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Comment by perryh2 | Hacker News Reader

You can easily rent a bedroom in an older house or multi-room apartment for around $1000-1200 in Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale though. A few of my coworkers do this.

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Ah yes, the worlds best and brightest, in the worlds technology hot bed, blamed for gentrification, told we are over paid, told our skills are in such demand that special worker visa systems are in place to supplement the supply but not only can they not afford a home, they can't afford rent by themselves.

Someone is making money in SV to live alone and buy homes but it isn't the engineers.

some engineers most certainly do. I'd say anyone who makes over 200K can afford to live here. Can a single person making 150K a year afford to live in Santa Clara County? I'd say for sure.

So basically only a very small outlier population (those who make over $200K) can actually afford to live in the area.

I'd say (depending on an individual's exact circumstances) a high 5/low 6 figure salary is the minimum salary for a single person to be able to rent a halfway decent apartment someplace in the Bay.

Your vastly overstating things. 2,700 per month was doable @85k. @150K you could afford 6K per month.

I'm just responding to the sentiment that even engineers have to resort to renting rooms from people. Depending on living expenses and the ability to save, lots of engineers can afford to live decently in SV. 90k isn't going to buy you a house in Palo Alto, but you can afford to live in SJ/SV/SC/etc with that.

> @150K you could afford 6K per month.

But why would I do that to myself?

I recently moved from the Bay Area to get rid of this-as you get older, interviewing with people (often for fucking culture fit) for the privilege of sharing a bedroom gets really, really old (I just want to pay rent and mind my own business). There's something to be said about living as an adult and having your own place.

Not to beat a dead horse, but that's hard to do with a family. So by the time you're late 20s to mid 30s and have a stable long term relationship and possibly kids, you're looking at those $2900/mo prices.

So, same price? (2400 for two bedrooms, add a premium for not being 2 roms in a 4-rom flat)?

My wife and I and our cats won't fit our lives into a bedroom very well.

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