patrick.net

I am Irish and I have just moved to the Bay Area from Australia so I am also a outsider .

I find that most homes that are for sale are presented pretty well , with fresh paint jobs and staging etc . However I lost interest in a couple of houses due to the state of ajoining houses .

Rentals seem to be a different story , I have viewed a few where long term tenents had just moved out and the place were in dire need of a paint job , only for the landlord to say they had no intention of doing it . It also seems normal to show a house for rent without even doing basic cleaning etc .

Having said that good landlords are hard to find in any country .

Houses in the Bay Area are tiny with small gardens and are closly grouped together with little privacy . They all seem to have been built around 1925 , maybe people were smaller back then .
If you want location mixed with decent size it seems to be from $700,000 upwards .

I did not know about the toxic dumps , now I have something else to worry about .

The Bay Area is a earthquake zone . When the big hits there will be nothing left . A lot of the houses are old and have this wrong with the foundation or that wrong with the foundation . Looking at buying here you get educated about foundations very quickly .

California is bust , but then so is the whole US , Europe and the entire western world . Greese is going to go pop any day now along with Spain , Portugal , Italy , Ireland etc etc . That will trigger a whole load of Credit Default Swaps . As Mr Geithner is really freaked about European banks and insists that no European country defaults on its banks debt , I am guessing that US banks are the counterparty . If its not a depression now , it soon will be .

Welcome to the Bay Area. properties in your price range will be small and have issues, Earthquakes are no big deal til they are. wait till the fog shows up again. some places in SF rarely see good sun regularly.
Hi But why focus on the negative.

The Bay Area is a place with great food culture entertainment. Wonderful location for recreation and fun all year long.

Stay closer to SF for the real Experience

2) It's very unusual to have 4 children here. Random strangers who see my twins tell me I'm lucky to have gotten childbearing over with in one pregnancy - two children is considered the perfect family size in the Bay Area.

I had the opportunity to work with several families who moved to greener pastures, like New York, Washington, Arizona, only to find in a few years, they could no longer afford to move back to THE state with the Mediterranean Climate.
Gotta Go. On my way for a bike ride over Devil's slide. I should probably take a wind breaker. After all, it is early FEBRUARY.

P.S. Stay off the bridges and out of tall buildings during the earthquakes.
P.S.S. Are earthquakes a result of subduction or expansion ?

We rent a typical house in Oakland (Rockridge). 2/1, 950 sq-ft, 3 children ages 7, 6, 6. Every once in a while the bathroom is occupied so one of us goes to the backyard to do our business. Frankly I don't mind 1 bathroom as much as the 5 of us being crammed into 2 bedrooms. Typical rent for a place like ours is $2000/month due to the house being a bit run-down looking. I figure we could buy this house for about $550k. We live in the Emerson elementary school district, a bottom ranked elementary in Oakland. All families on our street send their kids to private school and other than us, all have 1 child. Each time a family had their 2nd child, they moved. My wife works at a private school in exchange for tuition, so paying $11k elementary school tuition per child isn't a burden. I'm a software engineer and am at the upper end of a typical bay area software engineer salary.

Real estate is a magical sector of the economy, given that demand for it is limited by the restricted supply of housing and the fixed supply of land.

Aside from this house, there's always a better house, neighborhood, place to buy.

Additionally, it is very difficult to forego "consuming" housing. It can be done, but you've generally got to dodge the cops living in a van, or deal with a standard of living not unlike that of the neolithic era.

This massive imbalance between wants and what can be supplied means that housing will draw every surplus dollar out of a given economy (where buildable land is limited).

Prior to the 1990s dotcom boom I did not understand this at all. During the dotcom boom, I began to sense something was not quite right, and towards its end I discovered that someone 100+ years ago had actually laid all of this out in a book, called Progress and Poverty.

This was a really big "aha!" moment for me.

$1000/mo income surplus can support another $1000/mo rent or TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars of principal at 3.75%.

Bay Area land is expensive because we get paid more, and we get paid more because Bay Area land is expensive.

