Housing Bubble in Earnest

[MJRinCA]

As was mentioned, East Palo Alto isn't indicative of the Bay Area or Silicon Valley. EPA was a predominantly black neighborhood with extrodinarily high crime rates. Just a few years ago it lead the nation in homicides per capita. They have worked hard on cleaning it up, and over the past 5 or so years it has become a largely hispanic neighborhood / city, but having been a ghetto for so long, somethings are difficult to overcome.

The rest of the bay area has been doing fairly well. I've been in the valley for 20 years. We have owned two homes here, one in Newark and the other in Fremont, both "east bay bedroom" communities. We sold the house in Newark in Sept 06 and it was just below the peak value. We'll sell the house in Fremont later this year, and while it's down about 10% from it's peak value in 2005, it's still worth ~ 3X what we paid for it in 1989.

Compared to the rest of CA, San Jose / Silicon Valley is doing fine. There are some neighborhoods that are not doing well, they tend to be either crime ridden, or if not then in the lower performing school districts.

The people who are really hurting here are those that bought at the peak with insane adjustable rate mortgages.

We're retiring in 60 days and moving out of the area. We'll have two houses, one in SoCal (winter home) and the other in No. NV (summer home). The house payments on those two houses combined are less than what a 2 bedroom apartment rents for in a nice area of San Jose.

[California Lover]

I love San Jose. Close to the beach, close to the redwoods, close to San Francisco - its sites and fine dining, fairly close to the Sierra Nevada and snow skiing and gambling, close to several awesome State Parks and many State Beach Parks, close to great motorcycle friendly two lane roads and highways that run through gorgeous and lush natural beauty, and the unbelievabley great weather - BBQing year round and sometimes in a T-Shirt in the winter. We can ride our motorcycles all year round and because of theat fact we spend VERY LITTLE on gasoline. We also located ourselves near our jobs instead of in the suburbs. We have a good sized lot and our home cost twice as much as one in Fresno, but who in the hell wants to live in Fresno, or Texas, or where it gets so fricking cold you need to own a parka or where you get baked to death in the summer???..not to mention humidity. I LOVE THE BAY AREA!!!