wanna move to Silicon Valley/San Jose/San Fran, CA need advise on areas to buy houses? (Oakland: crime, buying a house)

[jjello]

Hi there,

I currently live in New Jersey and at the moment, need to move out to Silicon Valley to advance my career further in tech world and find better opportunities. plus one of my company locations is in Redwood city and Milpitas.
I'm single, 38 yrs old, within (Asian) Indian/heritage background.

I own a townhouse currently in NJ and my budget of buying a house in Calif is about $450K.

So, what's a good area (in or out of bay area) to buy a house at this budget? (probably none)...but please advice away...

Thanks,
JP

[sonarrat]

Actually that will get you an old, but decent starter house in Redwood City.. and there's a whopping 918 detached houses in San Jose for $450K or less. What are you looking for?

[MichaelinWA]

With prices declining down there like they have, I would think that you could find a new townhome for that price in a place like Fremont, with its interesting melting pot of Asian cultures.

Perhaps you were looking for something detached, though.

[Luke9686]

I would get with a good realtor, nail down a few areas and start looking. It is doable these days.

Good Luck.

[tennis368fan]

How large of a home are you looking for? How far are you looking to commute? Will you have family members living with you, such as school-age relatives?

For $450,000, very spacious homes can be had, but it all depends how long you want to commute in the 1 hour range, two hours to and back.

[jjello]

thanks all -
wow this is really active forum - one of the ones that i posted on hardly got any reply anyhow.
so first things first - thank you all
thanks sonarrat- i will check out redwood city as well.

MichaelinWA - thx - yes, am looking for something that's detached - but somethings' gotta give so if its not detached, that works as well. I really dont care about 'living-around-asian-culture' and so on since where I am today, i hardly have some around. so anyhow i mix well amongst other cultures pretty quickly.

thx Luke9686 - know any good realtor?

tennis368fan - how large? hmmm - the one i have is abt 2200 sq. ft - thats total nt living space - living space is prob abt 1500 to 1700. in terms of commute - most prob i will working out of milpitas or sometimes redwood city. no family members - at least not yet

are there any towns that i "shouldn't" even bother - in terms of shady or bad or high-crime neighb'rhoods?

thx for ur help.

[jjello]

hey sonarrat, where are these 918 detached houses in san jose? any linkers please?
thx in advance-

[sonarrat]

I use realestate.yahoo.com, which is linked to Prudential (at least until July 1st) and provides free access to the MLS with registration. I was monitoring it every day for over a year before I picked out my property in Oakland.

[Luke9686]

mlslistings.com is a good one for the Bay Area.

[matiy]

Check out Rivermark in Santa Clara on Montague