Got a job offer and need advice (San Jose, San Francisco: how much, house)

[lotar_vk]

Hi everyone,

I've got job offer in Palo Alto, and am going to take it, but I'm not sure what to do regarding place to live...

I ran over this and sub-forums and have seen a lot of different opinions. Now, the thing is that I'm married, although young (23) and will be moving from Croatia (Europe) there.

Bot of us have lived in and have used to mid-size environments (population max 300k) where we could have our peace at home (not too urban, suburban-like I'd say) but to be in 30 minutes walk distance to places where we can go out over weekends (we're still young, remember )

And one additional, unrelated question - does anyone from ex Yugoslavia lives there - as I'd like to know that we won't be the only ones?

Thanks!

[kdog]

You could live anywhere on the peninsula. It all depends on how much you want to pay for housing versus commute distance. For example, I lived in San Jose when I worked in Palo Alto. I had a nice house there that I'd never have been able to afford in Palo Alto. The downside is the commute. However, there are choices for transportation. I sometimes used Caltrain which is a great option. I eventually bought a motorcycle and used that. With legal lane splitting (which I believe is standard in eastern Europe), and commuter lanes being legal for motorcycles and great year-round weather, it's amazingly pleasant and efficient commuting that way.

As far as "30 minutes walk distance to places where we can go out over weekends", well that depends entirely on what kind of places you're talking about. Where I lived in San Jose, I had a huge county park for hiking and mountain biking within a 10 minutes walk. If you lived in Palo Alto, you could go shopping, eat sushi and walk around the Stanford Campus in 30 minutes, but that's probably about it.

Not sure about Croatians, but there are tons of eastern Europeans in Silicon Valley in general.

[80skeys]

People who work in the area pretty much live anywhere up and down the Peninsula. The Peninsula towns are pretty much what you're looking for, based on what you said in your post. They're suburban, not too crowded, more peaceful, less urban, but still have a good offering of shops, restaurants, and etc.

So the Peninsula means the towns on the west side of the Bay all the way from San Francisco down to Sunnyvale. If you pull up google maps, you'll see towns like San Mateo, Redwood City, Menlo Park, etc. Any of these will fit your criteria.

There's a lot of folks from Yugoslavia in the area, I used to work with some in the South Bay (Sunnyvale.)