Taking a typical track, a dev might start working at 22 and start a family around 30, leaving 8 years to save 300k (20% down payment on 1.5M), meaning they have

Taking a typical track, a dev might start working at 22 and start a family around 30, leaving 8 years to save 300k (20% down payment on 1.5M), meaning they have to save $37.5k/year. Add to that a $2-3k/mo rent for those 8 years, and you basically double that. Including income tax, that's about $110k/yr just towards housing. Let's say they have $500-1k/mo of other expenses (food, gym, discretionary) and add the $5.5k annual IRA contribution, and that's ballpark $130k/year average every year. That's without a lot of the fun things you should do in your twenties and an irresponsibly low contribution to retirement. Oh, and with the other 80% as a loan, there's a requirement that the payments aren't over 40% of your income, so a $1.2M loan at 3.92% for 30 years means you need to make more than $170k/year. You're right that lots of good software devs make that, but this is a crazy amount above the area median. And that's the lowest end $1.5M from the $1.5-3M range for a 3br in those areas. Hyperbole is not quite the way to spin it.