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Rent in San Francisco is so expensive that it’s cheaper to commute from Las Vegas
Not The Onion!
Reddit user yourslice poses a humble question to all those San Francisco residents fed up with rising rents: Why not move to Las Vegas and commute back to the Bay Area?
There are probably better descriptions for this query than humble, but in the spirit of the thought-experiment, we’ll bite. Trusting yourslice’s numbers, the basic math goes like this: $1,012 in rent for a two-bedroom apartment within 10 miles of Las Vegas, $1,120 on four round-trip flights a week (working remotely on the fifth day), and $276 in ground transportation via BART once you land at SFO. Totaling those costs still comes out to less than the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom in San Francisco; via Reddit:
Added together, it would cost you $2,408 a month to live in and commute from Las Vegas, meaning a savings of $715 a month (and double the apartment space) compared to living in San Francisco.
Add in a reduced cost of living, estimated at $409 a month, and yourslice settles on a monthly savings of $1,124—or nearly $13,500 more a year to waste in online sports fantasy games spend as you wish. But your happiness is important to us here at CityLab, so at the risk of taking this exercise a little too seriously, consider a few other factors before you sublet your existing San Francisco bunk bed on Craigslist and become a bona fide mega-commuter.
Commuting to San Francisco from Las Vegas is about 90 minutes per flight leg, or three hours of air time a day. Add in a very conservative 30 minutes of ground transportation at either end and you’re quickly up to four hours of travel before even considering airline delays. (In 2015, JetBlue’s on-time rate on flights through SFO is roughly 73 percent, and about 77 percent at McCarran International.) Money and time are both scarce resources, but only one can be replenished.
There are probably better descriptions for this query than humble, but in the spirit of the thought-experiment, we’ll bite. Trusting yourslice’s numbers, the basic math goes like this: $1,012 in rent for a two-bedroom apartment within 10 miles of Las Vegas, $1,120 on four round-trip flights a week (working remotely on the fifth day), and $276 in ground transportation via BART once you land at SFO. Totaling those costs still comes out to less than the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom in San Francisco; via Reddit:
Added together, it would cost you $2,408 a month to live in and commute from Las Vegas, meaning a savings of $715 a month (and double the apartment space) compared to living in San Francisco.
Add in a reduced cost of living, estimated at $409 a month, and yourslice settles on a monthly savings of $1,124—or nearly $13,500 more a year to waste in online sports fantasy games spend as you wish. But your happiness is important to us here at CityLab, so at the risk of taking this exercise a little too seriously, consider a few other factors before you sublet your existing San Francisco bunk bed on Craigslist and become a bona fide mega-commuter.
Commuting to San Francisco from Las Vegas is about 90 minutes per flight leg, or three hours of air time a day. Add in a very conservative 30 minutes of ground transportation at either end and you’re quickly up to four hours of travel before even considering airline delays. (In 2015, JetBlue’s on-time rate on flights through SFO is roughly 73 percent, and about 77 percent at McCarran International.) Money and time are both scarce resources, but only one can be replenished.
Um, people already have two-hour-plus commutes to the Central Valley.
5 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
That used to be someone's apartment before the landlord gave them the boot so as to rent it to you for more $$$. 