
What it’s like to house-hunt in Silicon Valley, the nation’s priciest market - trusche
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/what-its-like-to-house-hunt-in-silicon-valley-the-nations-priciest-market/2015/12/31/920c5b02-9dcf-11e5-bce4-708fe33e3288_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_tech-housing-1005pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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drewg123
The Bay Area is real estate insane. Prop 13 driven NIMBY-ism prevents any
reasonable density housing from being built.

After living there for 2 years and paying insane rent (more than $5K/mo on a
1200sqft house), I now telecommute for a Bay Area company, and live in central
VA in a 3000sqft house in a good school district with a community pool, etc,
which cost less than $400K. I telecommute most of the time, and I fly to CA
5-6 times per year (on the company's dime). My quality of life is so much
better. I mostly miss the weather and the food, but not the traffic & the
crowds and the prices.

Not to mention that I'm using one of my 5 bedrooms as a private office, which
is so, so, so much better than a low-walled cube in an open office
environment.

~~~
soldergenie
Did you have to take a salary cut when you moved to VA? (e.g.: so your salary
would be more in line with VA norms than silicon valley norms?)

That is the big problem with telecommuting for me - it seems hard to find
companies which are willing to pay silicon valley level salaries to people
living outside silicon valley, and if you take a pay cut, the savings in rent
diminishes drastically.

I suppose it is different when you start in silicon valley and move elsewhere
while staying in the same company, rather than just starting out elsewhere.
But that is still an concern since your salary gets reset if you ever change
companies without moving back to silicon valley.

~~~
curun1r
Not the poster you're replying to, but I manage both remote employees and
local devs. We do adjust salaries based on location, but the adjustment data
we use seems skewed in favor of remote employees. As an example, an employee
in Florida gets $140k which is only $30k less than we'd pay him if he were
local.

> But that is still an concern since your salary gets reset if you ever change
> companies without moving back to silicon valley.

I'm not sure if this is true. If you're going to work for another SV company
and remote, it's quite common for you to be able to quote a number higher than
you got from your previous remote job and negotiate your way down to at or
just above where you actually were in the previous job. The only time where
I'd see you needing to adjust your salary down is if you took a job with a
non-SV company in the interim. Just be aware that the salary data used by each
company may be different.

But it is probably helpful to come to SV/SF at some point in the beginning and
transition to remote work initially because hiring out here is somewhat
incestuous and having a well-known SV employer on your CV will help with
getting past HR filters and ensure you get the necessary LI touches.

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hijinks
I went through this but was lucky enough to do it 3 years ago. Our price point
wasn't above a million but was around 600-700k. For good schools that pushed
us out to the Tri-Valley area of the east bay where we finally bought a house.

We looked for 18 months. It got to the point where I'd leave work if a house
came on the market on a Thursday so we could have our offer in on Friday. We
were out-bid 12 times for all cash offers, mostly from overseas investors I
was told.

We finally found a house where an older lady was selling the house where she
raised her kids in and after I saw it I went back the next day and knocked on
her door and showed her some pictures of my family and almost begged her to
pick our offer. We ended up having to bid +45k over asking.

The funny part is if I sold the house right now, I wouldn't be able to afford
to buy it back.

~~~
nailer
> We were out-bid 12 times for all cash offers, mostly from overseas investors
> I was told.

I understand this is the case, but I don't know why it's better for the seller
if the buyer pays cash: say the buyer takes out a mortgage to buy their house,
doesn't the buyer's bank pay the seller in cash?

~~~
krampian
Things tend to go faster with cash buyers. In particular, no risk the bank
will decline them for a mortgage. I suppose there's less difference if they're
preapproved.

~~~
spiralpolitik
Even preapprovals can fall through as the bank can decline to fund when they
see the home in question or the valuation comes in lower than the sale price.

In a hot market cash is king as it removes 2 of 3 most common contingencies
people have. For the seller this is two less weeks where things can fall
through.

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fma
Two days ago I just closed on my second house. Brand new, gorgeous 3500 square
feet house for $363k. Great schools and good commute. The company I work has
over 10,000 IT workers world wide with four major hub offices in the US. None
of the hubs are in SV because of reasons like this.

