2 years ago I moved to SF from a shithole city. I had taken off like 3 years to work on my own projects. It was more difficult than I expected to find a job without any connections. Took about 3 months after moving here.
I think there's at least some bias against people who have taken time off because they appear comfortable not having a job and therefore the company has less leverage over them.
Most of these lose on weather, culture or proximity to the ocean for me.
All of SF isn't easy car free, but I live downtown. SF could have significantly better mass transit. In order to get completely car free in my lifetime would probably require opt in to a new city due to people who have jobs related to things that should be removed.
NYC is too dense and the main prominent industries appear to be wall Street, advertising, and fashion which are not things I like. Car traffic is also pretty horrible.
I work remotely in SF. I live here because I like not owning a car, walking and biking most places, and non-tech things to do. I'm just lucky I can afford it. The solution is to build more good US cities that aren't car centric. I'm not aware of any. Build a from scratch city with a target of at least 250k residents on the California coast and I'll move.
I don't know how many people think similarly, but there's still a lot of non-tech people in SF.
My impression from the article was that the sellers didn't have independent agents. They were approached by the buyer's agent when not even listing their house.