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Comment by notadoc | Hacker News Reader

> The record streak of rising Bay Area home prices started in April 2012, when the median sale price in the nine county region was $425,000, according to CoreLogic. Over the next seven years, median sale prices have more than doubled, hitting a peak of $935,000 last May.

Wild housing inflation is similar all along the west coast, with many areas doubling, tripling, or more in price over the past 6-7 years.

All the more reason for tech companies and startups to look at other parts of the country. The midwest, south, northeast, are all so much more affordable.

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When tech companies have work that does not need to be done in the SF/NYC/SEA, they go straight to India, Eastern Europe, and (increasingly) Latin America. There is no role for mid-priced US cities.

Which makes sense. They are trying to maximize human capital : cost ratio. Ordinary American cities are good at neither. You go for the highest human capital or the lowest cost. And in some dirt cheap places you can still find a bunch of underemployed people with STEM education.

If Ordinary American City is Stockton or Fresno, sure, but if they are Austin, Dallas, Boston, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, DC. I beg to disagree, now start-up scene perhaps has limited destinations. Tech sector is thriving in every major metro in US.

Somebody needs to tell that to Austin, Texas, they don't seem to have gotten the message. Denver/Boulder too, though housing there is getting pretty high as well.

Even if it seems high, you get a lot more for the money.

$1700 will get you a luxury 1bd (600+sqft), new/recent construction, a pool, bbqs, "sky lounge", 5-20 minute walk to work, and so on.

From what I can tell, it takes more than that just to get into a shitty box in SF.

True but you’re going to take a 30-40% paycut all to reduce your rent by $1000-$1500/mo. Rent goes down but a car and an xBox cost the same everywhere.

We are exploring moving a bunch of engineering to Mexico. The difficulty and expense in recruiting engineering talent in the bay is insane. So far we've found really great engineers through a company called Wizeline in Mexico and are strongly considering expanding our footprint there.

> All the more reason for tech companies and startups to look at other parts of the country. The midwest, south, northeast, are all so much more affordable.

They won't stay that way if tech companies offer a lot of jobs there.

That reminds me of the housing boom from 2003-2008. House values doubled or tripled in many areas. Then the financial crisis put a hurt on the housing industry. I can't help but feel that necessities like housing, food, transportation, etc shouldn't be speculation tools. Frankly, I think the housing, food, transportation, etc should decline in value, but that's another discussion altogether.

The "northeast" isn't much more affordable. I guess it depends on where in the northeast as the northeast is a big region, but housing values near NYC, Boston and even philadelphia has increased dramatically in the past 10 years.

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