~~~
chrisseaton
Is being brand new a good thing in houses in the US? In the UK few people
would prioritise a new house as it means no period features, no fireplaces, no
history, almost invariably thinner walls, no established garden etc

~~~
fma
Pros and cons, that's for sure. My current house is from 1974 - it's built
very well. There's a comment below about new houses being built poorly - there
are builders that cut huge corners but still stay within code. The new
builders will clear cut pristine forest areas, build houses and plant little
twigs called 'trees'. My current house...I had to cut down an oak tree as it
was getting a disease..I counted the rings and it was 90 years old. Same for
all the houses around my old neighborhood. The houses are about 40+ years old
but you can tell the trees are older than. Builders, and people cared back
then. I love walking in my old neighborhood...tons of trees, you don't even
feel like you're in a big city but I'm 15 minutes away from downtown Atlanta.

The new house is a open floor plan, 2 story foyer/family room, tall ceilings
etc, 50% larger more square footage. The outside looks beautiful.The funny
thing is, the price of my current house and new house are very similar...old
is valued at $330k, old was purchased a $363k. But my old house is closer to
the city in a nice area.

I am moving to a newer part of town. It's closer to work for both me and my
wife. All houses around there are no more than 20 years old...most are within
10 with new construction everywhere.

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paulbaumgart
This is mind-numbingly inefficient. We really need to build up.

~~~
briandear
No, that doesn't help much either: see New York city. Besides the point of
buying a house is to have a yard and not have neighbors bouncing on your
ceilings or leaving trash in the hallways or stealing your bike.

What's actually needed is more remote working and a departure of the
colocation mentality for businesses that don't actually need colocated
employees.

Software engineers rarely ever need to be in an office. A hardware engineer
almost certainly does. SaaS sales people: no need for an office. Customer
support -- no office needed there either.

Even many lawyers don't need an office (by office, I mean a traditional
office, not a home office.) I was a plaintiff in a lawsuit and never once did
I even see my attorney face-to-face.. And it was complex litigation.. And we
won.

Doctors obviously do, content marketers obviously do not. Accountants..
Definitely not.

My point is that the problem isn't housing, it's the density of tech companies
that seem to think physical proximity to Sand Hill Road actually matters. The
problem is also that Sand Hill Road also seems to think it matters. But it
doesn't. Cases in point Basecamp and Github.

Commuting to an office only to use Slack as the primary day-to-day
communication. THAT'S mind numbingly inefficient. Commuting to an office only
to stand in a circle for standup and then going back to a desk to work all
day.. That's inefficient. Marissa Mayer is wrong.

~~~
morgante
> No, that doesn't help much either: see New York city.

NYC manages to have cheaper housing than SF despite having radically more
demand, thanks mostly to the ability to add supply at a reasonable rate.

~~~
humanrebar
I think the point is already lost if NYC is an example of affordable housing.
Houston is probably a better example if you want to talk about affordable
housing in a major city. But commutes in Houston are getting pretty crazy
even.

~~~
morgante
> I think the point is already lost if NYC is an example of affordable
> housing.

NYC is actually quite affordable though. If you're willing to have a ~30
minute commute, you can easily live in some affordable places.

There are even more affordable options internationally though. Berlin, for
example.

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skyhatch1
Sidenote: Eichler homes look very modern. Definitely better looking than your
standard SV brick-and-wood-paneling matchboxes.

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walshemj
Compared to central London SV is cheaper and London does' not pay as well for
techies.

Id love to live in say fitzrovia or one of the lovely Georgian houses in the
city near st pauls - but unless I win the lottery that's not going to happen.

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city41
There is no doubt Silicon Valley real estate is expensive. But this article is
extreme.

For starters, Los Gatos is an upscale city nestled down at the bottom of SV.
Bentleys and Ferraris are everywhere and the Tesla Model S is a downright
common car. It's not representative.

If you look around in San Jose, Campbell, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, etc, the
prices come down and quality goes up. No, they don't approach the national
average, not even close. But 1.5 million for a fixer upper is ridiculous.

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bobosha
What is the market like in the East (Oakland) or North Bay (Sausalito and
north?

