$500k in 2010, at the depths of the housing crisis, would have gotten me a little over 1000 sq ft near an oil refinery in the East Bay. It's academic though, since that means a $50-100k down payment, which I could not have saved. Everyone gets hung up on the real estate appreciation in the Bay Area, but forgets that down payments are very hard to save up.

Edit: I wasn't considering condos. Go fee simple or go home.

Uh, $470k got me 1100sqft right near Caltrain in Willow Glen, a desirable suburb of San Jose. Last year.

The situation is crazy, don't get me wrong, but I think you're a little overselling it.

And $1.35m got me 1800sqft in Willow Glen last month. Afaik, avg sales price in Willow Glen over the past year is just over $1m.

Condo vs single family home :) I'm over by Tamien station off Minnesota Ave if that provides some context. (I call it the ghetto side of Willow Glen, as if there were such a thing. It's still a lovely neighborhood.)

Good for you! Maybe we'll run into each other sometime. :)

Actually I know someone who bought a 3 bedroom place 2 miles from Apple's new HQ in 2010 for 650K. They took out an FHA loan for 3% down with a PMI. This was a really smart decision because in 3 years their house value increased to 850K, bringing their loan to value ratio within 0.8 thus allowing them to refinance and get rid of the PMI. They had a monthly PMI of 350 dollars. That amounts to $12,600 extra for 3 years. 17% savings in downpayment amounts to 110,500. So essentially they saved 98K.

I have a 1200 sqft house with a nice yard in a cool neighborhood midway betwen Berkeley and downtown Oakland that we got for under $350k (including some largish repairs & upgrades) around that time. Admittedly we timed it well and property values around here have practically doubled since we bought it, but I think that was partly due to a lack of investment in new construction for a few years following the recession.

To be fair if you had bought a house almost anywhere at that time it would be worth almost double now. OP did even better and bought two!

Many parts of the Bay Area, yes. Not all metros.

In a huge number of places, 6 years ago was pretty much the low-point in house prices after the crash.

Which metros have increased the same percentage as the Bay Area?