Just curious, as I currently walk to work and that's a massive QOL issue for me. Sitting in traffic even 60 minutes/day would be awful.

If you highly value walking to work (and to other amenities) then NYC is a great option. $1.2M won't buy you a place, but you can certainly rent a great apartment within walking distance of the Google or Facebook NYC offices for significantly less than $72k/year.

Interestingly, the suburban office campuses in this area are beginning to go away. Companies are moving to locations that are at least Metro accessible (Google's new office), or into urban areas (Amazon HQ2). Local zoning has changed to make that more palatable - just interesting to see the change in preferences since I started work in 1999.

And to be honest, my ability to walk was dumb luck. If I change jobs, I’m just as likely to have to drive/Metro into Tyson’s as walk locally. But walking is a big incentive to stay put.

That was one fear with HQ2 coming to DC. With it on the other side of Fairfax, it’ll be a while before it impacts housing out here. But if Google expands its footprint, and with the Metro opening soon, we might see another bump soon.

It's an apartment condo. Worse yet, the land itself is leased from a different owner.

Start with the idea that you own the land and the building, and that you can walk around the building while staying on land that you own. Ideally you would also have mineral rights, the right to drill a well, and similar. You should have the right to bulldoze the building, paint it any color, add brick facing, add gargoyles, or install a triangular front door.

The point is, buying a place for $1.2M in walking distance isn't crazy.

You don't need to be at the company headquarters to make $500k a year. Not being at the headquarters is only a problem if you want to get past director level ($1.5 M/yr)

Either way, rent is around $5k a month here for a three bedroom, which is quite doable on a Google salary.

$1.3m will get you a 1300 sq foot town house, so yes, it's quite possible to be located near fang HQ on the budget described above with a family.

Source: Zillow around whisman station

https://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco/filter/mi...

If you really want a house comparable to what's affordable on 130k out there, you're talking at least double that.

Still more money, but your number are off by about 25%

Did this once and won my bet, but was very aware of how bad it might go. (Well, "won", since my ex got it all...)

Then you can use NerdWallet for cost-of-living excluding taxes (SF is 211% of NC). So after you've replicated your $90k take-home in SFO, you have about $48k surplus to invest. Not bad, but also probably not what you were expecting!

[1] https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes [2] https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...