moving to cali(san jose) help!

[gfr4656]

i need help finding an apartment for a reasonable price, neighborhoods i should avoid, or just some helpful hints.

[Warpy]

1. Rob a bank

[gfr4656]

2. that bad huh?

[IrishBloodEngHeart]

3. Yep

unbelievable housing prices.

[caligirl]

4. Santa Clara is a nice place. (Golden Triangle)Also lots of new apartments

off of Montague Expressway on Lick Mill Rd. Good area. Price? Get a room mate. Needed income for a family of 4 to buy the median priced home of around $400,000 is $72,000.

[caligirl]

5. Avoid Alviso in Northern area of SJ and East SJ area. The downtown area

too. Avoid anything from 7th Street East.

Santa Clara and Sunnyvale are good options. Alot of people like south San Jose.

[gfr4656]

6. sheesh

cheaper to stay in chicago

[Xithras]

7. Cheap? In the Bay Area? Cheap is relative.

Check out Craigslist first, and make sure to post a "Housing Wanted" ad for yourself. Ads in the newspapers or online referral services tend to be VERY overpriced, so look for a word-of-mouth referral or a less known site like Craigslist.

That said, there hasn't been anything "cheap" in the Bay Area for a decade. People in the Bay Area who want "affordable housing" typically find it by moving OUT of the Bay Area...they endure grueling commutes (sometimes 4-5 hours a day) but save hundreds of thousands on purchased homes and 50-75% on rents. A few years back a friend of mine was paying $2,000 a month for a studio in Los Gatos, until he finally got sick of it an rented a 2BR apartment in Concord for $650 a month. The daily commute from Concord to San Jose can be over 2 hours each way when traffic is bad (and it often is), but he's never looked back.

The trick is really to keep your eyes out and jump on the deals when you spot them. If you are moving out here blind, make sure you have the money for TWO deposits...one for the overpriced place you're going to move into first, and the second for the better priced place you'll eventually find if you keep looking and move fast.

Avoid Palo Alto, Newark, and Oakland. You'll see lower rents there, but they're lower for a reason.

Oh, and since you're from Chicago I'll also point out that you'll need a good car out here. My last boss apparently never owned her own car until she moved out here from Chicago at 40 years old...a fact that she complained incessantly about. She, like most people from large eastern and midwestern cities, was amazed at the utter lack of public transportation that exists in the SF Bay Area. The public transportation that does exist works well, but it only covers a small portion of the region. Many people have moved out here expecting to catch a bus or train to work, only to be suprised when they discovered that they don't exist in most of the region.

[confusionisnext]

8. better these days

A few years back a friend of mine was paying $2,000 a month for a studio in Los Gatos
I assume that this was during the heady dotcom days? In SF you can get a really decent 1 bedroom for $1450 (my current rent in the not dodgy part of SOMA), so I highly doubt that studios are going as high as $2000 anywhere in the Bay Area, crudely assuming that SF has the highest rents.

Also, do not overlook Oakland. Oakland is big and relatively sprawling, so there are both bad parts and really nice parts. And Palo Alto is a really wealthy community -- maybe Xithras is warning you about East Palo Alto?

In defense of our public transportation, our transit is good in SF and ok outside SF. Nobody outside a dense CITY should expect city-quality public transportation. NO suburb in America has good enough public transportation to warrant forgoing a car. I'm sure if you moved to areas outside the boundaries of Chicago, Philly, Boston or DC, you would need a car. Bay Area is no different.

Like the above post says, your best bet to get a feel for the housing market is to look at Craigslist.

[caligirl]

9. I have to agree. Oakland if only known by the news on

tv gets bad rap. The Oakland hills are very nice. Tom Hanks grew up there and went to Skyline HS there. My sons baby sitter went to school with him. Berkeley has many good areas but you would be commuting down 880 everymorning and with people going back to work the drive is longer.

Oh yeah, the best way to visually see the Silicon Valley returning to a good business cycle is to watch freeway traffic south on 680 and 880 in the morning and evening commute. Lots of layoffs, easy drive. Sick isn't it?

I have to drive through East Palo alto at least once a month to get to Stsnford docs, avoid East Palo Alto. The best reason to go there is IKEA.

[caligirl]

10. BART only goes as far as FRemont. They won't have it going to San Jose for

ten years. My husband was able to take buses from Freomnt to Santa Clara the first year we lived here. The Peninsula has a train from SF to San Jose. To get to an office from there you take either a bus or a smaller train that continually rns through santa Clara. The info above on areas to avoid either due to high cost or too low a cost are accurate.

Crigslist is a great suggestion.

[The Sheik]

14. Is the the capitilized FR in Fremont supposed to imply something?

Just curious.

[caligirl]

15. No just my bad typing, but it is not a place with much sense of community.

[Xithras]

11. Well...

I assume that this was during the heady dotcom days?

Yep '99. I knew they'd come down a bit, but I didn't realize that they'd come down that much.

As for Oakland, I stand by my recommendation that he avoid it for now. I know full well that there are good areas in that city, but there are also areas where people will knife you for $5 and not think twice about it. Until someone has lived in the area for a while and has familiarized themselves with the neighborhoods so they know which areas are which, I wouldn't recommend moving there.

And Palo Alto? My assumption was that Palo Alto is probably out of the original posters price range. Since there are unscrupulous property management agencies that list East Palo Alto homes and apartments under Palo Alto, there are really good odds that any low cost Palo Alto listings you'll find online are actually in East Palo Alto.

As to the status of public transportation, I have to point out that San Jose is a larger and more populous city than San Francisco, and yet its public transportation infrastructure is a pale imitation of SF's. I agree that SF itself has a great transportation system...when I go into the city myself I often leave my car in Dublin, ride BART into SF, and use the cities great bus and trolley system to get around, but I would NEVER consider trying that trick in San Jose. Unless they've dramatically improved it in the past few years, they have poorly maintained busses that run on extremely long intervals and have routes that leave big areas without coverage. Having to walk 5-6 blocks to reach the nearest busline isn't uncommon. San Jose isn't a "suburb", it's a major city in its own right and yet lacks many of the amenities you'd expect in a city of its size.

Besides, the reality today is that the Bay Area is really just one big city, and what the region really needs is a unified public transit system capable of getting people around the Bay without regard to city boundaries or county lines. Sadly, I doubt I'll see that in my lifetime.

[gfr4656]

12. thanks

craigslist. got it.
fotunately i know a couple of people out there and i do have a car. but i was just surprised at the prices for the apartments. i'm paying 700 for a one bedroom on the north side of chicago, in a pretty nice neighborhood too. In chicago!

[sophie996]

13. check the classifieds

at http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/

and http://classifieds.metroactive.com/classifieds/class-real.html

my daughter lives on s. 9th, near SJSU campus, is very happy with her location, although downtown is not generally considered a fine neighborhood. close to lots of good restaurants, movies, the super san jose museum of art. you could do a lot worse. there's a lot of upgrading going on.