Moving to Bay Area - Advice on non-traditional housing options?

[Connor Cushman]

I'm a recent graduate moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in October for a job with a technology company. I'm married and we have our first baby on the way so we're looking for something that's at least a 2 bed 1 bath ideally. I'm currently a licensed Realtor in Utah and have been a BP fan for a couple of years so I have some knowledge of investing but we have yet to purchase our first property. 

Rent in the Bay Area will be at least/around 2k a month for what we're looking for so I want to explore alternative options to simply finding an apartment to rent on Zillow and throwing my entire salary the landlord's way. I'm less familiar with the CA market so I'm curious if anyone has any recommendations for first-time home-buyer programs, off market deals, or niche areas to look at. We're interested in Walnut Creek, Lafayette area specifically but would consider anywhere that's around an hour commute into SF.

Are there any other factors besides high prices in the SF market that we should take into consideration before buying? 

We'd be open to managing properties in exchange for rent or working out some sort of arrangement with a landlord as well if anyone knows of any unique opportunities like that.

Thanks in advance for your help!