Many of my friends in Southern California lament that they'll never be able to buy a home because in their minds houses _start_ at $750k. I bought a house for roughly one-third of that in a place that none of them would be caught dead so much as visiting. It's almost as though areas that are nice to live in are consequently in high demand which drives property values up... obviously NIMBYism, Prop 13, and a host of perverse incentives are also at play here but it doesn't change the fact that you gotta pay to play.
If anybody's interested I just found this handy map [1] that illustrates precisely what I'm talking about, and since it's adjusted for income it paints a decent picture of why things are the way that they are.
[1] https://abag.ca.gov/tools-resources/maps/map-month/how-large...