- Gas: is still $3 a gallon here while a majority of the nation enjoys close to $1 a gal.
- State taxes: run close to 10% on professional salaries, most other states have 4-5% or no state taxes.
- Housing: This one is the big one, try finding a 3 bedroom house for less than $1M in the san jose/pennisula area, it just isn't possible (I am excluding parts of east san jose where housing is cheaper). A typical house in the US goes for roughly 350k. rent is no better, a 3 bdrm rental in a half decent area runs you 3.5k on up.
- Property taxes: this one is tied to housing, enjoy paying 1.5% a year forever on your $1M+ house, that is 15k+ a year
Trust me, I hear the same thing in discussions about DC area salaries and COL. Relative to the rest of the nation, software developers here have a high income and high COL, but the income more than makes up for it here too.
This is highly regional. We are currently at somewhere around $1.75/gallon.
Twenty miles away, though, has $0.99 / gallon.
Doesn't make sense to me.
Median household in SJ earns ~120k. Median for USA is ~$60k.
Even if the SJ resident spend 40% on housing, they come out WAY ahead of the median household spending 25% on housing.
Average cost of a house in America is around $380k, average cost of a house in San Francisco is $1.7M according to Zillow. San Jose is $1.2M. Fremont is $1.1M. The cheapest (and not a great place to live and horrible commute) place in the Bay Area is Vallejo and that's still $450k.
So 3-6x more expensive depending on where you look generally.