Back in the late '80s at my job with a SoCal defense contractor, I can remember talking to a colleague who was saying how his home that he had just bought for $200K was going to be worth $2M by the early 00s. I said that before it got to that ridiculous point, folks deciding whether to move to this locale would see how ridiculous the housing prices were, and decide no F-ing way, which would reduce demand enough to keep the prices lower than his goal. His home now might be worth $600K, which is still good, but it's at that level where folks moving in can barely put up with the high costs of housing. (I couldn't put up with it back then, and I moved away soon thereafter to a normal housing market.) I suppose that folks in the Bay Area got a little closer, but at the price levels now, there is just not going to be much appreciation; at some point, the employers who need to pay well to attract folks to live in such expensive areas are going to say WTF, and move to a cheaper area (like Amazon is doing).