The perennially expensive City by the Bay appears to have gotten so pricey that its lost its luster for a few Silicon Valley techies who are bidding the city’s bloated housing prices farewell.
Median rent prices in San Francisco continue their creep well past the $4,400 a month mark, according to data from Zillow.com. So some of the city dwellers are heading out to other, smaller (and cheaper) technology hubs like Seattle, Phoenix, and Portland, Bloomberg reports.
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And it isn’t just the homes that are getting too expensive in the Bay Area. Office space in San Francisco recently beat out New York City’s prices, at around $72.26 a square foot in the fourth quarter last year.
Now big-name tech firms like Twitter, Dropbox, and Zenefits are all offering subleases on some of their own San Francisco office space, in a bid to boost their own balance sheets as they consolidate.
Zillow Explains Why Rent Is So High:
Of course, the city is not even the worst offender when it comes to housing prices in Silicon Valley. In nearby Menlo Park, some firefighters are starting to cash in on monthly housing stipends that can top out at $2,000, an effort to lure the civil servants to live a little closer to work.
But while rising prices have some tech employees opting-out of town in San Francisco, tech sector job growth in the city is not coming to a halt. Technology employment there grew at about 5% year-over-year last year, Bloomberg notes, while the newer tech spots like Portland and Seattle saw job growth accelerate at slightly better rates, both over 7.5%.
Just remember, if you do still live in San Francisco, you can always forgo the astronomical rent prices and live in a box, which will only set you back about $500 a month.
