live associate trying to sell a house in the area.
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Apparently, my efforts to bring some sanity to the flattening of associate salaries across the country have fallen on mostly deaf ears. Again, I’m a big proponent of associate raises across the board to reflect what’s happened in Biglaw over the last decade — it’s just that not every single market should be making the same, and NY in particular is getting underpaid. But, good for all y’all — and given the location of some of the offices I’m talking about, that’s the right idiom.
However, maybe you all need a visual aid to drive home exactly how ridiculously good these associates in Dallas and Chicago have it. Or maybe you just need another reason to cry at your desk in New York City?
So I’ve gone through, with the help of Zillow, and compiled home listings that a recently enriched first-year associate can now buy in each market that raised salaries. We can call it “Lawyerly Lairs: Associate Raise Edition.”
In creating this list, I employed the following assumptions:
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1. Annual salary of $180K — no spousal or cosigning support.
2. Monthly debt of roughly $1,500/month — about average for a recent grad.
3. A small down payment of $20K — saved from your summer, natch. No old money help.
4. An average effective property tax rate of .8 percent.
The last is a little bit of a cheat. In San Francisco, an effective rate of .66 percent allows an associate, all else equal, to get upwards of $647K of home. Meanwhile, Boston’s 1.18 percent rate only yields about $603K of home. That can be a big difference. On the other hand, California associates are paying income taxes that Dallas associates aren’t so, for this survey, let’s just hold everyone to around .8 percent in taxes — which has the benefit of being the rate in several of the jurisdictions we’re looking at.
That nets a home of around $635K per the Zillow calculator, so let’s search for houses between $625K and $640K. For every listing, you can see more images at the links provided. You can also enlarge any photos herein by clicking on them and allowing the magic of the Internet to do the rest.
UPDATE (6/22/16 3:31 p.m.): As a tipster points out, I did not consider condo association fees. True. But in some ways this exacerbates the point since those mostly hit the big city markets (e.g. the Chicago apartment in this piece has upwards of $1000/month fees) and thus, if anything, the big city associates are even more screwed relative to their smaller market colleagues.
We’re going to look at NYC, Chicago, and D.C., of course. But also Dallas, Houston, L.A., San Francisco and Palo Alto, Denver, Boston, and Charlotte. This is a true tour of real estate around the nation.
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Let’s begin with New York City, so the rest of the country can feel that pain.
Here’s a $629K place with a whopping 530 square feet.
Note that this is the shot from the far window. You’re seeing the whole place. And this really is a lovely place in the Village. It’s also the size of someone’s tool shed in Dallas.
Here’s the kitchen, which has a door for some reason. You know, having a means of closing off ventilation with a gas stove is never a good idea. Was this the former home of celebrated author Sylvia Plath?
In case you’re wondering, this is the floorplan you buy for your $629,000.
Maybe you think you’re smarter than the average associate and you’ll live in Williamsburg with all the hipsters and get something bigger? Well, it may not be any bigger — it’s actually smaller, at 471 square feet — but it’s a very nice place nonetheless.
That’s a superb kitchen for a place like this. But did we mention the balcony yet?
Amazing. Yet let’s not lose sight of the 471 square feet issue:
For those outside New York, this is not an effort to find ridiculously tiny locales — these are actually very nice places for New York.
Or maybe you want to win this game by living in Jersey? Well, the joke’s on you because no one wins by living in Jersey.
Now let’s check out Dallas on the next page. It’s a little bit different….
