If there’s anything to make you reevaluate living in America’s tech hub, it’s this map from NeighborhoodX comparing Bay Area housing prices to those in the world’s most beautiful, exotic locales.
The yet-to-launch real-estate service—partly run by Constantine Valhouli, the guy who mapped New York’s musical references—lined up market rates for two-bedrooms in San Francisco and Oakland with neighborhoods in San Sebastian, Cannes, St. John’s, Antigua, and elsewhere. For what it costs to live in North Beach, for example, you could afford a fancy white-stone cave on an Aegean archipelago. NeighborhoodX lays out the dismal facts:
At $1,098 per square foot, North Beach compares to the Oia neighborhood of the island of Santorini in Greece ($1,017/sq.ft.). Considered one of the most beautiful islands in the world, many of the cliffside houses are built into the caves themselves, and are connected by steep, winding staircases. Films shot here include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
To rub it in, the site includes National Geographic-quality pictures of these paradises. Here’s Oia:
And this is one of those caves—you likely won’t find any bedbugs here:
The list goes on: Planting down in Dolores Park is equivalent to relocating to the tony Leblon district in Rio de Janeiro ($1,137 per square foot).
The far-south Crocker-Amazon neighborhood is as expensive as Ciutat Vella in Barcelona ($509 per square foot), which has “Roman foundations, medieval buildings, and the atmospheric Gothic Quarter—and the otherworldly architecture of [Antoni] Gaudi throughout the city.”
And fast-gentrifying West Oakland has rates roughly equal to Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos ($359 per square foot), where celebrity sightings have included “Danny DeVito, Derek Jeter, and Cedric the Entertainer.”
Explore the map and weep. Here’s hoping that when the tech bubble inevitably bursts, the site will make another one comparing real-estate prices to the crummiest places on the planet, like perhaps this decrepit oil rig in the middle of the sea.
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