<p>In the bay area, when average housing is below 200K, you will experience a safety issue, its not life threatening, but theft and vandalism.</p>
<p>Antioch and its surrounded area was booming because BART extended to Pitsburg. During the boom days, houses in Antioch reached 1.5 Million on the Lake with water front previlages. But the bubble soon bursted because there is no local jobs to support it. The commute by BART/purblic transportation is around 2.5 hours one way door to door to Silicon valley locations such as Mountain View. With the “lower price” of housing in Silicon Valley, Antioch, Oakley, Pitsburg and other areas were left without support base. That is the reason why contractor is willing to install the roof for Dstark 6000 dollar less. Material cost is more less the same.</p>
<p>I guess that something like that could work out - one of our employees lives about 2,000 miles from the office right now. He comes in once or twice a quarter but he has a home locally where he lives during the summer. Most of the folks in our group that have been here longer than a year come in one time every one to two weeks. People work from home or whereever a good chunk of the time. I was only in the office one day this past week.</p>
<p>Of course where you live has to somewhere that makes you happy and lowest cost isn’t always the major concern.</p>
<p>Davis is an awesome place to go to school. I loved it there. Unfortunately, my pre-vet daughter has dismissed UCD, as well as California as a whole for her college experience. So, empty nest-wise, no reason to stay in CA. </p>
<p>Having lived here all my life, I’m ready to experience the other side of the country, with weekends in NY, and leaf peeping in the fall, and quick trips to historical places, as well as short flights to Europe. (Not to mention primaries that actually count…) </p>
<p>Added plus, I will be able to get my college age daughter home for the weekend…</p>
<p>“Why the heck do you need a 4,000 square foot house? My parents have a 3,500 sf split level and they almost went broke just trying to furnish the damn thing, to say nothing of the heating/cooling costs.”</p>
<p>One of the responses. I guess I don’t get the priorities of some people. Trading commute time for the size of the house?</p>
<p>We have a large house (I think about 3,600 square feet) because of our home office, three kids, and a dog, lol (wow, those teenaged boys take up a lot of real estate). I do wonder what we’ll do when the kids move away. We love our neighborhood and house!</p>
<p>Older daughter stayed in California (though Southern California) and graduated last year, and is working in LA. I get to see her three times a year. (Never came home for summer or spring break, even Freshman year…) I think I might have a better chance catching up with her if I was on the east coast, she tends to head there when she has a free weekend…</p>
<p>One of the things that is flumoxing me looking at houses is my house here is a little less than 3000 square feet. I was thinking I could downsize. Nothing in NC in my price range is less than 3000 square feet, most are 4K. So now we are thinking maybe a two story, where we could heat only the main floor most the time, and heat the upstairs when kids/company comes.</p>
<p>Well…UCD?..why don’t you spend less on a house?</p>
<p>There is nothing for sale that is 2,000 to 2,500 a ft?</p>
<p>BCEagle91 found a 250 sq ft place. Ok. Maybe not in NC…</p>
<p>But if you want bigger…I know many people that think 3,000 sq ft is small…( they have big heads…just kidding). Go bigger…you should get what you want.</p>
<p>A friend chose to live in Antioch because he could afford a nice, new 2500 sq ft home. </p>
<p>My brother chose to move to Marinwood in San Rafael in Marin County. Better schools. Better community. You can take a ferry or drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to the city. But the house was older. And smaller. Very similar to this…My brother did turn the garage into a family room.</p>
<p>It’s specially designed for medical residents at the hospital across the street - the person with that apartment wouldn’t spend much time there. There are plenty of places nearby to hang out comfortably - in the busy city, there are a lot of other places that become extensions of your private living space.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t do it though.</p>
<p>The first studio apartment that I had was about 600 sq ft. Basically perfect for me.</p>
<p>I think that I like 1200-2000 sq ft these days. Even for raising a family with up to two kids. My siblings all have homes in that range. Mine’s probably the cheapest and the most expensive is one that lives near San Francisco. She bought it for $400K two decades ago. I went to visit and thought that I was in the wrong neighborhood - I was expecting a lot more for $400K. It was hard to find anything that cost that much where I live. Except for a bunch of mansions built in the early 1900s.</p>
<p>I certainly understand paying more for good public schools but paying more doesn’t always mean paying for more space.</p>
<p>The huge divergence between Heating Oil and Natural Gas this year may change views on the sizes of homes. In the past, both were expensive and the bigger your space, the more you paid for heating and cooling (efficiency being the same). This year, those with natural gas probably made out big-time on heating costs and those with heating oil probably aren’t happy. If the trend continues (and I think that it will), homes with natural gas would be more attractive and could sustain larger homes with similar heating costs to smaller heating oil homes.</p>
<p>Cooling is still a problem though you don’t need it as much here.</p>
<p>Dstark’s link about Antioch is an eye opener. But that thread was posted in 2008! At that time Antioch still has Million dollar homes, today I saw one of those is offered at $358K. Does it speak of some thing about the area?</p>