Possible move to Bay Area with good school district and family friendly neighborhood (San Jose: to rent)

[amago]

We are a family of four members (Spouse and two kids), intending to move to the Bay area. I currently live in NJ
I have found a new job and have been asked by my current employer to move to the bay area (work location SFO City with telecommuting option for 2-3 days a week)

Spouse will be looking for a new job(100K/yr) and I will be making (185K/year).
I currently live in 3000 sqft single family home(NJ).

Older kid Elder kid (6th grade) and younger one (2nd grade).

School is important but we are looking for a school district which is good overall. Not intending to get them into pressure cooker schools as NJ schools are great overall with an equal emphasis on academic and extracurricular activity.

We are looking to rent and then but in 6 months. Please recommend the best option here and I value your opinion.

I can potentially move in next 2 months. How difficult is to get into these schools given my current situation. Do I have to worry about this?

Please suggest and appreciate all your inputs. Thank you.

[jdhpa]

Not sure what SFO city is. Do you mean South San Francisco? Or the airport?

By 'good schools' I assume you mean high average test scores. Burlingame, San Mateo, and Belmont are all very nice cities that have schools that meet that criteria. I will point out that high test scores are all about the parents and how they value education, the schools themselves are not doing anything special. I have never heard of a public school here not taking a student who lived in their district. You might get any school in the district, though, not necessarily the closest one.

On the peninsula, you can rent a home on $285K / year in a good area, buying a home in a good area on that salary will be difficult unless you have ~$1M in equity. The house size will probably be closer to 1500 square feet than 3000.

[silverkris]

I'm guessing you're either taking a job in San Francisco (downtown perhaps), or San Francisco International Airport,which is SFO. SFO here refers only to the airport, and not the city itself. Please clarify.

That would probably mean San Mateo County in any case - where South San Francisco is in any case. Wondering if you are in biotech or pharma, since you're coming from New Jersey? Then it would make even better sense for you to be in San Mateo County, such as Millbrae, Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmont, Foster City.

Your income looks like you can afford to rent here, but your house size is going to be a lot smaller than in NJ, and frankly, you don't need a larger house since the weather is a lot milder and you're likely to be outdoors more.

[marcopolo666]

There is a pretty good search functionality on this site, which you can find here : http://www.city-data.com/forum/search.php . I'd recommend searching for "move" and then "moving" in subjects in the forum(s) you are interested in (probably the San Francisco/Oakland and {apparently} San Jose areas).

LOTS of people have already asked pretty much the same question. Try searching first and then you can ask detailed, pointed questions after having done a teeny bit of reading.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Originally Posted by marcopolo666

There is a pretty good search functionality on this site, which you can find here : http://www.city-data.com/forum/search.php . I'd recommend searching for "move" and then "moving" in subjects in the forum(s) you are interested in (probably the San Francisco/Oakland and {apparently} San Jose areas).

LOTS of people have already asked pretty much the same question. Try searching first and then you can ask detailed, pointed questions after having done a teeny bit of reading.

Or, you can just go ahead and ask your question, as there is no rule requiring you to scour old posts before being allowed to ask for fresh opinions, and there are plenty of us bored members happy to answer new questions.

That said, your post is too vague for me. This is an enormous area with lots of options. For people to be truly helpful, we need more specific requirements.

Best of luck to you.

[ZeApelido]

You need to look at estimates for what $ of mortgage you can get, and compare that with housing prices on Zillow. Then look at how long the avg commute time is going to be during rush hours. In general my guess is you are not going to like the answers, but who knows.