[nostrademons]

For historical perspective - when I first moved out to the Bay Area in 2009, I paid $900/month for a master bedroom + private bath in a 3BR townhome, in Mountain View. My roommates paid $650/month.

If you've never been through a downturn in the Bay Area, you'll be amazed at how low prices can go (and also at how many people can become unemployed and move back to where they came from).

[withdavidli]

I've read Yelp reviews on a previous 2/2 in San Mateo. $2600 at that point, one review had a price listed a few years back (~2011), ended up being near 20% increase year over year.

Also heard of the U-Haul stories of where there was none left in the bay because everyone moved out. Don't think that's going to happen this time around. Think that start ups, or at least their employees will be acquired into bigger/more stable companies. Did that happen last time around? For example, did Yahoo, AOL, PayPal go on a buying spree?

[nostrademons]

20% YoY increases is about right in boom times. My rent increased by about $300/month/year from 2011-2014, then has been roughly stable since then. It was stable from 2009-2011 though.

In 2009, most of the startups were really small Web 2.0 outfits with 2-6 employees. However, the big companies were laying off people, and very few companies were hiring. I was initially going to apply to E-Bay/PayPal (I had a contact there), but the day that I was going to apply they announced they were laying off 5000 people, and I was like "Welp, that's not happening." My roommate worked at EMC and went through 3 rounds of layoffs, with about 3/4 of her department laid off. Was very lucky to end up at Google, which according to the news media was in hiring freeze (like everyone else) at the time; I had an awkward conversation with my recruiter where I was like "Are you actually hiring right now, or am I wasting my time?" What tended to happen was that the big companies cherry-picked the startup founders/employees that they really wanted and laid off all their low performers, and everyone who didn't have a track record of producing stuff was basically fucked.

I wasn't around for the dot-com bust in 2001 or the 1991 recession, but my understanding is that they were far worse in Silicon Valley, because the dot-coms had hired a large number of underskilled workers who literally had nobody willing to hire them when their employers went bust. I suspect 2017 will be worse than 2009 but better than 2001 in tech; unicorns collectively employ many more people (particularly low-skilled people) than Web 2.0 startups, but the crash this time is a slow-motion slowdown and doesn't seem to be affecting all companies, and so there's time for stronger companies to pick up the pieces of weaker ones.

[pault]

2009 and (allegedly) 2017 are nothing like 2001. Within one week, my office building (in Seattle) went from being completely full of startups to 50% occupancy. I distinctly remember one day walking around and seeing multiple people in their offices crying with their heads in their hands. The whole market basically disappeared overnight. I had only been working for a year at that point, so I was completely screwed. It was 3 years before I could get an entry level job in the industry again (at 2/3 of my previous salary). Anyway, what's this about a crash? I've been job hunting and every company I've interviewed with says they are having difficulty finding people.

[gnicholas]

Yep: first, rents crash in the East Bay and other outlying areas, and then as traffic diminishes people who were paying $$$ to rent in PA/MA/MV decide that it wouldn't be so bad to live farther out. Rents then drop everywhere, although home sale prices never really drop much in PA/MA—they just level off for a while.

[nostrademons]

Condo prices can drop - in 2009 there were 2BR condos available for about $400K, while the cheapest you could get in early 2015 were about $900K. You're right though, I didn't see single-family homes drop much even in 2009; they still went for more than a million.