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Comment by alain94040 | Hacker News Reader

housing in SF is well over a million now, and if you're hoping to have kids and raise a family

Why isn't a nice condo in Mountain View for $700K good enough? 1,300 sq.ft is plenty of space to live. For instance http://www.mlslistings.com/property/ml81517677/1945-mount-ve...

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It's best to go by sales price rather than asking price, since very low pricing to start bidding wars is a common real estate strategy in the bay area.

I went to zillow and looked up actual sales prices for condos/townhouses in mountain view for the last six months, with more than 1,250 square feet of living space.

From my search of actual sales prices rather than listing prices, the cost of a 1,250+ sq ft condo in Mountain View ranges from $910,000 to $1.08 million.

Because you can get a nice house with almost 2000 sq. ft. in Texas for under $300k [0]. We're not talking about somewhere out in the country or in some distant exurb, either: I'm talking about housing prices I just looked up in a nice neighborhood within the City of Dallas. It's a safe neighborhood with good schools (speaking from personal experience: I grew up in that exact neighborhood).

Also, I currently rent a 1500 sq. ft. townhouse in Dallas for $1220/month. There's no way I'd be able to get anything nearly that nice in the Bay Area.

[0] http://www.dallasrealestate-homes.com/Dallas%20Subdivisions/...

Fellow Dallas resident as well. Everyone here in Uptown keeps complaining about rent increasing but these HN threads help me realize how good we have it. The job market is extremely hot as well.

Actually, I live in Far North Dallas. Rents in Uptown are too rich for my blood.

I get all the benefits of living in a suburb (low rent and lots of space), but I can still walk to Addison Circle when I want to go out and have fun. It's the best of both worlds to me.

Because you can get a 1300 sq foot condo for 70k (or less!) in most of the country. If you aren't among the elite of financial means (we're talking 1% wealth) SF is a losing proposition.

Whoa wait. The top 1% makes >$400K/yr. You're saying you can't afford a $700K condo on a $150K+/yr programmer salary?

How comes it's always the "other guy" that's the problem?

Pretty much nothing in Mountain View goes for "asking price". I strongly bet that place will go for near $1M. The Zestimate (http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1945-Mount-Vernon-Ct-APT-1...) is $800k, and zillow estimates for that area are notoriously low.

Plus a $500 monthly HOA fee...

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