I worked a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering in Cupertino. I was staying in a 1BR apartment on the edge of Cupertino and San Jose, and my

I worked a six month contract for Apple Retail Software Engineering in Cupertino. I was staying in a 1BR apartment on the edge of Cupertino and San Jose, and my rent for that apartment was $2k/month. That was 2014. During that gig, my wife stayed here in Austin, and we were paying considerably less than $2k for our 4BR house we have in one of the nicer neighborhoods. I saw shacks (not fit for human habitation) on postage stamp size lots in Cupertino where the property was for sale, the land had a value of $700k, but the property overall had a value of $600k. The house literally had a value of negative 100k, because that's what it would take to knock it down and rip everything out and start building fresh. Meanwhile, the median home cost in the Austin area was like $200k. I totally get how house prices are much cheaper here in Austin. But the housing prices have rapidly gone up -- like 3-4x in just a few years. And our property taxes are going up as fast as the law will allow. What house you could have bought for $300k just a few years ago will now cost you over $1m. It's going to take a long time for the property taxes to catch up to the home values, unless that law gets changed. I hope my wife and I can continue to afford to live here long enough to retire, and then sell our house for ridiculous amounts of money so that we can afford to buy another place somewhere else where the weather is more moderate and the prices aren't so totally out of whack. We will just have to see what happens. EDIT: I will add that I calculated how much I was making as a contractor for Apple, and I realized that they'd have to pay me over $250k to have the same amount of take home pay, were they to make me an offer to become a permanent employee. At that time, only VPs were making that kind of money, so I was very relieved when I was told that my work was done and my contract was ending, and that my early Christmas present that year was that I would be able to move back home to Austin.