My dd is a grad student in sfo and looking for a new apt (she’s commuting from Berkeley now) and I found she’s eligible for low income housing? So far it’s looking like $1500/mo is the lowest she can expect per person with 2-3 roommates.
Is it possible to find less ridiculous prices with a longer commute, or “less desirable” neighborhoods? Not meaning to be snarky, really don’t know.
I live in North Jersey, which is high priced though not like what is listed here, but in an “non-desirable” town, so jouse prices to commute to NYC are doable, if you’ll live here. And for generations, people in NJ have moved more than an hour, sometimes two, south or west, and commuted to NYC from more reasonably priced homes. Not saying these are great alternatives!
So I was wondering, are there cheaper “non-ideal” communities, and/or cheaper long commute communities outside of SV. Again, honest question; I don’t know this and wonder.
" And for generations, people in NJ have moved more than an hour, sometimes two, south or west, and commuted to NYC from more reasonably priced homes."
I’ve known plenty of people that have done the 2 hour each way commute into NYC for finance jobs. Never a lifestyle choice I wanted to live. You pay a price for those long commutes as well, both financially and less tangibly.
Whether it is finance/investment jobs in NYC or tech jobs in SV, you can find such jobs other places. You don’t need to work in NYC for finance or in SV for tech.
No. Many employed folks live on the streets or in their cars in a few West Coast cities.
@garland yes. I’m not an expert on pricing but pretty much the peninsula side (SF down to maybe Santa Clara) is the most expensive, and the East Bay is cheaper. The further out east you go the more affordable it gets, more or less. The traffic situation has become horrendous because so many of the great jobs are on the peninsula and people commute across just a couple of bridges. We don’t have a great regional transportation system. We have one heavy train line (CalTrain) that runs from SF to San Jose on the peninsula side, and then an electric rail system (BART) that has 4 lines, none of which go to Marin county or the peninsula.
We need a major regional solution that includes realistic new housing options on the peninsula. This is one of those local hot-button issues… of course no one wants the 12 story high rise apartment building next door when parking on your street is already tight and the developers are calling it ‘transit-oriented development’ meaning because it’s 4 blocks from a CalTrain station they don’t plan to include more than one parking spot per apartment. But weirdly, more housing on the peninsula would probably make the traffic better because fewer people would have to commute from the East Bay. We just passed a major regional transit measure which includes a lot of good projects but is being funded by an toll increase on the bridges… i.e., by people who commute by car, which includes a lot of folks who commute by car precisely because they can’t afford to live closer to their jobs.
It’s just a lot of growing pains right now as the area morphs from suburbia into a more urban, densely populated area and people have a lot of opinions on how that should or shouldn’t go. Add in earthquakes and potential sea-level rising and it makes it even more complicated.
Where do teachers, cops, firefighters, nurses, and all service folks live in these high COL places?
We need to have better public transportation system, we need high speed rails! Of course, it is always the NIMBY problem.
Not sure about San Francisco, but some California firefighters make significant money. About a decade ago, one California community made national headlines because firefighters were earning several hundred thousand dollars per year. If I recall correctly, it also was covered on CBS’ 60 Minutes show.
There are cheaper neighborhoods and more expensive neighborhoods, but “cheaper” here is relative. East Palo Alto is next to Palo Alto, on the flats near the Bay that flood in rainstorms. It has always been undesirable, and for a year or two recently it had the highest murder rate per capita in the US. Houses there are small, on tiny lots, and usually not extremely well built. The median home value in East Palo Alto is just under a million dollars according to Zillow.
Just across the city and county line, in Palo Alto, the median home value is $3.3 million. So East Palo Alto is a lot cheaper, but…
Or your family could try Tracy. The median home value there is about half a million. It’ll take you over two hours to get to your job at Facebook, Google or the City of Mountain View Fire Department, though, and the traffic is horrendous.
The east bay area is generally less expensive than San Francisco and the peninsula area (west of the bay), but not necessarily “cheap”. Also, some of the price increases have been within the last several years, so that people who bought earlier may have substantially lower mortgage and property tax costs than those who buy now.
