London! I moved to SF from London, you get bit of everything! :)

Tell me more. I’m also in the Midwest US. Still early in my career. I’d consider London but the cost of living scares me. Also the whole Brexit thing.

Don't worry much about Brexit, I was quite worried about it myself and I lost the chance to buy a house at a cheaper price. Brexit is turning out to be quite positive for the UK, and the media claims that the companies will move out is backfiring and they are moving into the UK now.

I have lived in SF / Boston / London / Portland, and I think London has the bits of all. Comparing to the west coast, London has equal or better food culture, similar political vibe but much more diverse yet localized within the city, the hustle and bustle of living in a true city, the architectural beauty and most importantly quite nicely located with accessible sites of natural beauty within the UK and Europe.

I think the only thing that is negative about London vs SF is the weather :-/ Also, it's not a very friendly place to move at the start of your career, quite closed for newbies and an old boys club so that's a caveat.

OK, so the only part I'll respond to is the Brexit thing.

Firstly, Brexit has still not happened in any real sense (there's a transition period till the end of the year).

Secondly, the UK government appear to want a minimal trade relationship with the EU, which will hit services trade pretty hard (and the UK exports lots of services).

The likelihood is that many large companies will need to move staff/assets to the EU to retain their licenses.

For me, specifically (as I'm a data scientist) this probably means that data products out of the UK are going to be tricky to sell.

I would expect that there will be a drop in London property prices, but a larger drop in jobs.

Don't get me wrong, London is a great city, but I (personally) would stay away from moving there till at least next year, as the implications around Brexit and trade should be much clearer by then.

I don't even have any counter arguments to make, you can speculate as much as you want, the home prices were suppose to drop drastically and I was waiting for it. They went up after the withdrawal agreement was signed :-/

I was under impression that whatever you just mentioned would have happened by now, but Nissan and Unilever are now moving to UK and all the speculations are going down the drain.

I have come to a conclusion that all the anti-brexit hysteria has been priced in, and indecisiveness is proving more costly as time goes by!

Totally. I'm in a similar position (wanting to buy a house, but concerned at the insane prices), so I totally get you. Maybe coronavirus will accomplish it. Something something market, irrational, solvent.

So, the Unilever thing is a stock move, that really only occurred because the shareholders in the City didn't like it (being removed from the FTSE would have been very bad for their share price).

My understanding is that Nissan (and all the car-makers) rely on frictionless trade in goods, which probably isn't going to happen. I believe that they will probably invest in the UK for the domestic market, but we'll see.

Again, nothing has practically changed in terms of trade, and will not until January 1st of next year. We'll see I suppose.

Well, that means UK does have a pretty amazing leverage to keep jobs in the country. I am one of the least politically aware person, but I have come to a conclusion that Brexit isn't going to be as good as it is being claimed by people who have voted for it. It's also not going to be as bad as people who voted against it claim to be.

As an outsider, for something as zero-sum as buying a home where supply is low, cost of waiting and indecision can be pretty high.

I would trust this comparison more if it was NYC / Hong Kong / London etc

But yeah I like Europe-area economic and financial centers for proximity to the rest of Europe and they are all centrally located in a diagonal line from London to Dubai.

I wish the US had a similar centrally located clusters, instead of the coasts at the far extremes of the continent.

oh dear, that was a bad rub in :P Yes, SF is always weird and complex to compare to other cities :-/

Asheville, North Carolina