*Yes, there's some sarcasm in there, but this is what San Franciscans have done since the 70's.

Your 1500 sq home probably would rent for about $4300 a month in Redwood City (https://www.zillow.com/redwood-city-ca/home-values/). That home would probably rent for about $1900 in Portland (https://www.zillow.com/portland-metro-or_r394998/home-values...)

A $30k/year rent difference requires ~$48k more income to cover (at 40% marginal tax rates). My guess is that the 100% salary jump is more than enough to cover the housing increase (probably handles all COL difference), making SF more favorable, especially if you don't want a very large home or are quite senior.

Besides, 10% is about the long-term S&P 500 average return.

That's not true in many parts of the Bay Area. See linked post above: https://medium.com/@usaar33/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-home-in-t...

I'm Australian so YMMV, but six months ago I took a 25% pay cut to move out of Sydney to somewhere with lower housing costs and a shorter commute. I'm never going back.

[1] Please don't mention Adelaide publicly. Coopers beer, the fringe festival, great weather, great wine, housing for families that's close to town, and beaches where you can be the only person for miles. I want to buy a house there and demand will drive pricing up.

Sydney and Melbourne seem to be the only Australian cities with a substantial tech presence.

Glad to hear it is working out for you :-)

Now I live in Morgan Hill which is a great place for families. I drive in to SJ, about 45 minutes in rush hour each way. Caltrain is an option as well, although it takes longer. A nice, newer 2k square foot house runs about $1mm so not “cheap”, but 50-70% less expensive than most of the peninsula.

My unscientific opinion is that the Bay Area skews younger (for people on HN who are bummed about housing) and most young people don’t like the ‘burbs. Anything outside the Real Bay Area (bounded on the north by SF, east by Oakland and south by SJ) is out of the running for a lot of people.

The area around almost every Caltrain stop has already seen significant appreciation, of course.

Utterly dysfunctional and dismal. I don't doubt that the land is appreciating there, but why can't it be put to better uses?

I agree that the Millbrae station is terrible! That's due to BART - most of the other stations up and down that line are in the downtowns of Burlingame, San Mateo, Redwood City, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc. All of those towns predate the automobile, and are certainly rail-friendly.

Coincidentally, all of those rail-friendly suburbs I mentioned are the NIMBY anti-density insane-housing-price places lamented elsewhere in the thread!

Outside the USA, public transport may run a little less often on a Saturday or Sunday, but it's still useful for people to use for shopping, going out and so on.

For example, in Copenhagen the trains run every 10 minutes rather than five, and the rural trains are every 60 minutes on a Sunday, rather than 20. I think the metro is the same at the weekend as during the week.

It runs roughly every hour (with a few additional express trains) on the weekend, very similar to the rural trains you describe in Denmark.

My point is that you can't just show up at a commuter rail station and complain that you have to wait a while at a bare-bones platform. It's built for people who take it at the same time every day, commonly driving to the station.

The "Lokaltoger" on Zealand run every half hour on Saturdays, and every hour on Sundays, with the stations at 40-70km from Copenhagen. The settlements are mostly around 1-2 thousand people, although here we can include children and the elderly as potential users as it's not expected to drive to the stations.

If I use public transport every day during the week, then when going to similar places at the weekend I will certainly complain if the trains are infrequent.

http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/weekend-timetable.html

http://www.lokaltog.dk/media/1179/920r-frederiksvaerkbanen.p...

There are some bare stations in the UK. I'd be interested to know if any of these are used for transfers / changes.

Stonehouse is pretty minimal, but I think any changes would be made at Cheltenham or Gloucester or Swindon.

OTOH, as long as you can sell your house for at least as much as it cost you, that money's not lost. There's something to be said for a few years' of Silicon Valley salary, then pulling up stakes and moving somewhere more reasonable. Best of all is to draw a Silicon Valley salary while actually living somewhere else, but I'm not supposed to talk about that. ;)

I loved my time in Redwood City, more housing would certainly not make it better.

If you live in a nice house, the idea of a huge apartment complex next door would not be remotely appealing. That's the only way you can "build more" in the vast majority of the City/Peninsula. I don't blame them one bit.