[ryandrake]

Not to nit-pick, but I'm curious about how a $1MM starter home is attainable for an engineer. For someone making let's say around $100,000/yr, your mortgage payment (assuming 4.5% is $5,000) is going to be at least 50% of your gross salary. That's a lot of sacrifice. The common formula is that you really don't want your total mortgage payment to exceed 28% of your gross income:

$5,000 * 12 / 0.28 = ~ $214,000/yr salary

I could see that for a very, very senior and specialized engineer working at one of a handful of companies, but that's probably double the norm in the 'Valley for your average 5-10 year experienced engineer.

Not to mention having to have $200,000 in cash for a down payment sitting around. Even if you saved as much as $1,000 a month, it would take you over 16 years to build up such a down payment--for a STARTER home!

[stephencanon]

After including annual bonuses, ~214k is perfectly reasonable (on the low side if anything) for a good engineer with 5-10 years experience at google/facebook/apple/etc. Add in a second income and its easily feasible without bonuses. Million-dollar starter homes are obscene, but people actually do buy them.

[iyulaev]

2 engineers at 100k/yr gets you right to the figure you mentioned. $200K down payment is rough but not nearly impossible given the figure in the first sentence and willingness to maintain a college-ish lifestyle for a few years.

[wpietri]

The norm is that both parents work, which changes the math substantially.

[cmccabe]

It's attainable if you bet on the right startup and make it. Or if you bought it years ago. California doesn't re-asses property taxes unless you sell your property, which means that many people are paying tiny amounts of property tax on incredibly expensive homes. They just increase it by a small (less than inflation) amount per year, so effectively you pay less and less tax each year.

Key insight: old people vote.