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Here's the other thing: Many of these bay area starter homes are located in safe, but characterless suburbs. I don't mean that in an angsty anti-suburban way: t

Here's the other thing: Many of these bay area starter homes are located in safe, but characterless suburbs. I don't mean that in an angsty anti-suburban way: they're just poorly planned with poorly made homes. You mention Des Moines... As a thought experiment: if the hand of god moved the city of Ankeny, Iowa so that it was a 30 min commute to the bay, it would soon be regarded as one of the "cooler" places to live outside of SF, and quickly fill up with millionaires.

Girlang 10y ago
My Sunnyvale neighborhood is not "characterless." You know what is? You are.
froindt 10y ago
Haha Ankeny is already getting filled with people living at or beyond their means and hoping they don't have a housing bubble burst. I have a family friend who moved there perhaps a decade ago and built a really nice house. Few years later, the house wasn't for sale, but someone knocked on the door and wanted to buy it for $1,000,000. Then they wanted it furnished, so the price went up a bit higher. They probably made at least 250k in a handful of years. My friend wanted to downsize anyway, so when someone literally arrived at their doorstep and offered 1M+, it was an easy decision. He bought a model home for 770k about 4 years ago. Someone wanted to buy it off of him in 2015, and he wanted to downsize again, so they made a deal. The purchaser put a large sum of earnest money down, and they would get the house after my friend built himself a new house. The old house sold for 820k about 10 months after the earnest money was put down.