According to [1] average income in SV is $140k, and median house price is $1.2M.

$400k income would put you into upper middle class territory.

[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/19/18229922/silicon-valley-inde...

140k is believable, but I think they mean it's per person. If you rent, it's very unlikely you'd be able to buy a 1.2M house on 140k if you started with 0 in savings.

EDIT: To clarify my previous post - I was talking about the household income.

$140k is household income:

https://siliconvalleyindicators.org/data/economy/income/hous...

I agree that it might be tough to buy a median house with median income in some areas, however you can easily afford to buy a decent house almost anywhere with $400k income.

Don't kid yourself. Even here in the Bay Area, $400K a year is still upper middle class. You'd be in the top 3% of earners across the nine bay area counties.

Prop 13 distorts that a lot. If you bought a house 25 years ago and now are earning 400k, yeah, you're an upper middle class.

Again, you're kidding yourself. Even if you bought a new house today with no existing equity, you could easily afford $11K a month in mortgage. That's a house that's over $2M. And still have $10K a month left for other expenses.

Forget about buying a house part. Say the person can buy a house in texas and retire there. Would you still say it's lower middle class?

The definition of the middle class would surely depend on the cost of living in the particular area. You can make $30k and live like royalty in the 99% of the world.