Why? I own a house in Portland. Company closed the Portland office. My family is settled there. It doesn't make sense to move your whole life just for a few days a month in the office . I didn't do it daily. However I did price it out and it is cheaper.

Pure financials can more than explain this, if you have a family and want space for them. Let's do some napkin math, from a quick Google search it's 150$ round trip, so 3000$ a month assuming 20 work days (maybe even less with frequent-flyer status, cashbacks and rewards).

For a 4 bedroom house, Zillow gives me around 7-8k a month in rent for SF and around 4k for SJ, so you'll at least break even and have a better quality of life for your family even if you won't see them much during the week.

Anyway: The fact that a simple adequate house for a family runs at 4k in the US is ... maddening. 1500 sqft is around 140 m², a comparable house in Berlin (one of Germany's hottest markets!) runs ~2500€. How one is supposed to live in the US when not on a typical techbro salary, I have no idea how y'all even manage that.