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use maps.google.com directions feature to find commute times. In San Mateo or Santa Clara counties, 30 minute commute is never easy to get unless you can travel in off hours or work within the town you live.
What times would be considered rush hour? 8-9? Thanks for the recommendations on places. It's very helpful!!
I'd say 7 - 10 am...4 - 7 pm. I'm not on it so much in the AMs anymore. I see it start getting sluggish even as early as 3 pm if you aren't in the carpool lane.
We are in the same boat as you at this time, our budget is slightly higher, we have been looking 1+ years for a home.
places mentioned above woodside, portal valley, Cupertino mountains, los altos hills (maybe), los gatos mountains. Here is my take.
Woodside in you budget would yield a house in need of MAJOR repair that is more likely a tear down. Ditto portola valley. Ditto Los Altos hills.
You may be mislead by what you find on any house search engine like redfin or realtor, and zillow is particularly useless around here. Homes within 30 min commute of mountain view that are in good enough condition to get a mortgage go pending in under 14 days almost uniformly unless they are priced way too high for the neighborhood. Buying a house is like attending a rare species cattle auction. You come to the auction with either cash in hand, or your bank letter and a fat check at least 3% of your bid. The list price on average is 10-20% below what the property will sell for. If you see an outlying listing that is "too good to be true" then add on 25%. Open houses are on Saturday and Sunday for one weekend only, or, if the list is very low, they may open the house for two weekends to create hype around this rare find. All property reports - termites, roof, inspection, geology, etc are already done - about 2-3K worth, and sometimes some or all of the work is completed prior to open house. OFTEN moderate renovations are done prior to hitting market like new counters, faucets, paint, siding, wood floors refinished, you have no idea of knowing the condition of the property six weeks prior and these cosmetic changes can make a crap shack look OK. Bids are due either Wednesday or Thursday following open house. You will need a good agent who will feel out the listing agent and they tell you what to bid. At that point you either balk, or go in.
You will not find a live-able house on 0.25 acre of land that can be walked on within 30 min commute of mountain view. You may find a shack on a cliff on 0.25 acres, though.
You will find a 1300 square foot 1950's ranch on 5500 square foot to 7800 square foot lot or something a little bigger that needs about 100-200K work, in Mountain View itself at around 1.7 to 2.1M. South Palo Alto has similar prices and lots on the low end, too.
Good luck to you here. I like it here, the housing sucks, and as long as the family is OK with that, the rest is gravy.
The real estate agent here often have MBA's, some are attorneys, good agents here can make a million plus per year. this market is unlike other parts of the country.
Take a look at Belmont, CA - still some decent prices, good schools. If your husband's office is within walking distance of the train, it's a GREAT commute option, not a terrible drive(not a great one, either, but for this area it's not bad). For all houses, second and third everyone else here - look at redfin and sort for closed sales, past 6 months - that will give you a much better idea of real prices, and I think they still show the asking price so you can tell asking/closing ratios.
Also, dburbs? Hit the nail on the head. Very very accurate post.
Never heard of Redfin, will give that a try. I had been using Trulia. Which showed homes that would work, but I had no idea about schools. Thanks so much everyone, this was very helpful!
We are in the same boat as you at this time, our budget is slightly higher, we have been looking 1+ years for a home.
places mentioned above woodside, portal valley, Cupertino mountains, los altos hills (maybe), los gatos mountains. Here is my take.
Woodside in you budget would yield a house in need of MAJOR repair that is more likely a tear down. Ditto portola valley. Ditto Los Altos hills.
You may be mislead by what you find on any house search engine like redfin or realtor, and zillow is particularly useless around here. Homes within 30 min commute of mountain view that are in good enough condition to get a mortgage go pending in under 14 days almost uniformly unless they are priced way too high for the neighborhood. Buying a house is like attending a rare species cattle auction. You come to the auction with either cash in hand, or your bank letter and a fat check at least 3% of your bid. The list price on average is 10-20% below what the property will sell for. If you see an outlying listing that is "too good to be true" then add on 25%. Open houses are on Saturday and Sunday for one weekend only, or, if the list is very low, they may open the house for two weekends to create hype around this rare find. All property reports - termites, roof, inspection, geology, etc are already done - about 2-3K worth, and sometimes some or all of the work is completed prior to open house. OFTEN moderate renovations are done prior to hitting market like new counters, faucets, paint, siding, wood floors refinished, you have no idea of knowing the condition of the property six weeks prior and these cosmetic changes can make a crap shack look OK. Bids are due either Wednesday or Thursday following open house. You will need a good agent who will feel out the listing agent and they tell you what to bid. At that point you either balk, or go in.
You will not find a live-able house on 0.25 acre of land that can be walked on within 30 min commute of mountain view. You may find a shack on a cliff on 0.25 acres, though.
You will find a 1300 square foot 1950's ranch on 5500 square foot to 7800 square foot lot or something a little bigger that needs about 100-200K work, in Mountain View itself at around 1.7 to 2.1M. South Palo Alto has similar prices and lots on the low end, too.
Good luck to you here. I like it here, the housing sucks, and as long as the family is OK with that, the rest is gravy.
The real estate agent here often have MBA's, some are attorneys, good agents here can make a million plus per year. this market is unlike other parts of the country.
