With median home prices still hovering near $1.8M, the rent-vs-buy debate here isn't academic — it's existential. Are renters deluding themselves by staying, or is ownership in this market simply an outdated milestone worth letting go?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentLived here 31 years. Bought in 2003 for $540k, which everyone at the time called insane. My neighbors thought I was throwing money away. That house is worth $2.1M now. I'm not saying timing is everything — I'm saying the people who told me to just rent and invest the difference are still renting and definitely not investing the difference.
The framing of this question is kind of offensive honestly. "Get out" — as if Mountain View only deserves people wealthy enough to buy property here. I'm a teacher at Crittenden Middle. I grew up on Escuela Ave. My students' families are HERE. The community doesn't evaporate just because we rent. Ownership has never been the price of belonging somewhere.
Nobody ever asks whether the people who "got out" actually came back when life happened — aging parents, a kid with a specialist doctor at Stanford, a job that won't let you go remote anymore. My wife and I left for Portland in 2018 super confidently. We were back in 2022. Renting again on Shoreline. Sometimes geography isn't a choice you make once and stick with. Sometimes the Bay Area is just where your life is. I've made peace with probably never owning here and I'm not ashamed of that.
get out. i said it. i moved to Sacramento in 2021 and my quality of life went up like 400%. yes i miss the weather. yes i miss being 10 minutes from Google campus. but i own a 4 bedroom house and my mortgage is less than what i paid for a one bedroom on Castro St. some of you are staying out of stubbornness not logic
Can someone correct the person above me? Measure V only applies to buildings built before 1995 and even then there are exemptions. Single family homes are completely exempt under Costa-Hawkins. A lot of MV renters have zero protection and are one landlord decision away from a brutal rent hike or an Ellis Act eviction. Please don't let people think they're safe when they might not be.
Hot take nobody wants to hear: renting in MV is actually financially smarter right now if you're disciplined. At $1.8M you're looking at a $9,000+ monthly mortgage with 20% down. Comparable rent is maybe $4,200 for a 2BR. That $4,800 monthly difference invested in index funds at historical market returns over 20 years beats the housing appreciation. I've run the numbers six ways to Sunday. The math works. What doesn't work is human psychology — people spend that difference on Teslas and Coupa Cafe.
My parents bought on Crestview Drive in 1987 for something like $210,000 and thought THAT was a stretch. I remember them stressing about it. Now that same house is the family's entire retirement plan basically. Every generation thinks the prices are finally too high to make sense and every generation that buys anyway ends up fine. I don't know if that pattern holds forever but it's held for 40 years in this town.
just moved here from Austin for a job at a certain large tech company i wont name. the number of coworkers who genuinely cannot tell me where their rent money goes every month blows my mind. six figure salaries, zero savings, because everything here is priced for the absolute top of the market. like even the TARGET feels expensive. i respect this city but i am treating my time here as a two year savings sprint and then i am absolutely leaving before i get too comfortable
Actually rents in Mountain View are controlled by Measure V so landlords can only raise rent like 2% per year which means long-term renters here are actually in a GREAT position compared to other cities. My landlord literally cannot price me out as long as I don't move. People don't talk about this enough when they do the rent vs buy math.
Can you be a genuinely good person without any religion at all?
110 comments
Is it wrong to choose not to have children just because you don't want to?
110 comments
Would you still eat meat if you had to kill the animal yourself?
109 comments
Are dating apps genuinely harder for men or for women?
108 comments