East bay:
https://www.zillow.com/richmond-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/pittsburg-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/hayward-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/livermore-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/walnut-creek-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/dublin-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/oakland-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/berkeley-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/fremont-ca/home-values/
San Francisco:
https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/
Peninsula:
https://www.zillow.com/east-palo-alto-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/redwood-city-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/san-mateo-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/mountain-view-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/palo-alto-ca/home-values/
San Jose and south:
https://www.zillow.com/gilroy-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/santa-cruz-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/morgan-hill-ca/home-values/
https://www.zillow.com/san-jose-ca/home-values/
How much is average rent in the city with “the highest murder rate per capita in the US” ?
The more relevant question may be how long of a daily commute are you willing to tolerate ? And I don’t think that 2 hours one way is considered excessive in this region.
Just under $2000 per month for a studio apartment in East Palo Alto, which no longer has the highest murder rate in the US but is definitely a higher-crime area.
That record-setting homicide rate was back in the early 1990s (which was also around the peak of the crime wave nationally).
https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/east-palo-alto/ says $2,536 is the average monthly rent now (not back then during the crime wave era).
It was also a noisy statistic. East Palo Alto is a small town. It was dangerous, but crime rates are going to jump around year over year a lot more in a small town than in a big city.
One of my kids was living in San Francisco and decided that the high cost of living wasn’t what pushed her over the edge but the having to work 10 hour days in order to afford it. She felt like she didn’t have time to enjoy life. She moved to another high cost of living part of Ca but slightly less expensive but the key change for her is she works less and has a much better work life balance.
My other D went to school in Davis. Moved to a cheaper part of Ca but her fiancé got a job back in Davis. They rented for a year plus and decided to buy a house. By this time she was working in Fairfield. They bought a house in Vacaville for 350,000 about 18 months ago. It is midway between both jobs. We had always thought of Vacaville as more of a distance drive for those working in Sacramento but they have found that many of their neighbors commute to the Bay Area for work via Hwy 80 or one of the surface roads that has just been upgraded to help commuters. Vacaville isn’t the most exciting place to live and the restaurant selection is terrible but it’s affordable for them on a just six figure combined income.
My D’s good friend works at Stanford but lives in the Santa Cruz area. I have another friend who does the same. The commute is terrible.
Time to buy property in Manhattan.
“Manhattan real estate had its worst second quarter since the financial crisis, with prices and sales dropping and inventory rising, according to a new report.”
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Manhattan-Real-Estate-Record-Low-Sales-487209201.html
Homes in Tracy are selling like “hotcakes” right now. IMO, a two-hour one way commute is outrageous, but home buyers are buying homes in Tracy and commuting to Silicon Valley anyway.
Niece just graduated and got her RN. She is expected to start at around $90k and will be living in SF with some other girls. (The pay prospect causes her grandmother to go all aflutter, btw. Said gma made a life of comparing her children to one another and now carries on that vaulted tradition with the grandchildren.) Meanwhile “poor” D started at $40k and was able to afford her own loft apartment in downtown Rochester and a new car.
DC is also fairly high COL, but S can afford a $2K one bedroom apartment near the metro that is an OK commute for him to get to work. He lives alone and has saved enough he’d be able to buy with a big down payment if he figures out that he REALLY wants to stay in DC.
S1 has lived in shared housing for the past four years. Pays $1400-1500/mo. This was for a room in a 3BR apt and his own bathroom. 40 minute commute (7 miles) to Mountain View. When he got his offer in the fall of 2011, one could get a 1000 sq ft cottage in need of major Reno for $650k. Same neighborhood is now at $1.6M.
The traffic on I80 with people commuting from Vacaville to either Sac or SFO is insane. It’s gotten significantly worse in the past few years.
I thought DC prices and traffic were terrible!
The high COL towns have school districts that pass small and large parcel taxes, which the school districts then use to pay teachers a higher rate of pay. Depending on years of experience and how much education over a BA degree, base pay at the bottom starts in the mid-$65K-ish to $125K-ish +/-, plus additional salary for additional certifications and benefits.