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Appealing has nothing to do with it. Atherton is a place where people who live there and work on the peninsula go to their second home on weekends. I know a number of people who live around there who have a “cabin” at Tahoe. I imagine others have a second home on the coast to escape the congestion. Atherton is 7,000 people in 5 square miles. 511 housing units per square mile. 1 acre lot size on average. Around me in metro Boston, there are blue chip suburban towns with exactly that density. Weston MA is half that density. Lincoln even less dense. Carlisle is 1/4 that density.
If I’m buying a second home, it’s going to have amenities beyond blue chip suburbia. I just sold a place a week ago I owned for 28 years at a Vermont ski resort. I just bought one at the bottom of Beaver Creek in Colorado. My summer house is a mile from the private beach and 0.7 from my boat slip. People buy city condos as pied a terre second homes. People buy houses on lakes. People buy 100 acres in the woods. It would be wildly unusual to buy a second home in a blue chip suburb unless you needed it for work.
Thanks. Is Atherton kinda only for people that work in Silicon Valley? A second home in these said locations would be more of a getaway rather than a permanent residence. My permanent residence is in EU. I have my own superyachts, supercars, and private jets. I'd want a large single home mansion that's fit for a family. Also have boat party's. That's the only time I don't mind living like sardines.
I would rather live in somewhere like Carmel or Tiburon than Atherton if I had an unlimited budget and didn't need to worry about commuting. But Atherton is more of an estate/mansion neighborhood than the Hamptons, which is mostly second homes.
Thanks. Is Atherton kinda only for people that work in Silicon Valley? A second home in these said locations would be more of a getaway rather than a permanent residence. My permanent residence is in EU. I have my own superyachts, supercars, and private jets. I'd want a large single home mansion that's fit for a family. Also have boat party's. That's the only time I don't mind living like sardines.
Atherton is expensive because peninsula housing prices are in the stratosphere. A 1,000 square foot shack on a postage stamp lot is $1.25 million. There aren’t many suburbs in that area where the farmland was broken up into larger lots so the prices are extremely high compared to other metros. If you want a suburban home on an acre, surrounded by similar homes, you pay dearly for it. There’s otherwise nothing special about Atherton other than that your neighbors are mostly tech bros who did well in the high tech epicenter of the planet.
I would rather live in somewhere like Carmel or Tiburon than Atherton if I had an unlimited budget and didn't need to worry about commuting. But Atherton is more of an estate/mansion neighborhood than the Hamptons, which is mostly second homes.
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here. The second homes in The Hamptons ARE estates/mansions. My neighborhood has a minimum lot size of 2 acres and the homes are all between 5000 and 10,000 square feet. Hell, there is one house that I can think of that is over 100,000 square feet.
Commute/work is not a factor for living in said locations. I'm in fashion if that helps.
If you're in European fashion, Atherton isn't a great second-house location. Your neighbors will be senior executives working 12-hour days in tech, and maybe wearing cargo shorts and hoodies. The weather might be fine, but there's no view, the traffic is nightmarish, and you're surrounded by office parks.
At least in the Hamptons, you'd have other NYC fashion-industry types around. Same with Miami.
If you want a "second home" in a coastal California metro, look south to OC and San Diego -- Laguna Beach, Carlsbad, etc.
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