There is very little affordable space in SF, cheapest homes in the mid-500k range but not the best neighborhoods. Better neighborhoods offer ordinary looking homes that go for $1mil and up (crazy). The farther out you go from SF to the east, the cheaper it is. As you said, dumps start at 500k near the bay, but they do drop lower to the east. Problem is the traffic commute is horrible. Best thing is to buy farther out along a BART corridor, and commute via train. They are extending BART down east bay to SJ, so those 500k dumps will get more expensive in a few years. Only thing keeping me here is family; we babysit grandchildren and if my daughter would move out of SF then so would we. She rents and is also a tech worker making a great income so it’s hard for her to leave that behind.
She rents..hmmm. She could probably still make a great income and be able to buy a house in Seattle. I’m not saying Seattle/Bellevue is cheap but it as crazy as SF. Plus WA has no income tax.
You’d have to adjust to the rain however but we do have the Seahawks to make it all better. :-))