Depends on what you are looking for and what your lifestyle is. For me, in PHX moving from a 3200 sqft place to a place in SF that was a 30-40 minutes commute (

Depends on what you are looking for and what your lifestyle is. For me, in PHX moving from a 3200 sqft place to a place in SF that was a 30-40 minutes commute (3bd, 1500sqft) would have changed my mortgage by at least 4k/month. But realistically it might end up more like 5-6k/month... because housing in SF is stupid fucking expensive. This is just on the mortgage alone mind you, not including taxes and other expenses. To put in perspective of how little I pay, I pay about 1900/month for mortgage, taxes, insurance and HOA (which is like $150/month because we live in a gated area). I am about 30-45 minutes door to door from PHX airport. On the low end, it would require ~75-80k before taxes just to make up the mortgage difference, and likely be more than that. TL;DR: Yea, it can easily be 100k cheaper in PHX vs SF depending on your situation.