New construction is generally considered to be crap nationwide. It's not unique to the bay area. Of course, you're also insisting the OLD housing stock is crapp

New construction is generally considered to be crap nationwide. It's not unique to the bay area. Of course, you're also insisting the OLD housing stock is crappy, so.. "People who live in SF wake up at 5.30am/6am to commute to the Valley" .. well, there are people who make poor life choices the world over. Living in an urban area to commute 50 miles to a suburban area rarely makes much sense (other than the fact that it's a reverse commute). It has nothing to do with traffic being bad, frankly. The reverse commute is actually pretty fast. If you're commuting from the suburbs to the city, that's where your bad commute comes in. I commute from the peninsula into SJ and do 85-90mph pretty much the whole way (EV+also carpooling), at 7:30. If I commute solo in the non-carpool lanes, it takes me a horrific 25 minutes to go 20 miles. Maybe 30 or 35, at the outside, on the way home. I didn't choose this commute; I used to bike commute until my company got acquired, but I'm still quite happy with my commute. Again, if you choose a crappy commute, you'll have a crappy commute. If you want to live in the city, you should probably choose to work in the city, which has only become much more viable in the past 10 years as many tech companies have moved north.