'Million Dollar Shack' documentary looks at Bay Area's insane housing market [View all]

You've already heard the stories told in the new documentary Million Dollar Shack.

Rentals are scarce; home prices are staggering. The wealthy elite are scooping up Silicon Valley properties. These investment homes are sitting empty or rented by people who spend more time on the road than at home, turning neighborhoods into ghost towns. Members of the middle class are leaving the Bay Area in droves, searching for a more realistic reality, a place where they can actually afford a home.

Over the past decade, the media has jumped on these stories helter-skelter. This self-funded, homespun documentary on YouTube packs the insanity into 22 minutes and tells the harrowing tale through the eyes of the filmmakers, Michelle Joyce and Steve Fyffe, a married couple with two kids, who've been trying to buy a house in the Bay Area for five years.

Michelle said she and her husband, who worked as journalist before becoming a communications manager at Stanford University, decided to make the movie because, "The crazy housing situation in the Bay Area is all we talked about and all anyone we know talked about."

"We didn't have to go far to find examples of everything we show in the video," Michelle said. "Many of the people we interview in the video are personal friends. We hoped we could get a more honest conversation started about it.

"We notice stories in the media about ghost houses, rental prices and commuting, but we hadn't seen a story that put it all together. I don't think people realize all the pieces of this puzzle."

http://www.sfgate.com/aboutsfgate/article/Million-Dollar-Shack-documentary-Bay-Area-housing-6582122.php#photo-8831839

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The 20+ minute video is well-worth watching. Sad reality for renters and prospective property owners in the Bay Area and as for the natives