IANAL or a real estate person, but my understanding is that it's a combination of the following: 1) Laws passed in the 1970s that lock in a home's tax value un

IANAL or a real estate person, but my understanding is that it's a combination of the following: 1) Laws passed in the 1970s that lock in a home's tax value unless/until it's sold, meaning anyone who owned a home in the 70s will never, ever want to sell because their taxes will skyrocket from their fixed 70's values; 2) NIMBYs forbidding the construction of new housing, especially any high-density housing, meaning an area that's massively grown in population has not significantly grown in housing availability; 3) Tech companies insisting on building huge campuses here, attracting more and more people, who use their tech salaries to snap up the extremely limited housing, leading to tech companies needing to pay higher salaries to attract new employees, leading to those higher salaries being used to outbid others on houses, leading to tech companies needing to pay higher salaries... When we rented our last house, the real estate agent handling the rental asked why we, a Bay Area-salaried DINK couple, weren't buying. We laughed, because the down payment alone on the house we were renting - a dinky, dingy two-bedroom from the 60s which hadn't been significantly upgraded or maintained since - would have been close to our combined yearly income, never mind the taxes and mortgage payments. And that was for one of the crappiest houses in the neighborhood, not one we'd actually consider buying.