I'm thousands of miles away, in an English village, not the crushing-it hub of the Bay Area. Noting the absurd 14x average salary cost of buying a house in my nearest city, I moved 20 miles from my workplace and bought a modest house in the middle of nowhere for 3x joint salary at the time.

In the past 11 years, we've paid off almost half the mortgage ... but, the commute was killing us (almost literally - people don't drive safely down two hours'-worth of winding country roads, though thankfully we only had one serious accident).

Then lockdown happened, and we didn't have to get up pre-dawn any more. We're cruising it, not crushing it, and removing the cost of childcare/commuting is like having a £1000 per month pay rise. Therefore, I've gone from 'staying afloat' to 'reasonably comfortable', without changing anything other than monthly expenses.

So, 'net worth' is no measure of wealth at all. You're not 'rich' if you owe the bank millions for your mortgage and have only pennies in the bank. You're not 'rich' if your vanity metric is a retirement fund you can't touch until you're sixty.

Meanwhile, true wealth is 'freedom from fear', however you measure it. For the OP, that's not having an oppressive mortgage. For me, that's having a paid-off mortgage and some savings in the bank.

There are always trade-offs and FOMO is one of them, but the literal rent-seeking people-farmers who rely on excessive house prices shouldn't get too reliant on endless increases. In past pandemics, people deserted cities in their droves. We may see the same happen now.