Apple workers' homes are worth more than yours

An Apple a day keeps the doctor away, goes the old saying. But the technology giant is far beyond the point: Apple sold an average of 818,681 iPhones every day in the final quarter of 2014. The result? Doctors are some of the few people who could afford to buy their houses, as their property prices skyrocket.

Figures from Zillow reveal just how much the technology boom has distorted the housing market in Silicon Valley.

The average Apple worker now lives in a home that is more than five times more valuable than the average US home. That gap has widened in the last five years: in 2010, the average Apple worker's home was worth three times as much as a typical US home.

Indeed, Bay Area home values are soaring, driven by a flood of well-paying jobs at tech companies. Even within Silicon Valley, though, Zillow's analysis of census data found that home-value appreciation for workers at Apple, Facebook and Google have outpaced that of their neighbors.

"This analysis highlights the widening wealth gap between tech company employees and other US workers – a gap that is putting increasing pressure on housing markets where tech companies are booming," said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell.

The typical worker at Apple's Cupertino, Calif. headquarters lives in a home that is worth about $1.14 million, about $241,000 (27 per cent) more than the median home in the already-pricey San Jose metro area and $380,000 (50 per cent) above the median home value in the San Francisco metro area.

Workers at Google and Facebook headquarters – in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, California, respectively – live in even more valuable homes. The median home value among Facebook workers is $1.25 million, and the median home value among Google workers is $1.28 million.

The value gap between Silicon Valley techies' homes and their neighbors' homes has been widening recently, especially for Apple workers.

Apple workers' home values took off after the first iPhone was released in June 2007, when Apple's stock price rose, increasing the wealth of many employees.
Prior to summer 2007, the typical Google employee lived in a home that was 37 per ent more expensive than the average San Jose home; since summer 2007, that gap has widened to 39 per cent.