People Leaving Silicon Valley Due To Rocketing Housing Prices

Google HQ, Source: Google.com

Silicon Valley is a home to many start-ups and many global technology companies. But there is something wrong about the real estate market of Silicon Valley when even workers of tech giants like Facebook, Google, Reddit, and Uber are struggling to afford a piece of land in Silicon Valley.

Software engineers at Google, Twitter, and Facebook, for example, make roughly $200,000 a year. A typical home within a 20-minute commute from these companies’ headquarters costs around $1.2 million.

“When we say workers from Google or Apple would need to pay more than 30 percent of their income for a home nearby work, the reality is many of these workers wouldn’t be approved for a mortgage in the areas we analyzed,” Judd Schoenholtz, co-founder and CEO of Open Listings, told Business Insider

Pay-pal Co-Founder Peter Theil

Pay-pal Co-Founder Peter Theil is also relocating his home and personal investment firms to Los Angeles from San Francisco and scaling back his involvement in the tech industry, people familiar with his thinking said, marking a rupture between Silicon Valley and its most prominent conservative.



“We’re just not building enough housing. More correctly, cities are not permitting developers to build enough housing,” Downing said. “I think more affordable housing would have kept us in Silicon Valley.”

“None of us have a crystal ball,” Brennan said. “What it does suggest is that we really need to take seriously the things that are causing people to leave, housing prices again being a big driver.” 

— The San Francisco Chronicle/Tribune News Service.