> My employer doesn't believe that. If they did, they would pay me sufficiently that I wouldn't need to choose. The Bay Area doesn't believe that: if they did, they'd address the housing crisis.

There has to be a name for the logical fallacy of treating the market as some kind of oracle, as if it was a global optimizer, instead of a greedy optimizer that will happily ignore the costs it can externalize.

"The Bay Area" doesn't "believe" the housing crisis needs to be addressed because for most interested actors, it's in their personal interest to further the crisis. You paid a lot for your house, and you want it to appreciate in value. You paid a lot for your house, because others who bought before you wanted theirs to appreciate in value. Someone else will pay a lot for their house, because you want yours to appreciate in value.

That's a good one. I propose "Efficient Market Fallacy". The Efficient Market is such a tempting idea with simple explanations for complex human behavior. The reality can be very broken, very inefficient, wasting many human lifetimes and with tons of horrific externalities in situations that basically amount to a kind of organized crime.

I propose "First Church Of The Invisible Hand".

It is called regulatory capture.

You've fallen victim to this very trap. Markets have clear failure modes that have nothing to do with regulatory capture.

Pollution is the clear example. Unless forced externally, producers will just ignore negative externalities.

And if more housing was built it would be snapped up by speculators - is a bit like building better roads =to reduce congestion.

Potential solutions to that: prohibit ownership of residential property (whether small scale, like single family up to 4-unit properties, or large scale, e.g. apartment complexes) except as a primary residence by foreign individuals or businesses that have foreign individuals as their true beneficial owners, and have additional taxes on properties that are not owner-occupied a substantial fraction of the year (say, 9 months).

And it's often not just more expensive living near a big city, it's also a different lifestyle. The type of housing near in to the city where I work is different than the housing further away. For example you may have to live in a smaller apartment/condo in a more urban neighborhood vs. living in a SFH in a more green neighborhood. Some people like the former, others like the latter.

While this "enumerate all the costs and benefits" calculus is really appealing, the "how much is the land (de)appreciating?" factor dominates everything. This is why most people can buy homes without much serious thought and still come out very happy and ahead, because the land appreciation (or depreciation) sort of bakes in all your complex considerations for you.

My dad told me something I thought was a good guiding principle; you can always make more money, but you can't get back wasted time.

Equivalent housing on overground commuter lines to London in the UK, compared that of inside London, is basically <rail fare> per month cheaper to mortgage.

For many people it comes down to whether they can afford to deposit or get the income multiple loan to buy in the city, not monthly expense.

The difference being that the UK's rail infrastructure (especially around London) is orders (plural) of magnitude better than that in the Bay Area.

I lived and worked in London (South Kensington/Pimlico at college, Streatham, Walthamstow, Acton Town, Notting Hill - all over, really) for about 16 years. I've been in the Bay Area for ~17 years. There really isn't any comparison. Londoners have it made, even if it doesn't feel it when the train is packed/a few mins late/cancelled.

I see the light-rail here going by on occasion. It's empty. BART is inadequate (there are 270 stations on the tube, there are 50 on BART covering a larger area), and it runs with a 10-20 minute cadence, not the 2-5 minute cadence of the tube. As far as real trains go, Caltrain is pretty good if you're on the track (really, the train itself is nicer than most in the UK) but it's coverage is very limited.

Just like the NHS, you don't know what you have until it's gone.

If you live in big city in a country not totally ravaged by car culture, you can also subtract car price.