Those exact same houses from the 70s (even from the 50s, in fact) are selling for seven figures near me. That's about 20x the median household income in my city.
That's what blows me away about San Francisco. Not only are you paying 10x ($1.5M) what most people in the US pay for a house ($150K), you're getting a lot less house at the same time.
We're talking going from ~2000 sq. ft. to ~1100 sq. ft., old construction, no insulation, etc.
If you really wanted to make a comparison between equal houses, the difference is more like 20x ($3M for a similar house in the Bay Area).
If you're comparing NYC to St. Louis and desire a 60th floor apartment in a high rise, then the COL difference is infinity or mu or NAN or something. You simply can't make the comparison.
The same is true when comparing the average detached home in the Midwest to San Francisco. For most people, the answer to, "how much more would I have to make to buy the same house out there?" is "it doesn't matter, because you'll never make that much."
