We have generally found that San Francisco housing prices are lower than Silicon Valley. Cupertino, Mountain View, etc are absolutely insane.

Housing prices in Mountain View are just as bad as those in SF.

Also, YouTube's head office is closer to the SF airport.

If only there was a bus straight to campus that went to like 5 counties...

> Also, YouTube's head office is closer to the SF airport.

Which is also not in SF.

It's geographically close enough.

It isn't geographically close enough to make the claim that living in SF is necessary because you work there.

Of course, even if the office was in SF that wouldn't be justified. It's hardly unusual for people to commute into SF from places with lower living costs.

Housing on the peninsula is incredibly constrained so most people are priced out. Right now in the East Bay, San Leandro and Castro Valley are probably the best price points for square foot per $. Commutes suck from both places but they are equally positioned between valley and city giving you access to both.

If the bubble continues I would expect that both places will get priced out in the next 2-3 years. At that point you'll have to look at the Tri-Valley area (Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore) for the affordable price points.

The Tri-Valley is actually quite a bit more expensive than the mid East Bay region (Hayward, Union City, San Leandro, Castro Valley). It's still cheaper than the Peninsula or South Bay, though.

If you're looking at the East Bay you're too late. Castro Valley and San Leandro were marginally affordable about 4 years ago. Now, you are probably going to need a salary of over $200K to support buying there. Dublin and Pleasanton have good schools so you'll need more $$$ out there. Livermore is probably still affordable to a mere mortal but I'd start looking further out towards Tracy or Stockton at this point.

San Francisco is stunningly beautiful. Prices near YouTube (which is close to San Francisco) were also incredibly high.

I live ~1 mile from Google in mountain view and a few blocks from here: http://www.orolomahomes.com/site-plan/

tl;dr: 1300 sq. ft. new 2 bedroom townhome for 1.3 million.

SF is cheaper than SV. Unless it's Palo Alto.

I think you have that backwards. Especially since you mention Palo Alto as being the exception.

Do you mean East Palo Alto?

He worked at Youtube, which is actually in San Bruno. Living in SF is the trendy thing to do so he probably felt the 'real' experience would be more worthwhile (which it sounds like it was). From the southern part of SF (not South San Francisco, that is different) it's not a crazy commute to San Bruno. To Mountain View it would have been hell.

I'm about the furthest from "trendy" you can imagine. But our quality of life living in Bernal Heights was amazing.