It's actually somewhat different, because the housing around Facebook is fairly unique. Facebook is in a kind of triangle formed to the south/north/east by the

It's actually somewhat different, because the housing around Facebook is fairly unique. Facebook is in a kind of triangle formed to the south/north/east by the bay, and to the west is East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, then the 101 freeway. (although it's technically just part of Menlo Park; the 'east' is not part of the name, it is not a city unto itself). EPA and Menlo Park in that area are a bit like the land that time forgot. Historically high crime, heavily minority. East Palo Alto in particular has had much government corruption over the ages. The area has been an oasis of cheaper housing that many people virtually forget about unless reading about a shooting or going to Ikea. In many ways its been isolated from the rest of the housing market. I can only presume that when Sun Microsystems occupied the current FB campus, nobody wanted to live there. Now that Facebook is there, and vastly bigger than Sun ever was, building infrastructure, plus Amazon is there now by the Ikea, the area has become desirable to "rich" people. Whereas places like Cupertino have been relatively desirable for a long time, and the size of the employer doesn't dwarf the habitable units by such a great amount. Source: I'm currently gentrifying a neighborhood <2mi from FBHQ.