Alexei Barrionuevo | Vox Our world has too much noise and too little context. Vox helps you understand what matters. 2019-03-06T10:39:48+00:00 https://www.vox.com/authors/alexei-barrionuevo-2/rss https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/vox_logo_rss_light_mode.png?w=150&h=100&crop=1 Alexei Barrionuevo <![CDATA[High-Tech Millennial Lifestyle Inspires Micro Apartment Boom]]> https://www.vox.com/2016/3/15/11586986/high-tech-millennial-lifestyle-inspires-micro-apartment-boom 2019-03-06T05:38:04-05:00 2016-03-15T12:53:14-04:00

Since the 1980s, cities around the country have been contracting serious cases of Silicon Valley envy. Everyone, it seemed, was looking for the magic formula to create their own high-tech incubators with educated, upwardly mobile work forces that would drive their cities to modernize and grow.

From Seattle to Portland, and from Denver to Austin, new tech hubs are prospering. Many of them are filling up with emigres from the Bay Area who simply couldn’t afford to work in tech there any longer.

But it’s not just the workers themselves who are spreading their wings. The lifestyle trends pioneered by a new generation of tech millennials, and by technology itself, are also spreading from coast to coast. And that is influencing housing trends. Millennials are demanding an “on-demand lifestyle” that values location over square footage and amenities.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

]]> Alexei Barrionuevo <![CDATA[Lack of New Construction Pushes Bay Area to the Brink of a Bubble]]> https://www.vox.com/2016/2/24/11588204/lack-of-new-construction-pushes-bay-area-to-the-brink-of-a-bubble 2019-03-06T05:39:48-05:00 2016-02-24T11:36:20-05:00

The San Francisco Bay Area’s booming tech industry is transforming lives and changing habits around the world. But it is also deepening one of the nation’s worst income gaps, and setting up the region’s housing market for a potentially nasty correction.

Consider the latest numbers. Silicon Valley home sale prices rose for the third year in a row in 2015, to $830,000, more than double the median price of $411,000 in California. One-bedroom rentals are averaging $3,500 per month in San Francisco, the highest rent in the nation.

Looming behind the buzz over whether a bubble is primed to burst is the dysfunction: New construction in the Bay Area is not keeping up with job growth. Neither are salaries, as high as they seem for the tech crowd. Even as the clamor for more affordable housing gets louder, new development remains politically risky, and it’s tough to see where, when, or how relief will arrive.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

]]> Alexei Barrionuevo <![CDATA[Tesla and Competitors Fuel Housing Boom in Nevada]]> https://www.vox.com/2016/1/5/11588524/tesla-and-competitors-fuel-housing-boom-in-nevada 2019-03-06T05:18:25-05:00 2016-01-05T18:46:26-05:00

In the 1860s, gold and silver discoveries spurred a short-lived economic boom in Nevada. Hundreds of prospectors flooded into the hillsides of what is today the western edge of the state, many of them coming from the gold mines of California. Men like Henry Comstock, for whom a giant silver lode was named, scrambled to stake their claims in a wide-open frontier.

Today, it’s electric car plants and data centers that are setting the stage for a modern-day economic transformation in a state still sweeping away the ash from the fire sales ignited by the recent housing bust. Once again, California opportunists may be among the biggest beneficiaries of a new mini-housing boom. Over the past year Tesla Motors and Faraday Future, the electric car manufacturers, have announced massive new operations in Nevada, and as a result, the state needs to add tens of thousands of new housing units.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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