Are you just renting now? In my opinion, my husband is going to have to endure the longer commute. We maybe able to afford more than 2 million - negotiations for relocating/salary are still be worked out. But I don't want to spend that amount on a house that needs work or has a postage size lot. So the houses that I am still seeing forsale, that have been on the market longer than 14 days, something is wrong with them? Or they are just further out (say 45 min) and not as desirable as the one's closer to Mountain View?
What about Fremont? Is that too far? Thanks so much for your help on this. Like moving across the country isn't stressful in itself.
dburbs is spot on. also, it is very challenging to buy a house in this market from a distance. we did a cross country move in 2014 and just stumbled upon some dumb luck that got us a house.
Oh, so the schools - that's another fun one. The districts here are pretty small, compared to what I was used to - the school districts comprise one or two towns' worth of schools only, and there are mega-weird boundary overlaps - for instance, some homes in Saratoga are Cupertino Union district, homes in San Carlos can be in San Carlos, or Belmont/Redwood Shores, or Redwood City districts. Also, the high school districts are distinct and often different from the K-8 districts. Many many many of the good schools here are "impacted" (full) so as a new resident, your kids will often go to a different school in your district than the closest ones or the ones you think you're zoned for. That makes it more important to choose your district carefully, for one that has uniformly good schools. And comingbacktocali is so right, it is very unusual to buy a house without renting here for a while, because so many people have to bid on multiple houses before they land one. The good news is, once you get into contract, you'll likely be closing within a few weeks, so there's that advantage
And there is another unusual thing here that our realtor clued us in on, and we watch with fascination. If a house is overpriced, it will.not.sell. I don't understand why, because in normal markets someone would just come in and underbid, but here that doesn't seem to happen. So yes, if a house is on the market for a month or longer, there is something wrong - but that something might just be that they are asking a little too much for it.
Are you just renting now? In my opinion, my husband is going to have to endure the longer commute. We maybe able to afford more than 2 million - negotiations for relocating/salary are still be worked out. But I don't want to spend that amount on a house that needs work or has a postage size lot. So the houses that I am still seeing forsale, that have been on the market longer than 14 days, something is wrong with them? Or they are just further out (say 45 min) and not as desirable as the one's closer to Mountain View?
What about Fremont? Is that too far? Thanks so much for your help on this. Like moving across the country isn't stressful in itself.
Your budget will go a lot farther in Fremont than on the peninsula. Your husband's commute wouldn't be fun, but lots of people commute Fremont to Silicon Valley. 1/4 acre lot or bigger is hard to come by in most parts of the Bay Area, but you'd definitely have more options in your price range if you looked in Fremont. 2 million + would get you into a very nice neighborhood in Fremont and good schools.
Milpitas is another option and would give your husband a slightly easier commute. Homes there in your price range would mostly be up in the foothills and they would be very nice. The east foothills have some gated communities with large homes on large lots with great views. Schools in Milpitas are good.
You may want to look into the Evergreen or Almaden Valley areas of San Jose too. There are many upscale neighborhoods with large homes on large lots in both of those areas. Many of the homes in the nicer neighborhoods there hover right around 2 million and schools are good too.
Fremont to MV commute in a car is HORRID. Some MV companies have a shuttle from Ardenwood parking lot, and that wouldn't be terrible.
The reason 0.25 acre is so hard to find is because most of the cities allow a second property cottage rental on the lot once it reaches a certain size. A rental unit in good shape - even 600sq ft cottage size can fetch 3K per month so the extra lot size is very valuable. I have seen many property falsely listed with larger than actual lot size, but I called the county for a more accurate measure and found the listing agent lied. When I brought this to his attention, he didn't really give a ****.
if you do come and want to rent first, call the school district prior to signing a lease to make sure where your kids will go. If you end up in MV don't worry to much about individual schools scores, even Theuerkauf which has low scores due to high non-English speaking population, is not really that bad, and that neighborhood is changing right before my eyes - it does not look the same as it did two years ago because the small shack (i'm not exaggerating, they are shacks) home stock are being leveled for 1700-2100 square foot new homes that will cost you 1.9-2.3 or so. A new 1900 sq ft condo just sold here for over 1.9M. This may be a good area to target in your price range, it is crawling with dual professional young families, and lots and lots of kids in the park. There is a 10 rated magnet school in the middle of that neighborhood too called Stevenson. I do not live in this neighborhood (rex manor) but I have seen quite a few homes here.
With all the pros and cons of MV, I have been VERY impressed with this city, it is doing a great job planning for the future. You can go to the city website and watch city council meetings live. It will surpass Palo Alto within 20 years as far as livability for young families goes.
From MV, you can drive 25 min across dumbarton to Ardenwood Farm, drive 15 min up El Monte to Hidden Villa, or drive 20 min to Rancho San Antonio - all three of which have farms and open areas to go with young kids. These places are not at all congested on the weekends. You may not be able to buy your own acreage here, but you have vast beautifully preserved public access space.
At Rancho San Antonio last month on a nice weekend outing we saw a family of several deer - at least 4-5, a flock of wild turkey (!), sheep, goats etc, and walked in the woods for a while. parking was free. I think you can walk trails for 25 miles in the hills without seeing a car. http://www.openspace.org/sites/defau...an_antonio.pdf
the free and nearly free weekend recreation is amazing here, and I do not regret the tiny crap housing (1300 ish) that we rent. my kids don't seem to miss the 4500+ square foot home we used to have, my husband wants more space, though.
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