Housing Cost
Hi! We are students from Dr. Cardenas Sociology 101 class at Cascadia College and we are here to inform you about where technology companies are located and how they affect home costs. The states that have been affected are mainly Washington, California, New York, and Texas (Fig. 1).
Based on our research, we learned that as a technology company enters into a community and successfully develops the price of living drastically increases.
As an example we compared Bellevue, WA which is a main hub for Microsoft to Spokane, WA which has no technology companies. Between 2007 and 2016 the average cost for a single family home in Bellevue grew from roughly $520k-$720k (Fig. 2). The growth coincided with the expansion of Microsoft. In comparison, Spokane’s average cost for a single family home between 2007 and 2016 remained the same, roughly $100k (Fig. 2).
In another analysis, we looked at Google Corporation, which is based in Mountain View, CA. Between 2007 and 2016 Google exploded. The cost for a single family home increased dramatically from roughly $700k in 2007 to $1.3 million in 2016 (Fig. 3).
Map of Tech Company Locations in US
| Washington |
| Amazon |
| Microsoft |
| California |
| Apple |
| Facebook |
| Alphabet Inc. |
| Google |
| Intel |
| LinkedIn |
| Mozilla |
| Pintrest |
| Twitter |
| Ebay |
Bellevue, Washington vs. Spokane, Washington Home Costs
Mountain View, California Home Costs
