The vast majority of engineers at FAANGs are _not_ commuting out of San Francisco -- looking at where the workforce really is: Mountain View, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, you most definitely don't need to shell out $2.5M for a reasonable house.
Yes you do - Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, and nearby peninsula cities are even more expensive than SF. At least in SF you can get a nice new construction apartment for 875k.
You can find a cheap house for $1.25M in San Mateo or on the outskirts of San Jose, but it’ll still be pretty small and far away.
That's not universally true. US homes in warm climates had high ceilings until the advent of central climate control. Homes in cold areas tended to have low ceilings to keep the warm air where it was most useful: at the level of the occupants. Eight foot ceilings are very common in tract homes built between the introduction of air conditioning and the start of the McMansion trend in the 1990s. Common areas with higher ceilings are not rare in newer homes.
It's always... interesting... To look at SF on Zillow. There are a few nice-looking options in the ~1.5M range, mostly foreclosures, and it seems mostly in not-so-great areas. I don't know if there are any great areas in SF proper though.
FAANG has a much larger presence in Silicon Valley than SF. SF is more biased towards startups. Although it’s true all the major tech companies have SF shuttles.
San Jose’s median house price is $1.2 million. A million will get you a quality ranch.
(I fully appreciate the ridiculousness of presenting a million as “affordable”)
