Reasons to buy a home in Silicon Valley

Big Tech

1. Home prices in silicon valley track Nasdaq - basket of tech stocks 
2. Silicon valley is headquarters of top S&P500 companies - Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Paypal
3. As tech companies become winner take all market leaders, housing seems to be a great diversification from company specific equity.
4. Google, Facebook, Apple pay hefty refreshers. Any engineer who has worked in these companies for 2-3 years can come up with a 200k downpayment in the bay area, which is needed to get a starter 1 million condo. If you are not working in FAANG(Facebook, Apple, Amazing, Netflix, Google), bay area real estate is your only way to play Faang equity refreshers. For context, Facebook E5 engineers make 120k and Google E5 engineers make 100k refreshers every year. An Engineering Manager in these companies in bay area easily makes north of 600k which is higher than Vice Presidents/Directors in many fortune 500 companies in New York, Toronto, London. All these folks buy a home where they live in, ie in the bay area. 
5. Low interest rates(<=3%) in the last 10 years has propelled asset prices

Startup Ecosystem

1. Silicon valley is the start up capital of the world. Startup IPOs continue to mint new millionaires in the area who buy homes. For eg : Uber, Lyft IPOs of 2019 pumped up bay area housing prices. Bay area startup IPOs are the greatest millionaire generating machine today. 
2. Top venture capital funds are all located in Sand Hill Road, Palo Alto. Easier to raise funding in the bay area. Andresson Horowitz, Benchmark, Sequoia Capital are all based our of Bay Area. 
3. More IPOs produce more founders, more capital, that keeps this innovation engine going. 
4. Startup talent : given all the startups and big tech, bay area has an ecosystem of startup talent and knowhow. 
5. Biotech hub : South San Francisco is the home of biotech. Biotech is going to be the next big disruption. 

China 

Chinese all cash buyers propel prices in the bay area.

1. Limit on owning home in China for more than 70 years
2. Rich Chinese buyers buy bay area property  
3. Chinese kids who study in US often come to bay area and buy houses with all cash down payments from payments
4. Chinese people have generated enormous wealth in the last 2 decades with companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu having big IPOs. Bay area real estate is a great diversification play. 

Covid

This is a surprise one. 

1. San Francisco is one of the few top cities worldwide which has truly flattened the Covid curve. Also San Francisco is home to UCSF hospital and Chan Zuckerberg hospital. UCSF ranks among the top 10 medical units in USA. 
2. Covid will accelerate the adoption of tech worldwide. Tech companies will win and their stock prices already reflect that. Increased tech stock prices will continue to support bay area home prices
3. Federal reserve money printer will continue to print dollars. These dollars will have a trickle down to real assets and asset price inflation will continue as interest rates continue to be at historic lows. Due to Covid, there will be unprecedented economic job losses and  Fed will continue to support low interest rates thus creating another mega asset price bubble.  
4. Chinese economy will come out pretty much unaffected. Any softness in bay area home prices, will be great opportunity for all cash Chinese buyers to gobble up. 
5. If you are too worried about remote work affecting home prices, look at cities like Wellington, Vancouver, Melbourne who never had top tech jobs to support sky high real estate prices. 

Cities

1. Bay area has two major cities : San Francisco and San Jose 
2. Three International Airports : San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland
3. Cities have major network effects. Think about New York City, Mumbai, London, Vancouver, Toronto. Bay area home prices are cheap compared to these cities given high per capita income. Bay area has the lowest barrier to entry compared to these cities because there are enough jobs available who can pay you to support the home prices.
4. Public transport connectivity through Bart and Caltrain between SF and SJ

Weather and Natural Beauty

1. Last but not the least, amazing weather. You get what you pay for. You are not holed by half the year due to snow or rain here. 
2. You have Yosemite, Tahoe, Sequoia, Lassen Volcanic national parks within 3-4 hours driving distance
3. You have the beautiful beaches and the pacific coastline - the scenic CA-1 drive filled with amazing natural hikes

Education 

1. Two top universities : Stanford and Berkeley are located in the bay area. They attract top talent from all over the world. Top professors want to teach in these universities because of the bay area living
2. University of California : The UC system has top colleges like UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UC Los Angeles. Cash rich foreign parents often buy homes to establish residency for their teens so that they can get admitted to UC system as local on lower fees. 
3. Top private schools where kids of tech professionals go to : Stratford, Harker
4. High property prices support high public school funding. Top public schools : Palo Alto High, Mission San Jose. 
5. Good supporting universities : University of San Francisco(Top 10 hospital in the country), UCSF, SJSU

If you have read till here, you can also break into Bay Area big tech : read my Engineering Management blog here, articles free of management jargon, real insights that will help you advance your career.