You could sell and laugh, but then where would you live? You either get a ridiculous commute, or you have to pay exorbitant rent. Something decent runs for over $4k/month everywhere in the valley these days. Everyone said the same thing about the Valley during the last 2 bubbles, but it keeps going up. People need somewhere to live - selling now on some hypothetical crash makes living your life very difficult.
Do you absolutely need to be in the [EDIT] Bay Area?
If the answer is no, then there are a lot of other cities with reasonable tech scenes and much cheaper housing. Boston and Seattle are around $350k median home value. Denver, Atlanta, and Minneapolis-St. Paul are around $200k. Those places all count as "somewhere to live", and don't make life particularly difficult (unless your life revolves around something specific to SF/SV.)
If you currently own a home in San Francisco, its pretty clear you don't need to live in the Valley, in the same way that if you currently own a home in New York City, its pretty clear you don't need to live in Trenton, NJ.
All this assumes that people want/can leave where they currently live. Personally, with family, friends, fulfilling job, and a lot of fun stuff to do, I don't particularly want to relocate.
"I don't want to relocate" is a far cry from "selling... makes your life very difficult".
If you're particularly attached to and fulfilled by everything you have where you are, maybe you should stay, even if it costs a million dollars for a 2 bedroom house. Personally, I've got family, friends, fulfilling work, fun stuff to do, and a much bigger house that cost under $200k where I am. Life is not "very difficult" here; it's quite pleasant.
EDIT: to phrase it slightly differently, you're criticizing others for assuming people can relocate or assuming people might prefer Denver for the extra money. Yet you yourself assume the Valley is the only place that makes sense to live. That assumption simply isn't valid for most people.
Selling makes your life very difficult if you don't want to relocate. I am criticizing folks who say "wow, that's expensive, you should just sell!" without any critical thought as to what that actually means.
And I'm criticizing those folks who say "leaving is impossible" without any critical thought as to the potential benefits of cashing out, or potential alternate locations where a million dollars would go a loooooooong way to making a good life.
It's possible we're both criticizing folks who don't actually exist.
Things are expensive but there's no reason to round-up or inflate numbers. Maybe if you must rent a large single family home. Then sure, $4k would be the minimum.
But I live in a 2/2 duplex in a desirable SF neighborhood and pay $3100.
Ok, if you want to live in a 2/2 duplex. How's your kitchen?
If you like it, good on you. Real estate more than almost anything else really does take all kinds.
My challenge is that I want some room for kids - more than 2 bedrooms, a yard where they can play and still be somewhat supervised, no sharing walls (for me AND for the neighbor, what neighbor wants to hear a screaming baby through their $3100/month duplex walls?).
I moved south of SJ. Still not cheap, but I've got the big SFH 30 mins outside of SJ for less than $3k.
Not everyone desires suburbia but if you do, prepare your wallet.
I'm not rounding up or inflating numbers. That example came from recent rentals on the peninsula my brother is looking at. 2/2 townhomes ranging from $3800-$4300.
I sold my place in the east bay and now rent in Morgan Hill. $2900/month gets me a 4 bedroom place in a 10 year old neighborhood. My commute to SJ is 30 mins up 101.
I guess the idea is to sell, live on rent for a while, and then buy a new home after the crash. Easy to make a decent profit if house prices crash by 30%.
>I guess the idea is to sell, live on rent for a while, and then buy a new home after the crash. Easy to make a decent profit if house prices crash by 30%.
yeah, if you can time markets, there's all sorts of ways to make money.
Me? I refused to buy when I got my first "real job" in '98, because clearly we were in a tech bubble and a real estate bubble.
I should have bought then. Even if I then sold at the depth of the crash in '08, I'd have still been ahead.
I mean, I'm not saying that the current bubble is similar; all I'm saying is that seeing that it's a bubble is easy; timing that bubble is /hard/
