The wealth that has been created here since the last market crash has been enormous. Given the limited amount of land, the cost for RE has been driven incredibly high. As a result, the cost of everything is also way up.
I'm sure the congestion on 101, the BART, and the bridges is worse than it has ever been.
In the past cycles, people left the city because of costs and moved to the peninsula. Now even the peninsula is full of people hoping to get their kids into schools that are under-funded and have waiting lists.
I cannot predict when that river of wealth will run dry, but I think the companies that benefit from this can no longer afford to fund housing, health, etc. for every single employee they have.
Where are they going to go? They are going to go somewhere else.
It makes sense given that one of the implications of building and amazing global communication network is... that you don't have to be in a certain place in order to participate on it :-)
Also, don't get me started on the construction here in the Bay Area vs. some of the amazing craftsmanship like the one seen in the article.
I think we are going to see a lot more articles like this.
Oh, one other thing. One of the the reasons all these companies started here was because it was relatively cheap! For example, Apple picked Cupertino because everything further north was 'expensive'. Imagine that!
"Also, don't get me started on the construction here in the Bay Area vs. some of the amazing craftsmanship like the one seen in the article."
Drive around Menlo Park south of Santa Cruz Ave and west of El Camino and you'll see many beautiful houses with craftsmanship at least as high quality. This is new construction but with a traditional design, interspersed with 1950s ranchers that haven't yet been torn down. Of course you may be paying $1,000+ a square foot to build these new custom homes, so your 3,000 sq. ft home is closer to $5M including land.
So only an order of magnitude more than these "New Silicon Cities..."
I'm sure the congestion on 101, the BART, and the bridges is worse than it has ever been.
In the past cycles, people left the city because of costs and moved to the peninsula. Now even the peninsula is full of people hoping to get their kids into schools that are under-funded and have waiting lists.
I cannot predict when that river of wealth will run dry, but I think the companies that benefit from this can no longer afford to fund housing, health, etc. for every single employee they have.
Where are they going to go? They are going to go somewhere else.
It makes sense given that one of the implications of building and amazing global communication network is... that you don't have to be in a certain place in order to participate on it :-)
Also, don't get me started on the construction here in the Bay Area vs. some of the amazing craftsmanship like the one seen in the article.
I think we are going to see a lot more articles like this.
Oh, one other thing. One of the the reasons all these companies started here was because it was relatively cheap! For example, Apple picked Cupertino because everything further north was 'expensive'. Imagine that!