Does $1.2M put you within walking distance of any of the FAANG headquarters? I'm looking at Mountain View, and it appears it's more like $3M to live close to Google. There isn't anything listed (Zillow) close to Infinite Loop, Cupertino. What is listed is $1.8M+.
Just curious, as I currently walk to work and that's a massive QOL issue for me. Sitting in traffic even 60 minutes/day would be awful.
Almost nobody walks to work at the Silicon Valley tech company campuses - they are mostly suburban office parks surrounded by parking, so you'd have to walk pretty far. Lots of people bike though. There are plenty of people that walk to work in SF itself, and walking to work in San Jose will probably become more popular as the various new office buildings around Diridon start to open.
If you highly value walking to work (and to other amenities) then NYC is a great option. $1.2M won't buy you a place, but you can certainly rent a great apartment within walking distance of the Google or Facebook NYC offices for significantly less than $72k/year.
I'm in Reston, VA (outside DC) currently. $500k for a decent townhouse and 1 mile to the town center. I can walk to Google's Reston office spaces, Walmart Labs is around the corner, and AWS (Herndon) is a short bike ride.
Interestingly, the suburban office campuses in this area are beginning to go away. Companies are moving to locations that are at least Metro accessible (Google's new office), or into urban areas (Amazon HQ2). Local zoning has changed to make that more palatable - just interesting to see the change in preferences since I started work in 1999.
Reston is nice! Didn't mean to imply that NYC is strictly better. It would be nice if there were even more private-sector tech jobs in Reston, although I fear that housing supply constraints would then push Fairfax and Loudoun county home prices up to NY/NJ levels.
I own already, that’d be great for my retirement. ;)
And to be honest, my ability to walk was dumb luck. If I change jobs, I’m just as likely to have to drive/Metro into Tyson’s as walk locally. But walking is a big incentive to stay put.
That was one fear with HQ2 coming to DC. With it on the other side of Fairfax, it’ll be a while before it impacts housing out here. But if Google expands its footprint, and with the Metro opening soon, we might see another bump soon.
It's an apartment condo. Worse yet, the land itself is leased from a different owner.
Start with the idea that you own the land and the building, and that you can walk around the building while staying on land that you own. Ideally you would also have mineral rights, the right to drill a well, and similar. You should have the right to bulldoze the building, paint it any color, add brick facing, add gargoyles, or install a triangular front door.
I rent a studio in NYC for $2500/mo ($30k/yr). It's within a 12 minute walk to Google and a 12 minute bike ride to FB. Also close are Amazon, Twitter, Spotify, Uber, etc.
You don't need to be at the company headquarters to make $500k a year. Not being at the headquarters is only a problem if you want to get past director level ($1.5 M/yr)
Just curious, as I currently walk to work and that's a massive QOL issue for me. Sitting in traffic even 60 minutes/day would be awful.