If you want to understand how crazy the California real estate market is, just listen to the local news.

Well, tonight a crumbling shack is the new face of San Francisco's sky-high real estate market.

Take a look. This uninhabitable dwelling could be yours. If you cough up to...

Just this month, a CBS affiliate reported on this San Francisco property. It's an old house.

It's actually unsafe to enter. That went on the market for $2.5 million. A few days later,

the same TV station reported from an empty lot in Palo Alto.

It was on the market for $9 million.

There's no home, no garage, no driveway, nothing, just a lot.

But the realtor says he's already received some interest.

The process of finding a place to live is long and difficult and arduous.

Farhad Banju is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, lives in the Bay Area.

I'm lucky because we did it about four years ago when it seemed impossible, and now it just seems even, you know, ten times more impossible.

I wanted to know how this impossible real estate market has started changing the way he lives.

Like, when he talks about real estate with the people next door, what do they even say?

It's a good question. I mean, well, sort of literally, I don't really talk to my neighbors.

My neighbors are, you know, they have a sort of same-sized townhouse, but it's four or five people who work at Google, who don't know each other, who live in this condo.

And I think that's true of, you know, a lot of the people around where I live.

Like, it's sort of like corporate housing for tech people.

This surge of tech workers, it's part of the problem.

It's squeezing everyone, raising the cost of living.

And for some people, this isn't just an inconvenience.

Nearly a quarter of the country's homeless population

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