The Bay Area is real estate insane. Prop 13 driven NIMBY-ism prevents any reasonable density housing from being built.<p>After living there for 2 years and paying insane rent (more than $5K/mo on a 1200sqft house), I now telecommute for a Bay Area company, and live in central VA in a 3000sqft house in a good school district with a community pool, etc, which cost less than $400K. I telecommute most of the time, and I fly to CA 5-6 times per year (on the company's dime). My quality of life is so much better. I mostly miss the weather and the food, but not the traffic & the crowds and the prices.<p>Not to mention that I'm using one of my 5 bedrooms as a private office, which is so, so, so much better than a low-walled cube in an open office environment.
I went through this but was lucky enough to do it 3 years ago. Our price point wasn't above a million but was around 600-700k. For good schools that pushed us out to the Tri-Valley area of the east bay where we finally bought a house.<p>We looked for 18 months. It got to the point where I'd leave work if a house came on the market on a Thursday so we could have our offer in on Friday. We were out-bid 12 times for all cash offers, mostly from overseas investors I was told.<p>We finally found a house where an older lady was selling the house where she raised her kids in and after I saw it I went back the next day and knocked on her door and showed her some pictures of my family and almost begged her to pick our offer. We ended up having to bid +45k over asking.<p>The funny part is if I sold the house right now, I wouldn't be able to afford to buy it back.
Two days ago I just closed on my second house. Brand new, gorgeous 3500 square feet house for $363k. Great schools and good commute. The company I work has over 10,000 IT workers world wide with four major hub offices in the US. None of the hubs are in SV because of reasons like this.
Compared to central London SV is cheaper and London does' not pay as well for techies.<p>Id love to live in say fitzrovia or one of the lovely Georgian houses in the city near st pauls - but unless I win the lottery that's not going to happen.
There is no doubt Silicon Valley real estate is expensive. But this article is extreme.<p>For starters, Los Gatos is an upscale city nestled down at the bottom of SV. Bentleys and Ferraris are everywhere and the Tesla Model S is a downright common car. It's not representative.<p>If you look around in San Jose, Campbell, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, etc, the prices come down and quality goes up. No, they don't approach the national average, not even close. But 1.5 million for a fixer upper is ridiculous.