The advantage of the bay area is your improved chances of networking. If you are well connected enough as it is, chances are you'll do better elsewhere, maybe even doing remote work for bay area companies. There's people here that could pay for a 4 bedroom house in full every year if then wanted to, just by abusing that pay differential.

So why would we move there, if we can get paid pretty much the same with a much cheaper cost of living? The extra connections are not worth going from 1K a month mortgages to 4-5K.