It's not impossible to afford a house in the Bay Area on just cash compensation, if you're a dual-finance/tech/legal/medical couple and both partners have risen to mid-levels in their organization. L6/E6 cash compensation is about $225K, two of them is $450K, figure 50% out for taxes/401k/benefits and you're taking home about $225K/year or about $18K/month. PITI for a $2.5M home (20% down) is about $14K, so you've got $4K/month to spend on everything else. That's just barely enough - it's like someone making $48K/year but having no housing expenses, which is tight but lots of people do it.

Most people in SV do this. So, it’s pretty normal actually.

That's just totally disconnected from reality. The majority of Silicon Valley homeowners don't receive any equity compensation. You should walk around and talk to regular people sometime.

(The numbers may be different if you look solely at recent buyers in a certain limited set of neighborhoods.)

Those are the "already mega-wealthy." Their mortgage bills are low because they have enormous home equity.

And property taxes pegged to the value of the home in 1985!

Then there's going to be a lot of foreclosures soon.

Yup, I think the housing market got totally overheated on the back of RSU values going through the roof.

Now that even Apple and Google are well off peak, I’m super curious what happens next.