Thanks for writing :)

I suppose the issue here is that the "wait and save" approach does not always have success, especially in the Bay Area.

The reason for that is because there is a finite number of houses, and an excessive number of bidders. These bidders use loans and leverage (other people's money) to pay a higher price than they normally would be able to afford.

Thus, waiting and saving is tougher.

Of course this begs the question, why not just avoid the Bay Area?

Unfortunately, most of the tech jobs are there. Other cities don't have the job capacity, despite having plenty of houses.

So, finally, there really only are 33m people on this Earth who can afford to pay cash for a home in the Bay Area.

The rest have to leverage, and thus, are affected by identity theft and credit scores.