Moving from California to NOVA

[HB2HSV]

Originally Posted by blindside

To the OP, there's a saying when you leave California, it's hard as hell to get back.

Not if you keep your house/ condo as a rental property.

[HB2HSV]

Originally Posted by Julianpieohmy

Californians are well aware of microclimates. 10 miles can literally mean 10 degress. It can be snowing in the mountains 1 hour away and 70 degrees at the beach.

SF weather is cold, but the bay area varies greatly. San Jose has average highs above 80 for three straight months. It also have average lows below 45 degrees for 3 straight months.

Pleasanton is also considered the (east) bay area and average June/July highs are 89.

San Francisco weather is uniquely San Francisco and parts of peninsula. Most place do not have that weather

Exactly. Most folks don't realize how fast weather can change by just driving over the hills in California.

San Francisco is cold in the summer because, as the valleys & the desert heat up the hot air rise and the cold air get sucked in from the Pacific, and the City is at the tip of peninsula bearing the frontal assault of cold air in an otherwise hot summer!

[gomason]

I realize how much weather can change in different parts of the state. I know there can be like a 20 degree difference between the Inland Empire and the coast in SoCal but how many people are driving 65 miles everyday for work? I'm gonna guess not too many.

And frankly you can say the same thing about VA but I don't know too many people commuting to Front Royal or Harrisonburg.

[Contentt]

We just left the bay area a few months ago, it was just random that I came back to the forum today looking for something. I agree find job first, live close to work to avoid commutes, rent for 1-2 years to make sure weather works.

The locals in VA look at me funny when I say housing here is cheap in Vienna, but almost everything is cheaper here in VA and less crowded, although the forums and locals had me scared before we moved 4 months ago (August). Traffic here can be bad, but 101 is worse than anything I've seen here including the 405 or 66 during commute hours. So it's all relative to exactly what you are comparing to. I do try and avoid those freeways, or any busy road during rush hour for that matter. But that was the same as the Bay Area. Gas is cheaper, taxes are cheaper - sales tax, income tax, gas tax (I haven't done a detailed property tax comparison yet), living costs cheaper, housing is way cheaper and you get much nicer things for your money. Daycare is the only thing I've found to cost as much as the bay area, and it's been hard to find a good one for our kids. But that has a lot to do with our timing and kids ages.

I'm in tech marketing (B2B startups) but I haven't really looked for a job here yet, there is definitely less opportunities and the pay will be less. My guess is 20-30% less for me. My wife had a job lined up in Vienna, where we are renting, her job actually pays more here than in CA. We moved from Morgan Hill after a year there, I grew up in Redwood City, my family and most friends are still in cities around Redwood City, all work in tech. And most are leaving once they have kids, even with the dual income 100K+ salaries housing is unaffordable once you have kids. One of my friends won the startup lottery and bought a house, most my other friends who grew up there like me have worked for many startups that can't get beyond 20mil in revenue and options are worthless. Unless they bought a house 5+ years ago nobody I know who grew up there owns a house or is going to be able to buy without serious money from parents.

I've lived in SF inner sunset, Burlingame and Menlo Park area most my life. We lived in San Bernadino in SoCal before Morgan Hill, so we were used to the heat. We primarily moved due to housing costs and schools, which as you know go hand in hand in the bay area. We couldn't justify 1K+ a square foot in the bay area on the peninsula for a tear down. And I don't think we would have even been able to win a house as the all cash offers seem to take every house for sale as you probably know.

We're lucky in that my wife's family is in VA, so that made moving easier. We ended up in Vienna, but looked at Falls Church and Fairfax sub-burbs. McClean was too far from our family here so didn't look at it. Mclean seems like a nicer Vienna, more money, larger lots so you don't live on top of your neighbors as much in Vienna. Our Vienna house rental has trees all around and even the neighbors are a lot further than the 10 feet distance you'd find between houses with a new build on the peninsula. In Morgan Hill we rented a run down crappy 4bed 2bath house for $2500 a month, 1500 sqft, with 3 small kids. It was in best school district (Nordstroms 9 out of 10), but everyone tried to get into the charter school by lottery. CA school resources don't compare to Vienna, it's night and day.

We lucked out with our Vienna neighborhood, my daughter has 3 friends from school on our block and we've met plenty of transplants and locals who are nice. Love living near the W&OD trail. I haven't seen rain like this since I was a kid. We'll see how we do with the weather for a couple of years before buying and settling here. I love CA, will move back in a heartbeat if housing crashes on the peninsula (it won't), but we could no longer justify the unbalanced lifestyle due to the cost of living. That sacrifice had become too high for our family, but everyone is different.

[RusUs]

Contentt,
Welcome to Nova and Vienna! It is nice to read people's posts about their positive experience with this area, which many of us love. Vienna is nice - glad that you found "your" place here. And thank you for reminding that while we know that Nova is expensive, it could have been worse ;-)

[Contentt]

Thanks for the thanks! My response was mostly focused on relating to the Bay Area housing costs and why we moved so I didn't even go into all the great things we have discovered in Nova, the list is huge, just like it would be for the Bay Area. The nova traffic, urban sprawl and general crazyness is pretty much the new normal in large cities, so complaints about nova being bad should be taken with a grain of salt when looking to move here in my opinion.

[lovnova]

WOW, I didn't think there could ever be another place that compared to NOVA! But then again we are talking sunny CA here.

[Deluusions]

Originally Posted by lovnova

WOW, I didn't think there could ever be another place that compared to NOVA! But then again we are talking sunny CA here.

NoVa compares to a lot of metro areas of big cities..... ding ding common sense. High cost of living and major traffic isn't something that's unique to NoVa.

[gomason]

The DC Area is much more sprawling than San Fran Bay Area. San Fran has a lot of geographical limits to how far the sprawl can go like water and mountains. There isn't tons of open flat land surrounding San Fran like around here. In fact, the Bay Area is twice as dense as the DC area.

The DC Area's density is closer to mid size cities like Denver, Milwaukee, Trenton and New Orleans. Of course that will change quickly as we are a fast growing area.

Source: http://www.census.gov/population/met...203%20Data.xls.