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When I was last in LA, there was a lot of residential construction out in Riverside (where I had to go a few times), 60 miles or so east.  Land then no doubt was cheaper and more available.

I don't know how long ago that was, but Riverside is still considered "cheap" compared to LA County and Orange County. However, it's a lot more built up there than Lake Elsinore. I chose Lake Elsinore specifically because there are only two ways to go east from Orange County--one is the 91 freeway which makes me want to inject coronavirus directly into my eyeballs every time I have to drive it in traffic. The other is Hwy 74 (Ortega Highway) which is a winding mountain road that connects south OC to the inland counties, and right on the other side of the hills is Lake Elsinore. If I was trying to move inland I'd avoid the 91, so Lake Elsinore would be my only shot. However it's a long way south from any of the LA/Riverside County businesses, and a long way north from the San Diego metro, which is why it's so cheap. 

Looking at Zillow, it kinda looks like if you want 4bdr under $500K in Riverside, you are maxed out around 2000 sf. Still MUCH less expensive than here. Within Mission Viejo, I just looked up 4br places under $800K. There are only 5 listings in the entire city, and the lowest price is $749K. 

Yeah Riverside was so far out the land was still affordable so they had a building boom.  The houses there were not stratospherically priced at that time.

I was doing some work with a prof at UC-R.  I looked at some adds in eastern CA up north near the Sierra that had properties pretty reasonably priced, some nice cabins, 4 bdr, etc.

Sorry, but if the cost of living is very high in an area, the major way you are going to get people to work there is if you offer a higher wage unless there is some other factor that would make people work there. So the question would be why is the cost of living so high in California and one of the reasons I pointed out was they extreme Taxes, fees, levies, etc put on building a house by the local and state governments in California. And if you don't think that is a large factor in the high cost of living in California I don't know what to tell you.

My undergraduate degree is in Economics, so I am not stupid about it. I will grant I used a simplification of "1 Factor" in the reason for higher salaries in California, but I assumed you didn't want to read a 20 page dissertation on why salaries in general are high in California and would accept they fact the the cost of housing is a factor in it.

If you want (nevermind I don't want) we could get into a whole discussion of causation vs Correlation 

Hey, a fellow econ major!

Perhaps I read what you wrote incorrectly. Perhaps that post wasn't clear. But our friend Bwar said Ca pays lots of taxes, and your short answer was "It is your state's choice to overregulate, over tax." Evidence of a large tax base was presented, and you quickly wrote that it was strongly linked to government meddling. 

You used the word choice. I read that for what it was. And I thought about the alternative to that choice and if other places could apply the same choice, and it went against huge swaths of what I was told by all those econ professors. 

I appreciate an econ major, but as one, you had to expect someone might call that out unless you add a mighty qualification somewhere. It might be about a bubble, which is in the vein you're describing. I don't need 20 pages. But if you're gonna jump in that the government is making houses more expensive and that is big in raising salaries, yes, I'd ask for a little lip service to the level of demand/overall economic productivity that is driving it. Put it another way, a situation where pricy government meddling leads to a growth in even just perceived wealth goes against a lot of economic thinking. So just throwing it out unqualified might just get some pushback. 

The cost of real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area is a function of supply and demand. To the extent the government has played a role, it's primarily that local jurisdictions that approve land use spent the last fifty years preventing multi-unit housing, which has prevented the housing stock from growing at a rate commensurate with the job growth (the area is essentially geographically constrained with a ring of high hills (arguably mountains, but not relative to the Sierra Nevada), and only limited ingress/egress on highways and rail. More demand, static supply=more expensive. Although the abundance of good paying jobs impacts that, people here with high paying jobs make far less relative to the cost of living, than people with similar jobs elsewhere. Example: a huge cohort of former colleagues just moved (by company edict) to the beltway in Virginia/Maryland. They all moved into relative mansions compared to what they had here.

It's also led to a lot of really nice older houses getting broken into like 2-4 apartments. 

It's also interesting that some of those cities are letting in more high rises, which is overwhelming the infrastructure in other spots. It's a theoretical bubble, but the damn thing ain't popping, at least yet. 

