A Salesforce PM friend asked me last week if she should buy or keep renting in the Bay Area.
The real question turned out to be different: What am I actually building?
Renting in the Mission for eight years, now paying about $3,800/month for a one-bedroom. RSUs stacking. And that quiet voice at night: “Did I miss the window?”
We didn’t start with Zillow.
We looked at three things:
- What it actually costs her to live (after tax, not the sticker price online)
- How much of her financial life was already tied to one company (salary + stock)
- Whether she could hold a home for 7+ years without stress
Here’s where it got real
Buying at her max budget would have tied her even tighter to her job. Same company → paycheck, stock, and future mortgage.
That’s not diversification. That’s doubling down.
So the answer wasn’t “buy now” or “wait.”
It was: buy something you can afford on one income. Not the version of you after your next promotion.
For her, that meant a smaller place in the city or Peninsula — see what's realistic in San Carlos, Belmont, or Redwood City, somewhere with an easy commute and something stable, not stretched.
Because if your job feels uncertain, your mortgage shouldn’t be.
She left with a 90-day plan. Not a listing.
I’m seeing this pattern a lot, and I feel it deeply because I was exactly where she was five years ago.
People in tech don’t need more data. They need help making decisions they can live with. The cap table and the cap rate. The runway and the down payment. Both at once.
So if any of this sounds like a conversation you’ve been having with yourself — sitting on RSUs and not sure if owning makes sense, renting for years and wondering if you missed your chance, holding too much of one company’s stock and feeling uneasy about it — send me a note. No pitch.
Same operator mindset. New product.
