Moving to SJ - renting, preschool, community questions (San Jose, San Francisco: low income, apartment)

[HyphensinCA]

My partner, my toddler, and I are probably moving to the South Bay, and most likely San Jose, in August. Since we live in DC now, this move is pretty daunting logistically. I've been reading through many of the threads in this forum and am really impressed with how thoughtful you all are! I'm hoping folks here might give me a bit more insight into a few questions.

1) What neighborhoods/areas of San Jose would be good for a young family to live in? My partner will be commuting to Santa Clara and I might need to get to San Francisco for work once a week or so. We love our current lifestyle, which is very walkable to restaurants, grocery, bars, parks, coffeeshops. My sense from poking around here is that we should look at the Rose Garden area, Willow Glen, and maybe downtown. Any other ideas?

2) What sorts of preschool and early childhood education options are there in the area? Is there any public preschool for kids who are not low income? If so, what ages and how does it work? In DC there is public pre-K for 3 and 4 year olds, though I think there's a preference for low-income kids. We will have some time to figure this out as our little guy turns two in the fall, but we do need to start thinking about it.

3) I've gathered that the rental market is insane. Most listings are on Craigslist and are looking for occupancy within days or weeks, not months. Is that right? Any advice on how to handle the logistics of organizing a cross-country move if we might need to do something like find a place in July for our August move? Or is there some part of the market where we could line something up for August with more lead time?

Any help or advice you have would be great. We are excited about the move, if daunted and a bit sad that we can't make San Francisco work in our budget.

[ccm123]

1/ Willow Glen has a nice downtown area. The city of Mountain View also has a nice vibrant downtown area with lots of professionals. Los Gatos also has a vibrant and nice downtown area.

2/ I don't know the answer to this question.

3/ You would have to come out here for a "house hunting trip" and start looking for, applying for and getting a rental that will work for your time frame. I have relocated
here a couple of times for work and that's what we did. Flew up here, rented a hotel for a week and started calling the available rentals. If they were still available when we called, we made an appointment to see them. If we liked it, and the terms (timeline, price, etc) were good, we put in an application for the rental.

Rentals move fast here, if you like it, apply for it.

[HyphensinCA]

Originally Posted by ccm123

3/ You would have to come out here for a "house hunting trip" and start looking for, applying for and getting a rental that will work for your time frame. I have relocated
here a couple of times for work and that's what we did. Flew up here, rented a hotel for a week and started calling the available rentals. If they were still available when we called, we made an appointment to see them. If we liked it, and the terms (timeline, price, etc) were good, we put in an application for the rental.

Rentals move fast here, if you like it, apply for it.

Thanks, this is what I was expecting. I guess I'm trying to get a handle on the timeline question - it would be much easier for my work schedule if we could come in early June (at the latest) and find a rental for August 1 or 15. Would that be possible or are most rentals looking for occupancy faster than that? I know we could just pay for rent in two places to make that possible, but obviously moving 3,000 miles is already pretty pricey so we'd like to avoid that if we can.

If we would be likely to be able to line something up with one trip in July, then that might not be too awful for us. Stressful though. Does the rental market tend to be pretty good over the summer in terms of availability?

I'm less concerned about having to make a decision on a rental quickly - that's what DC's market is like as well. And I think we will have a good handle on budget, have two reasonable incomes, plus we have good credit so I think we should be attractive tenants. It's more trying to figure out the logistics of timelines while also needing to arrange movers, etc.

[ccm123]

I would say that most rentals are looking for pretty quick occupancy. Landlords do not like to lose any potential revenue. If someone was willing to rent a vacant place on July 1st and you want August 1st, I believe that the landlord would go with the July 1st party (assuming all other factors are equal).

You could probably come in June and find an August rental, though. Many tenants provide advance notice of their intentions to vacate a property. When we moved out of our last rental house (we bought a home), we notified our landlord as soon as we signed the contract to buy our home. This gave the landlord ample time to find a new tenant and she was grateful to us for that.

Summer is generally when many families move (change schools, buy a new home, etc).

Good luck. Be persistent and you will find a good rental.

Originally Posted by HyphensinCA

Thanks, this is what I was expecting. I guess I'm trying to get a handle on the timeline question - it would be much easier for my work schedule if we could come in early June (at the latest) and find a rental for August 1 or 15. Would that be possible or are most rentals looking for occupancy faster than that? I know we could just pay for rent in two places to make that possible, but obviously moving 3,000 miles is already pretty pricey so we'd like to avoid that if we can.

If we would be likely to be able to line something up with one trip in July, then that might not be too awful for us. Stressful though. Does the rental market tend to be pretty good over the summer in terms of availability?

I'm less concerned about having to make a decision on a rental quickly - that's what DC's market is like as well. And I think we will have a good handle on budget, have two reasonable incomes, plus we have good credit so I think we should be attractive tenants. It's more trying to figure out the logistics of timelines while also needing to arrange movers, etc.

