[quote=AN]Sorry to hear about your frustration. That’s my experience as well when I considered moving up there a few years back. The cost of living increase far out weight the income increase. Which is why I decided to stay. I said this in another thread awhile back. It seems like it’s worse now. A 2/2 in SD near work center can easily be had for $200-300k. So, you’re looking at cost of living that’s 2-3x more but income is only at most 25-30% higher (that’s also before tax).[/quote]
Yeah, it seems the market up here recovered much faster than down in SD (maybe 1-2 years sooner). I guess that’s what happens when jobs are plentiful. Based on my observations 2x-3x would seem a bit high. I would say a more fair comparison would be comparing a condo in UTC to a comparable condo in Redwood Shores, Foster City or Mountain View. If the former sold for $450k a similar condo in the latter would sell for around $600k (which is a little over 30% more) so the numbers are actually pretty close if income is 30% higher.
Similarly a 200-300k condo in Mira Mesa would be worth about $300-400k in somewhere like Milpitas.
