Sure if you cherry pick like literally the most expensive 25sq mile neighborhood, and are dead set on buying real estate and not renting. But even then, the ca

Sure if you cherry pick like literally the most expensive 25sq mile neighborhood, and are dead set on buying real estate and not renting. But even then, the calculation on bestplaces.net appears to be a bit farcical: Assuming you spend $8k/month on renting a large modern 2500+ sqft house, and are in the tax bracket which knocks your after-tax income to $300k from $500k, you still have ~$200k after tax and housing. The rest of your expenses are not going to be so much more expensive (~4x) that they don't vastly exceed $100k - tax (~25k) - housing (24k for similar) in NC. $250k in NC vs $500k in bay area though sure, that's in the right realm.