I used to read Lee Lin's blog through Facebook -- very smart guy. I think at one point he designed a custom search on Zillow for condos that were commutable from Microsoft, and in the price range that their newly-hired engineers could afford.
I should have said SOME 2br townhouses in 2004 were selling for $120K, as in, the starter homes I wound up buying. The median near MSFT campus was about $180K.