It only gets harder if you happen to have kids and are looking for decent schools. Would be interesting to see an infographic like this with both rent and school quality included.
You are still broadly correct, though - people underweight the importance of a short commute.
Leave the bay area. I'm up in Yuba City now. Full time work from home bay area job.
The only draw back is that a ride to/from say, the Embarcadero can be fairly long at times, sometimes approaching 45 mins off peak. Yes, I know it's only supposed to be 35 mins, but from my experience it's always a bit longer.