Having said that, there are reasons why prices could be 50% lower later this decade. And there also reasons why prices could be 50% higher this decade.

genesplitter says

We rent a typical house in Oakland (Rockridge). 2/1, 950 sq-ft, 3 children ages 7, 6, 6. Every once in a while the bathroom is occupied so one of us goes to the backyard to do our business

i was poking around your website just a heads up that none of your sample work links really work right. It might be because my web browser is google Chrome not sure.

Bellingham Bill says

Bay Area land is expensive because we get paid more, and we get paid more because Bay Area land is expensive.

You can look back and see that areas in Boston, Mass and regions of Connecticut were much more expensive than SF or South Bays Palo Alto. SoCal was more expensive for decades past than NoCal. So the 'notion' BA land was more expensive was a more recent phenomenon.

You forget we in the Bay Area learned a bitter lesson from the 80s, that overspending (compensation) has led to dreadfull failure by private industries, leading to salary cuts, layoffs and out migration.

somebecca says

2) It's very unusual to have 4 children here. Random strangers who see my twins tell me I'm lucky to have gotten childbearing over with in one pregnancy - two children is considered the perfect family size in the Bay Area.

somethings never change ... its no wonder home prices were more tracking a single earner income vs what the realtors keep talking about..(dual income with credit to max limit).

grinderman says

I find that most homes that are for sale are presented pretty well , with fresh paint jobs and staging etc .

A more recent phenomenon.. and was not the norm past practive. Overall it hard to imagine someone exaggeration the value of a home based on temp presentation. At the end of the day its still a 50s Eichler...

For a good overview of the normal pricing and rents in the US:

Note that Bay Area prices are largely off that chart, to the right. There's something seriously wrong with prices here. Clearly still a huge bubble, IMHO.

And yes, the ground water is seriously polluted with carcinogens:

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?source=patrick.net&id=22807

And note that Steve Jobs died of cancer in that same area. No proof, but I think there is definitely good reason for concern.

Patrick - Seriously?

I live down Waverley from the Jobs house - several of my neighbors have reached 100 (and died peacefully at home), while others are well into their 80s. Using your flawless logic, you could say that the polluted groundwater is causing these extended lifespans.

I'm just saying there is definitely some carcinogen in the Palo Alto water supply. No proof you'll die from it. Just a cause for concern.

Some smokers live to be 100 too.

Watch,

thomas and I are local kids, we've seen it all. Most of the rest are Immigrants to the Bay Area, either from other countries or other parts of the USA. Including even, Patrick himself.

Among the Immigrants, there's two attitudes: either the "something's wrong and distorted" side like Patrick or dunross would say, or else the Sky is the Limit Cool-Aid drinkers, like American Express Black himself.

If you wanna get honest input from a Local Kid who's not a kid anymore, name the date and time to meet at City Lights Expresso in downtown Santa Clara. Maybe thomas.wong will even join us.

1. Don't be worried about the toxic sites, worry about the air pollution where you are thinking of living. Soil is fine as long as you don't eat it. Water is fine if you use brita or similar or buy RO water. Who actually drinks tapwater anyway?
2. Earthquakes are no problem for houses made of wood. I lived through a big one here and the issue is houses shake and bounce off their foundations if they are not bolted down onto them. The fix may be expensive for houses that were not retrofitted like the ones were around here.
3. California is broke and they are going to look for money from homeowners who are trapped and can't leave easily. They know that the average family has no ability to scram when the property taxes go up.
The thing to worry most about is the huge cost of buying and the huge financial disaster that is California. See all those short brown girls pushing baby strollers around? They need your money. See those millionaire cops and firemen at the gym? They need your money.

I'm just saying there is definitely some carcinogen in the Palo Alto water supply. No proof you'll die from it. Just a cause for concern.
Some smokers live to be 100 too.

That is the cost of being called "Silicon" Valley... That is the cost of making semiconductor wafers, disk platters, circuit boards and many other components that require materials and chemical cleaning and acids.

Given all the state and EPA standards could we have manufacturing back in California ? Many would bar such manufacturing in the state. We could do it more smartly of course ...

Yes.. Keith Richards after all the smoking, pot/hash, coke, herion is still alive and may well reach 100 years old..