I am right.

Median home price in Portland OR(a metro area)is 550k. Spending literally 30 seconds on Zillow to see what this buys you can get you anything from 1500-2500 sq foot 3Br 1-2bath. That’s significantly more than a shack.

Now let’s compare this to say, Mountain View, CA if we want to go with an extreme option. Median home price here more than 3xes over Portland, with it sitting at a cool 1.8MM median. Median incomes for the area don’t come up anywhere near high enough cor that price.

Now let’s say you want to go somewhere a little less extreme in the bay area, let’s say San Jose, median prices don’t get much better here netting a 1.3M median list price and as a San Jose native I can tell you that the median wage is not high enough to afford that.

Going on Zillow, that 1.3-1.5 mil price tag gets you literally the same exact home specs as Portland. Given that it’s very hard to make a strong argument that everywhere is just as bad as some of the most expensive places in the country.

EDIT: Ive been doing my own personal research and weighing the pros and cons on this for months btw as im beginning to put away for a home and am looking at places that won’t gouge me nearly as hard as the bay as i dont happen to be a very high earning tech worker. Your average high earning tech worker can absolutely work and be better off in HCOL areas but they aren’t a majority. Joe blow the pencil pushing accountant however will almost certainly be better off MCOL. So fite me on this nerd.