It could be school quality and/or crime too. The suburban costs seem to correlate with school quality, crime, ease of building [0] and distance to job centers.
[0] In Palo Alto home prices are artificially high in part because the schools are great and it's very hard to build new houses there. In Mountain View and Sunnyvale there is a lot of newer development and the schools are a little worse. This trumps distance.
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It could be school quality and/or crime too. The suburban costs seem to correlate with school quality, crime, ease of building [0] and distance to job centers.
[0] In Palo Alto home prices are artificially high in part because the schools are great and it's very hard to build new houses there. In Mountain View and Sunnyvale there is a lot of newer development and the schools are a little worse. This trumps distance.