Does it make sense to buy my own house?

[Siddhanth Maheshwari]

Hi, 

My wife and I have been living in the bay area for 5 years and till now we have mostly invested in stocks and lived on rent. We are tired of having the rents increase on us so we wanted to buy our own house. 

Given how extreme the ratio of price to rent ratio is in the bay area, does it even make sense to buy our own house? If yes, which areas are good and how do we understand how much we can afford comfortably? We have visibility that we will be staying in this area for at least the next 7 years.

Background:
We both work in tech
We have about 500k invested in stock (not including 401k)
We have about 100k in cash equivalents
We earn a combined income of 550k annually include cash and RSUs
We have no kids and don't have plans for any for the next three years at least. We can work from home.