[tlb]

You can find this in many places around the Bay Area outside SF. I have 5 acres and keep chickens in Woodside, and it's 15-20 minutes drive to several big tech companies in Palo Alto and Redwood City. Some people keep horses here.

[burfog]

Nice, but I don't see how it generally works. The highest levels of pay in the article was $950,000. Wikipedia says that in Woodside "The median household income in the town is $212,917, and the median family income is $246,042."

Double those pay numbers to determine the price of a house that a person can afford... and it is not looking good. I looked around on www.trulia.com a bit. An empty lot of questionable geological status goes for $1,500,000. A small empty lot far from the tech companies goes for $500,000. Most of the actual homes go for millions.

So I guess yeah, it could work for the experienced person earning $950,000 per year at Facebook. That would allow building $500,000 of house on the $1,500,000 empty lot, assuming you can solve the geological issues and get the permits redone.

That is the top pay listed though. It's the top level at the top company.

[joshuamorton]

Why on Earth do you think you need to make 950k/year to afford a million dollar home?

The mortgage on a 2 million dollar loan (which would be a 2.4 or 2.5 million dollar home) is 10k/mo or 120k/year, which is solidly affordable on a 400k income.

I know of 5 and 6 bedroom houses than can be gotten for that much in Palo Alto and Cupertino.

[hdhdhdd]

This is assuming you never lose a job or can get a new one to replace current one easily. When market downturns, those equity based salaries will go heavily discounted, and you might not be able to afford mortgage anymore.

People overestimate their max credit payments... And financial system incentivizes that (why wouldn't you borrow from 401k? It's just your retirement savings)

[joshuamorton]

Which are great reasons to be responsible and run a large emergency fund, or be responsible and make 450k combined before buying the house. But not reasons to make 900k.

[syedkarim]

5 acres that is 15 minutes from Palo Alto/Mountain View? How much does that cost?

[TulliusCicero]

Yeah seriously. Just the land for a regular house lot can easily be over a million dollars in the area, and 1 acre can hold like six of those. So five acres...like thirty million dollars? Unless there's some weird situation I've never heard of.

[smm2000]

5 acres in area where minimum lot is 5 acres is much cheaper than in area where minimum is 5k sq ft. In most areas you can’t subdivide lot - that’s the reason houses in Atherton on huge lots are so cheap (relatively).

[overcast]

The land is what you're generally paying for in any real estate deal. It doesn't cost millions to build these houses, but the land is valued as such because it's finite.

[opportune]

Sure, if you have $Xmm you can spend on land or can afford the mortgage on it