Ugh. I wish. I love Paris.

I tell people it's my least favorite French city, which leaves many perplexed if they didn't pay attention.

I'm an electrical engineer. The ideal place for me to live, career-wise, is the Bay Area.

I don't have any desire to do so, because the cost of living so far outstrips the pay that I can command relative to other places. 

It's a theoretical bubble, but the damn thing ain't popping, at least yet.

I wonder to what extent the trends that were starting pre-COVID (remote work increasing more and more) will change this?

It doesn't necessarily take much. Often these things, driven by behavior at the margins, can create large differences. 

While there are undoubtedly network effects due to having people near each other, I think those are weakening due to technology and communication improvements.

One part of it, not even being true WFH, is setting up satellite offices in less expensive places. Even for jobs that can't really be done "from home", distributed teams are becoming more and more productive due to technology. Places like Boulder, CO aren't cheap. But they're a heck of a lot cheaper than Silicon Valley, they're in close proximity to an excellent engineering school (can attract graduates), and they offer many of the cultural advantages of places like California with close access to Denver. It's still a "magnet" city to much of the surrounding states, so you can draw regionally too. 

By distributing some teams regionally you can reduce some of the housing pressure on places like Silicon Valley. 

The other aspect is a partial-WFH scenario. Let's say I work for a company in Sunnyvale. If I have to go into the office 5 days a week, I'm going to consider my commute one of my key quality of life metrics. I'm not going to live in Scott's Valley and have to brave Hwy 17 over the hill every day. Nor am I going to live in Pleasanton and battle the 680/880 hell every day. I'd consider it not worth it, so I'd end up paying more, sacrificing quality of life in other ways (price, square footage), even though the housing markets in Scotts Valley or Pleasanton might be more to my liking. 

Now imagine I WFH 3-4 days a week and only come in to the office 1-2 days a week based on a certain meeting schedule when we try to get everyone into one place... Now I might take a different look at commute vs. housing tradeoffs, because the commute doesn't happen as often. Maybe I'll live in Scotts Valley or Pleasanton, or even Gilroy because I love the smell of garlic. 

Partial WFH would reduce some pressure on Bay Area housing costs because people would be more willing to live farther away from their job if they knew that they didn't have to fight that traffic every single day. 

Will a change to a more remote workforce be what pops that bubble?

I want to get out of here, honestly. For my career and specialty, ideal places career-wise would be the Bay Area, Seattle, Denver, Austin, RTP, and maybe the Boston area. 

• Bay Area: ideal for career, and I love the weather, but eliminated due to cost of living, taxation, etc. 
• Seattle: Also good for career, but it's blown up SO much over the last couple decades with Microsoft and Amazon that cost of living is horrible, and traffic is just outright absurd. 
• Denver: Potential to transfer with my current job (and current salary). Weather is great--although it gets cold in the winter it's not Midwest-level cold. Low humidity / few mosquitoes in the summer. Cost of living is pretty good, especially in some of the places I'd consider living. Culturally I love it--Denver is one of my favorite cities.
• Austin: Potential to transfer with my current job (and current salary). Weather is too hot for my tastes, but that's what air conditioning is for, right? Temperate winters. Good culturally, with great food/music/entertainment scene. Good cost of living, I think taxes are pretty moderate.
• RTP: I'd probably need a job change for this, but it's a good place for engineers. I'd be only 2-3 hrs from my best friend who moved to Charlotte. Weather is temperate, but a little humid and too many mosquitoes in the summer. Cost of living is manageable. 
• Boston/Northeast: No desire to live there whatsoever. It seems so culturally different from me to be foreign, and I can't even explain why. Weather sucks. 

So if I can get over the idea of going to court and trying to get the kids for the school year and send them to their mom's for the summers (which she'll fight tooth and nail because she can't afford to keep her lifestyle without my alimony/child support and without money she gets from the state that she'd lose if she didn't have the autistic 11 year old to care for), or if I can get over the idea of leaving and only having then for the summers, I very might become utee's neighbor.