For example, I looked at comparables for my current home in a recent job hunt. My reasonable sized (1700 sq ft) house in a good area of Michigan (western Wayne county, bordering Washtenaw and Ann Arbor) is about $250k if we sold today. As far as I could tell, this would not be the down payment on a roughly similar house in comparable neighborhoods in the Bay Area.
[added]
When I was looking up the mortgage costs to help in my negotiations, it was looking close to $100k/year in payments (6500-8500/month). Which meant, when I looked at that in terms of after tax income, we didn't have much money for things like food, sending kid to college, cheap clothing .... stuff we might like to do like going to movies ...
Yeah not great. The biggest issue is that for $1M you're looking at a long commute. Maybe you have a short commute to your current employer, but once you get married or change jobs, someone has to drive from SJ to SF or Pleasanton to Palo Alto.
For example, I looked at comparables for my current home in a recent job hunt. My reasonable sized (1700 sq ft) house in a good area of Michigan (western Wayne county, bordering Washtenaw and Ann Arbor) is about $250k if we sold today. As far as I could tell, this would not be the down payment on a roughly similar house in comparable neighborhoods in the Bay Area.
[added]
When I was looking up the mortgage costs to help in my negotiations, it was looking close to $100k/year in payments (6500-8500/month). Which meant, when I looked at that in terms of after tax income, we didn't have much money for things like food, sending kid to college, cheap clothing .... stuff we might like to do like going to movies ...
So, yeah ... there's that ...