I personally don't live in SV and don't expect to.

My experiences are in various places, all outside the US, and some of them in "ordinary" towns that don't have unusually high prices.

Besides, where I am, renting is often more expensive than buying, at current mortgage rates. (It was the other way around when I looked into it about 17 years ago).

House prices are going up for buying and renting in tandem, with some lag either way depending on area. Do renters get a better deal as a result of those rising prices? I don't think so.

Why not buy then, you say? The gatekeeper for most people is limited access to mortgages, not the cost, because perversely they pay more in rent than they would on a mortgage for the same place, and to rub salt in the wound, the money they pay in rent consistently for years is ignored for the purpose of assessing their creditworthiness and affordability.

Not that opening that gate would help for long, because prices would adjust upwards if more people obtained access to mortgages, but it is still perverse when we describe buying as an unreasonable aspiration in an area, when people are paying more in rent than the cost of buying.

That's odd, because I know many (including myself) that own property in SV and other high-expense cities on the West Coast.

So I don't think that's true.

My post was directed at the long-winded rant that seemed to boil down to "I can't afford a home in SV," not everyone in general.