It is 10x expensive. I lived in the RTP area. I paid roughly $800 for a very nice three bedroom house with a 10 minute commute to downtown for work. That's a house I owned. Lots of tech talent there, lots of jobs, lots of startups. That's more than 10x what the rent for this shoddy apartment is being set at. A very nice downtown condo would run you about 1.5 times as much. What does an apartment in downtown SF go for now (to buy?).
That is just rent, not your other non housing expenses which are quite comparable to the rest of the country. SF is not Norway/London/Switzerland/or even Japan expensive, nowhere close!
To get your 10x cheaper location, you aren't looking at RTP, but maybe Cambodia (though much of the south feels like a developing country to me...they still aren't that cheap).
