Considering a move from Seattle to San Fran (San Jose, San Francisco: for sale, rental)

[mtrpkl]

Hello,

I've been lurking and think you might be able to help. My boyfriend and I are considering a move to the Bay Area in May when our lease is up. We are in our late 20's and currently live in West Seattle, which is one of the more suburban-feeling areas of the city. We like that we can walk to basic services, take the bus to work or ride our motorcycles in and it takes around 20 minutes, can walk the dog, live around a lot of parks, and are relatively close to restaurants and the beach.

We are looking for recommendations on areas to live where we could have our big dog, our grumpy cat, our two cars and our two motorcycles. We currently rent an 1100 sq foot, 3 bdrm house with a one car detached garage (for the motorcycles) for $2000/month. In the interest of giving you the full picture for your recommendations, our combined salary is $160k+/year and we could expect to make more because of next step up the career ladder and the adjustment for cost of living. Is this a livable wage between the two of us when we MUST have a place that will accommodate the animals and has a garage for the bikes? I think because of the lease on one of the cars, we might be stuck with having two cars. How much of an issue would that be for us?

Can you please provide us neighborhood recommendations? If we are crazy for even considering this, let us know now.... Our job search starts next month, so proximity to employment cannot be considered quite yet in the neighborhood search. He's in tech, so we might need to consider proximity to San Jose. We're planning a trip down there in February to scope it out.

Thanks for all your help...

[hsw]

Palo Alto

Lots of rental houses....mix of Stanford grad students/faculty....and many affluent engineers and tech billionaires also live in neighborhood...rather economically and intellectually interesting crowd

Some of region's best natural terrain for driving, biking, hiking, etc is found in the hills and mtns just W of PA...weather is much like that of coastal LA, except more wooded mtns

SiliconValley essentially stretches some 30mis from PA/MenloPk into SJ...arguably, PA is the economic and intellectual epicenter of SF region....most of SV's founders, executives, financiers and engineers live in PA or the suburbs just W of PA

[jzt83]

Where will you and your BF be working in the Bay Area?

[mtrpkl]

I work in healthcare and he is in the tech industry. We haven't started applying yet. We just want to know neighborhoods where we can get the kind of place we need within our budget. See above for criteria and budget. That may very well influence where we decide to apply for employment.

[sonarrat]

hsw responds to everything with a canned response about either Palo Alto or San Francisco Pacific Heights. I don't know what his schtick is but he seems to be insensitive to the needs of others. You won't find a house rental for $2000 or even $2500 there.

If there are no kids in the picture, I would consider western San Jose, around the 280/880 junction. Affordable but safe and lovably suburban.

[mtrpkl]

Thanks so much. I did some followup research on Palo Alto after HSW's response and thought I might be missing something. Everything was a fortune and huge, which is not what we need. I will research that area of San Jose. We have no kids, so we don't need to worry about school districts or anything like that.

[Jonotastic]

$160,000 salary will be enough for you to have a comfortable life in San Francisco, but you are going to either have to downsize your house/apt or pay a lot more. Most apts don'tcome with parking, if they do, there will only be one space. You can rent additional spaces for around $300 per month and about $150 per month for motocycles. A decent 1 bedroom apt will run around $1500 to $2000 per month.

Are you looking to buy or rent?

I'd recommend looking in...

North Beach
Russian Hill
Nob Hill
Marina
Pacific Heights
Haight
Panhandle
Japantown

ADD:

You mentioned you want to be able to walk out of your house to basic services such as restaurants, parks, bars, shops etc...don't move to Palo Alto if that's the case and ESPECIALLY don't move to San Jose. I chose San Francisco because of that very reason. I wanted to be able to have dinner, go to a bar, go grocery shopping, take a quick bus ride to Union Square for shopping etc. I would choose Seattle any day over San Jose or Palo Alto, it's just your normal suburban style cities.

[bayarea-girl]

Jonotastic makes really good points. But if you will be working in San Jose it probably will be a more enjoyable experience to live in San Jose because commuting can be a drag. San Jose is really nice and is known to be the area for tech jobs (although they are all over the place in the Bay). Try looking for jobs in Mountain View and San Francisco too (if when you visit SanFran is the better option for you). But a lot of Healthcare jobs are in San Jose and I believe the pay is a bit more since there is more demand there for that industry.

Good luck to you.

[mdwstrnkid]

Until my recent move to San Francisco, I lived in Santa Clara for the past seven years, in the Rivermark development. I recall seeing a number of for sale and for rent signs for townhouses in the development around the time that I was moving out (in September). Though you will need to pay a bit more than what you are paying right now, you can find some newer townhomes (<5 years old) that could fit your needs.

I worked in the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto and found it to be a pretty easy commute: 25 minutes in the mornings, about 30 in the evenings. Public transportation wasn't really a viable option, but I don't think that's too unusual for the South Bay. Rivermark is only a couple of miles from SJC and 7-8 miles from downtown San Jose.

[mtrpkl]

Thanks for your help everyone! We scheduled out trip for mid-February, so keep the advice coming if anyone has additional thoughts.