Becoming intensely in debt (thereby forcing myself to work more) by buying into a ridiculously overpriced housing market, locking me to a single physical location that is destroying itself through disgustingly selfish infrastructure planning is not my idea of an advantage, financially or psychologically. I've never lived or visited anywhere in my life that has screwed itself up as much as the Bay Area has - they'll be lucky to be growing as well as Gary, Indiana at the rate things are going. The prices are not justified by wage increases (wages aren't matching price increases) or increasing population (the bay area is now starting to lose population), and combined with the idiotic local and federal politics + trade war economics, have nowhere to go but down.
On the contrary, I contend anyone that depends on the current prices for survival is a bag holder making an extremely risky bet. The evidence is already there that the bet is not going to pay off. My advice: unless you're very wealthy and don't care, or your plan is to go underwater in the world's most expensive retirement community, get out, now. If things go south, liquidity will be far more important for your financial and psychological soundness than debt on a sinking asset in a shrinking regional economy will be.
Don't buy a house because you feel like it's what you are supposed to do!
Itβs ridiculous to say that happiness depends on home ownership, and equally ridiculous to pick an arbitrary age like 30 to serve as a benchmark.