It's probably not even getting you comfortably into one of the better neighborhoods, unless your partner is the bread winner.
Chicago is one of the most affordable major cities in the US - and $300k isn't gonna do more than have you comfortably living in a small condo in the better neighborhoods.
The average $800k+ condo in the loop is 2 bedrooms.
Sure, maybe there's a couple rare 4-bdrm's for $800k - but there's a reason they are so much cheaper...
At the moment - there does not appear to be a single 4-bedroom listed on Zillow for less than <$800k: https://www.zillow.com/the-loop-chicago-il/?searchQueryState...
In fact - there's not one listed above $800k either...
There are only 3 3bedroom condos for less than $800k - and the average HOA would adjust the price to well over $1M - making them not affordable...
I would not say if you can find 1 condo in a decent neighborhood that's semi-affordable at $300k that somehow my point is refuted that $300k - after taxes - is really not that much money...
Where you'd probably actually buy, with $800k burning a hole in your pocket, is Wicker/Bucktown, Lakeview, Hyde Park or Roscoe Village. If you were price conscious, you'd buy in Lincoln Square or Jeff Park.
$800k will also buy you a pretty fantastic house in Chicago. Of course, it won't buy you a house in the Loop, because houses don't go in the Loop. When people in the HN demographic think about the parts of Chicago they think are high-status, they're not thinking like a typical house buyer, who has kids, cares about the local schools, and wants a yard. Those people are buying in Beverly, Portage Park, and Jeff Park. Houses there top out at $800k; I had a sinking feeling looking at Redfin listings there (oh shit, am I wrong about this?) untiL I realized I had to drop the lower limit way below $750k to see all the available houses.
I assume this thread is about how hard it is to survive in major American cities on $300k/yr. I think you're generally doing OK just about anywhere in the US at $300k/yr, but I assure you you're doing well in Chicago making that.
- Good private school for a kid or two (guess what one of the bribes to Thomas was...). Not gonna get away with much less than $25k/yr/kid, there, and it goes up from there.
- Long vacations expensive places a couple times a year (again...)
- House somewhere nice (notably, however, the public schools can be shit, which saves a little money here)
- Country club membership, or similar
- Don't have to do, at least, the ~50% of chores you hate the most (you pay to have them done). Ditto the worst parts of childcare.
- (optional, but recommended) Attendance of fancy functions (esp. e.g. charity events–what's the point of it all if you don't feel fancy?)
- Second property with housing on it (doesn't have to be lavish, but can't be quite as shit as a hillbilly fishing shack, which even poor country folk sometimes have)
- (optional, but recommended) Any money left over after that.
That's gonna be $400k+, household, in a cheap but not crazy cheap market (who wants to be fancy in truly bum-fuck nowhere? Though your vacation property might be there...) in 2023. Bare minimum ([EDIT] that won't get you much of the "optionals", I mean, and the rest is gonna be teetering right on the edge of having to start cutting items—and then, only if you're somewhere relatively low COL).
You aren't living, to a certain social class, if you start having to sacrifice much of that. That's how you're supposed to live.
Someone with a $300k/yr income will end up with an extraordinarily nice home, by any standards, in Chicago.
[0] https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Illinois/Chicago/Househol...
I'm not sure why we think this is only something for people who rub elbows with Bezos or for people who bought a house 10 years ago.
