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Littleworried,
A 20-30% hike sounds extremely high, even for CA. I've seen lots of move-in specials in my neck of the woods (L.A.), while rents --though high for what you get-- seem to be tracking inflation (5-6%).
*Sniff*, *sniff*, do I smell troll?
Littleworried,
Sorry if I mis-read you. Your comment about possibly making a mistake by not buying coupled with the 30% hike raised a red flag for me. That's par for standard troll operating procedure :-)
Anyway, that really sucks --I'm very sorry. It sounds like the building got flipped recently and the new owner is trying to cover the monthly nut --or they're just getting greedy. I'd definitely start looking elsewhere --no need to pay for someone else's greed/flip. Can't give you much specific advice about apt. hunting in Santa Clara, but for that money you ought to be able to find something a little bigger.
I am a little worried about this rent hike. No apartments are offering specials and I see rents about 20% higher compared to this time last year. My apartment complex in santa clara is asking long term renters like me to vacate. They are gonna renovate the apartment just a little bit and are gonna jack up rent by almost 30%! At this rate, instead of home prices going down, rents might creep up to match home prices. May be I made a mistake not buying. sigh
Go fuck yourself troll.
Dear New Maggot Troll,
tinyurl.com/lcf58
Perhaps you should pull your fucking realtwhore head out of your ass and sniff a non shit smell, there are over 1300 apts in the glorious bay area for under 1000. Or better yet, buy in now before you're priced out forever.
Asshole.
Does it matter HARM? Same tired fucking bullshit, RENTS GOING UP, THRU THE ROOF. HOUSING IS GREAT, I CAN BUY A BWM FOR WHAT MY HOUSE "EARNS" EACH MONTH.
Fuck them all.
I am looking for some kind of rational explanation to this phenomena and see if I am missing anything
Your Mothers crack habit is dependent on the DEA's inforcement policies?
Man, it's been so long since we've had a trolls around on a regular basis my Troll-dar is rusty.
Not sure if you guys are aware of this, the mortgage rate on 30-year fixed is dropping. Someone must be turning on the tap (where did M3 number go)?
I have a friend who is hunting for homes, she is sort of sitting on the fence but actively looking and comparing in the market. She just told me that the long-term mortgage rate has been dropping since about a couple of weeks ago, originally she could only get 6.7%, now she could lock in 6.3% or so. One-year ARM rate is also declining.
Looks like some financial forces out there are trying to make the housing bubble last much longer.
I rent near Cisco for a 2-bedroom apartment and after the last 7-month lease was up in July, the rent went up by 7.5%. So I too have a hard time believing a 20% or 30% increase.
HARM,
You know, before I picked a CA college over Bryn Mawr out of sheer pique, I always had a strong prejudice against CA precisely because of the glamourous image of the CA lifestyle (I'm a pessimist and an introvert, so a lot of happy tanned beach people really didn't appeal to me).
However, your last set of pictures are from SoCal. NorCal does seem a bit better on the traffic and attractiveness front. Lots of fun can still be had on a limited income (anything above 30K a year), if you're single and plan carefully and don't go drinking every night. The problem comes when people start wanting to do ridiculous things like having kids or own their own decent size house or keeping up with the HELOCed Joneses.
private affluence and public squalor -- maybe all the money that could've improved public spaces and increased wages went to the movie stars and charismatic CEOs...
I'm not worried about rent increases; The rents are already high and I'm sure they will try to raise them, but that doesn't mean I have to stay and help them pay for their overpriced mortgages. There are plenty of good places to live elsewhere and the rents are 1/4 of what they are here (I'm in NY). For example, you can get a 2 bedroom 1000sf apartment like this in N.C. Not a bad place to chill for a year or two when most of these homedebtors hang themselves. One thing that is great about renting, you can always move anywhere, anytime. If you don't like the rent increase, don't get mad, do what I am going to do; move!
I think the rental prices will go down as the employment market sours. The low end will get squeezed and move in with friends/family/FBs who need to rent out a room to make ends meet. This increase in low end supply may be enough to stablize most housing prices, except at the high end (those clever housing bears with family and money).
I'm actually hoping the increased rents will drive my boyfriend's upstairs neighbors away. These people are raising 2 pre school kids (and I can definitely hear them when I stay over) in a small 1 bdrm apartment intended for single people or a couple at the very most. I hope that means any rent increase will drive them to seek cheaper housing, maybe by stupidly driving out another 20 miles to do so.
(FAB, if you drop by, feel free to take that example and run with it.)
"California Past (pre-Prop. 13, SMUG/NIMBY, illegal flood):"
I remember Prop 13 but don't know what "SMUG/NIMBY" are--any one care to fill me in? [I now live in "Hot"lanta--can't wait to get the F outta here and get back out West...]
First, great thread topic.
Second, I live in a prime place in Crapertino and my rent is not going up. Also, apartment complexes are notorious for raising rents. I find it better to deal with a private owner. My friend who rents a condo in Mountain View (and is on month-to-month) had a $40 rent increase several months ago - $40, that's it. This is for a nice one bedroom condo in MV - rent $1100. Maybe she and I have just been lucky with our rent? I don't know.
I wouldn't feel safe renting from a private owner unless they've owned the place for 10 or more years and really want to hold onto it til they die (anyone here knowledgable about CA commercial property sales taxes?). Otherwise there's just way too much risk of getting kicked out at some point with no predictability. To me, the higher likelihood of this hassle is worth at least a 10% discount.
Apartment living does suck in some respect, it's almost uniformly cheap materials, zero insulation, and iffy neighbors. Maybe private party rentals would be superior for these things.
My parents' lousy ex-neighbors (sketchy subletting, loud music, not mowing their laws) are selling their place. Funny how the exact same model as my parents' former Loudoun County house suddenly grew by about 1,000 sq ft. I guess they decided to consider their roughly finished basement rec room in the total square footage.
Anyone else notice this trend of including basement sq footage in the house? Do these people just think buyers won't notice and feel hostile when they see a much smaller place than anticipated? Or that the square footage for new construction is recorded with the county and a cinch to verify?
Comments 1 - 19 of 236 Next » Last » Search these comments
Thanks to Hollywood's cultural hegemony, everyone in the world seems to "know" California and usually has a mental image of what life in the state is like. Sadly, the reality of the typical CA "lifestyle" today bears almost zero resemblance to the popular Baywatch glamor image slavishly promoted by the media.
For most working-class wage earners (especially for post-Boomers) that lifestyle generally ranges from spartan to awful, and seems to be trending worse by the day. Housing is only one part, albeit a very large one, in the overall progressive deterioration in the quality of life here for regular folks. The deterioration manifests itself in a number of ways: environmental degradation/pollution, overpopulation/urban overcrowding, traffic perma-gridlock, rapidly deteriorating physical infrastructure and schools, and --critically-- the inability of a working-class income to provide a middle-class lifestyle.
Ignoring the current housing bubble for the moment, the secular trend for at least the past 30 years appears to be California transitioning to a completely bifurcated economy and society, strictly divided between a super-wealthy elite "haves" and a permanently impoverished majority, mostly made up of illegal immigrants and marginalized citizens. The emerging reality is closer to what one might expect to find in Mexico or Brazil, not in the U.S. The housing bubble has greatly exaggerated and magnified this trend, of course. However, even when you remove it from the equation, this long-term trend towards housing unaffordability, overpopulation and overall lower quality of life remains.
I present you with three distinct visions of California.
California Past (pre-Prop. 13, SMUG/NIMBY, illegal flood):
Hollywood Fantasy California:
California Present:
#housing