To give some idea of the market - people are starting to count stock options as future income in order to qualify for home purchases. The median home price that sold recently in San Jose is close to a million dollars.
5-6X will not get you a nice house in a nice area. It will just get you a small house. In San Jose, the cheapest ones I'm seeing are in the 500-600K range - smaller than 1000 sq ft.
Is this true? I am ignorant of actual prices in Bay Area, but people are always complaining of high housing prices there.