[StandingRoomOnly]

There are no public preschools here as far as I know...private preschools offer discounts for low income parents but that is it... Preschool or pre-k will run you average 500 a month for 2 half days a week...you can find cheaper options around 300 a month (usually 2 half days a week) if you use the local YMCA or community center, or slightly cheaper if you find a local co-op preschool (which you are required to teach once or twice a month or more depending on the size of the preschool.)

[butercup]

We are you except we are moving out next week. We have been looking on CL for a rental since mid-February and my husband has been out there twice for business trips. We still haven't found a rental and are moving into a hotel. Now, we are worse off than most because we have a dog and a cat, and we're trying to wait for a four-bedroom house. We were trying to stay in Willow Glen but have given up on that and are now expanding to Cambrian, Campbell, and the part of Los Gatos we can afford. I'm betting there will be more rentals opening up in the summer but more competition as well. I assume you can do a smaller place so will have MANY more options than we do. I'd look at CL every day if I were you so you can get a feel for it - and don't just do the map view - if they don't plug it in right, a lot of the rentals don't show up well on the map. Use list view even though it is annoying.

It seems very uncommon for them to rent too far in advance - I have seen one or two for May first pop up this week (so 6 weeks in advance) but the great majority are for immediate occupancy or 2 weeks or so in advance (CL ad will tell you not to disturb the tenants). A couple we have called have been fake - wrong numbers, homes that were just sold, not sure what the angle is on the scam but they are scams.

There was a perfect-seeming house available 2 months ago and I would give anything to have rented it and eaten the thousands in cost. The stress of moving our stuff and trying to figure out how long it will be in storage and what needs to not go in storage is awful. Not to mention the hotel part of it (again, may not be as bad for you - we have 3 kids and dog and a cat too).

If you come out for a house-hunting trip and are willing to rent early, make sure you are here all day on Sunday - most of the rental open houses seem to be Sunday afternoons specifically. No idea why, but just what I've noticed from months of looking at CL. Good luck!

JoAnn

[Wrenb]

Originally Posted by HyphensinCA

3) I've gathered that the rental market is insane. Most listings are on Craigslist and are looking for occupancy within days or weeks, not months. Is that right? Any advice on how to handle the logistics of organizing a cross-country move if we might need to do something like find a place in July for our August move? Or is there some part of the market where we could line something up for August with more lead time?

We were just in the Bay Area last weekend house hunting for a move in early May. Most of the places we saw were vacant or available April 1. Having been an apartment manager for many years, I thought the landlords were crazy to forego the rent and let the places go vacant. But then I asked a relative who's a landlord on the peninsula. He told me that it can be really challenging to get the maintenance and cleaners scheduled properly to turn over a rental. So instead of what we did here in Wisconsin, where we scheduled everyone to come through in one day, they let the property become vacant and then clean and make repairs. Because there is a good chance that a vendor will hit them with a week's delay.

I found that having that explanation really helped my stress levels. We ended up taking a townhouse with a lease that starts 3 weeks before we move.

Good luck!

[HyphensinCA]

Thanks everyone, this has been really helpful. I think we will likely end up having to pay double rent, but maybe we can do it for only one month instead of several. We shall see.

[silverkris]

Originally Posted by StandingRoomOnly

There are no public preschools here as far as I know...private preschools offer discounts for low income parents but that is it... Preschool or pre-k will run you average 500 a month for 2 half days a week...you can find cheaper options around 300 a month (usually 2 half days a week) if you use the local YMCA or community center, or slightly cheaper if you find a local co-op preschool (which you are required to teach once or twice a month or more depending on the size of the preschool.)

Not only that, but a lot of preschool programs are full and taking waiting lists - so if there are any programs that you like, get signed up on the waiting lists of several of them.

[Wintermomma]

Agree with what others said. Landlords rule the market here. We called on one once and he was hoping to rent it that weekend! They clearly know that they call the shots and someone will be willing to pay extra just to get in. I also had several I made "appointments" with (which for those looking you know most often you show up and it's a cattle call) who then decided to raise the rent several hundred dollars due to people BIDDING over asking (ON RENT) sight unseen.

So about preschool. In California we have a program called "First 5" and I think it has certain preschools which offer low cost. Now expect them to be the "shove the academics down the baby's throat" kind of stuff b/c I presume the goal is to get them ready to compete in the typical academic kindergartens. Since preschool isn't free and Kindergarten is now like First grade was, the kids who would come in without having the academic preschools have trouble (note - this is just my opinion as a parent).

First 5 | California
Home | Welcome to FIRST 5 (local chapter - maybe if you call them they can provide direction)


This might be one of them (I did some quick googling and it's kind of clear as mud who provides):
Preschool | San Jose Unified School District