This was actually one of the reasons I did not want to move to California. Around 2000 I had someone from Oakland staying at my $139k home in Minneapolis. Admittedly, I did live in a very nice neighborhood, but her estimate was that my house would cost at least $500k in a comparable area in Oakland.

That was all the incentive I needed to stay put. IIRC, I wasn't making that much more than $70k at the time but I could have worked in a coffee shop and paid my mortgage.