"Just" buying and selling also has a higher bar now than ever before -- Median sales prices are around $1.5M for peninsula / SF locations. Even on extremely generous tech salaries, it'll take some time to build up enough savings to get a loan.
I completely agree, my point though is if you are legit rich, even for the bay area, it makes no sense to ever rent. someone with a net worth upwards of 20M isn't going to save any money renting even if they stay a paltry 5 years (though covid and WFH might change things of course, but this pattern has held up decently for the past couple decades).
