People don't seem to get this. Rising housing prices really don't help anyone unless you plan on using it as an ATM. If you sell, you just pay more at the next place anyway. Meanwhile taxes, insurance, etc just increase.
One more thing... There is a lot of money here due to the high tech. Jobs pay more, often much more. Companies may pay a differential if you work here, and may ask you to take a cut if you relocate to a remote location like Oregon.
Of course, the house prices are wack no matter how you slice it. I hear you are shopping Atherton or Blackhawk? Wow!
Housing price is a reflection of the overall financial market and demand / supply. It is not a "I want it higher or I want it lower" that can just change it.
When you have an asset that cannot be easily mass produced (land limited), you will have finite supply, and competition to increase the price for people who want it. The demand for CA is not really weather (although it is nice), the demand is the jobs here. The reason jobs here pay more is because that's the kind of jobs that will generate value much higher than other jobs elsewhere (software, chips, cloud data center related, etc).
Can these companies move elsewhere because of cost of living? Yes, but there's always a competition between multiple things:
1) The momentum started here with Moffet Airfield and Jousha Hendy Iron Works. The military industrial complex was here developing military use tech.
2) The decline of Boston due to non-compete clause and competition started moving here to pouch competitors employee with higher pay. (This is one argument on why US should allow foreign talents instead of protecting US citizens, because all it takes is another developed nation say, Singapore, to pay through the nose to develop another top tech hub, once that decline started it is hard to get back up).
3) The VC is here, they have been again and again started almost all of our recent big tech companies here other than the ones in Seattle (Amazon and Microsoft). These guys will likely do different business in Boston or NYC where the focus is more about old money investing instead of high risk high return tech start up. The culture here supports that much better than anywhere else on earth.
4) Tech is a heavy in performance multiplier business so an employee making $400k can be 10x more productive than another employee making $150k. Companies here will pay for it, but less likely in say, Montana. Those talents got recruited here to those pay and after they do the math they are still better off moving here. This is why I always encourage people do their own math to decide whether to stay in CA or not. If you get what you want here stay, and if you don't, it is totally ok to cash out and move to Dallas for a comfortable life. There's something for everyone in life and you are not limited to here.
BTW high home price helps existing owners who bought long ago. They can always cash out and move somewhere cheaper once they retire and just enjoy life. This is why many renter protection laws almost always skirt around single family homes and focus on older apartments only. If you make an enemy of typical home owner on their net worth your bill will never see the light of days.
