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December 04, 2007
House Hunting in Silicon Valley
Errm, not really house hunting. More like apartment scrounging; but that lacks alliteration ;) More seriously, the variability in pricing here is startling. Apartments in Cupertino cost 2-times as much as those in the abutting cities of Mountain View and Santa Clara. Why? Is there anything in Cupertino besides De Anza Junior College and Apple's campus?
I guess I haven't been in the area long enough to understand the forces driving real estate pricing here. What I know is that I need to find a place closer to work as the hour long, 15 mile, commute is really getting tiresome. I love the views from my current house across the entire valley, but the location does leave one feeling isolated. Need something from the market? That'll be a 10 minute drive down the hill, 2 minutes at the market and then 10 minutes to drive back up. It'd be much nicer to be able to walk 10 minutes each way, you know? And going out to a club or bar? Forget it, unless I want to drive two towns over and back. At this point the move is inevitable; what's still up in the air is where, exactly, I should move to.
It looks like my choices are limited though... given what a cheapskate I am (apparently there are people willing to pay $1600 month for a 700 square foot apartment in some cities) I'll have to either move to Santa Clara or find an incredible deal to be in Mountain View or Sunnyvale. Or, buy a mobile home and park it outside different big-box stores for a week at a time. Hmmmm, could I spin that into a web2.0 "reality" web site of some type?
Posted by ashusta at December 4, 2007 08:14 AM