Status of Houses for Sale in the Bay Area
It is claimed that the houses for sale in the Silicon Area or Bay Area Bay Area are unattainable for several middle income families. Even for the high paid tech workers of big companies, the housing here is not affordable. This is the very observation of a study conducted by a real estate startup Open Listings.
Owning a Silicon Valley home is said to be affordable by these so-called techies employees, more than those workers as teachers, service industry workers and other scores of workers. But it is said that home ownership by these prosperous techies may not be possible too nowadays because there is a shift signaling the more expensive costs again of the housing in the area.
A study revealed that more than 28 percent of the monthly salaries of the software engineers in these Bay Area big tech companies are to be fork over just so they can afford a home near enough to their office to be commuted by 20 minutes or so. A study for example would cite an average software engineer earning $188,000 a year in a tech company, would have to spend 33 percent of this salary in allocation of the median priced home she or he owns in Cupertino. Further, around 32 percent or 30 or 29 percent are allotted in their income for mortgage and tax payments by these software engineers in other high tech companies.
Getting a home loan is still difficult for these employees allotting the above mentioned percentages of their income. But still if ever they do get the loan, the amount is not the full amount of the price of the house, which would make them get more money to pay for the down payment. Saving up a standard 20 percent reserve for the down payment is still not enough especially for residents there who are already paying the high cost of rentals.
If this is difficult to have a home ownership in the area even for high tech workers, these local tech companies will have difficulty in recruiting and retaining employees then.
This concern is already acknowledged by these Bay Area tech companies, and so their executives supported a bill to make it easier to build near transit stations housing projects.
According to the leaders of these tech companies, this housing problem is a detriment to their ability to hire employees and of the growth of their firms. They further stated that this shortage in housing would lead to displacement, rent burdens, long commutes and harm in the environment, and these companies want to be involved in the solution.