So, we’re back. Darin and I flew up to San Jose Friday morning sans enfants, spent three full days looking at houses, and then flew back Sunday night.
We didn’t find a house. We did get a lot of information about areas to live up there. And what the housing market is like at the moment. And, evidently, what the employment market is like—the realtor kept saying, “Your job is secure? Your friends, they all have jobs?”
The housing market is still insane. Maybe not as insane as it was—several times our realtor looked at the house and looked at the price being asked and she said, “What? Are they dreaming?”
Let me tell you about dreaming: we didn’t find a house that didn’t need at least $250,000 of remodeling (as a start) until we looked at places over $1.2M.
I can’t even wrap my mind around those numbers. I always thought if you bought a house with that many digits, everything came gold-plated. But these days, a couple hundred thou here, a couple hundred thou there, and pretty soon you’re talking about a heavy-duty mortgage.
We didn’t get pre-approval on a mortgage before we went. Big mistake. We have to run the numbers, figure out a budget, figure out what kind of load we can carry.
Of the 30+ properties we looked at, we only saw one that both Darin and I responded to, and it didn’t fit our criteria in so many ways (including price, but we were pretty discouraged at this point and wanted to see anything). But it was unique and had personality and was really attractive in an off-beat way. The house was shaped like a U, with a kitchen/Great Room combination on one end, the bedrooms down the bend, and a gigantic living room—700 feet?—at the far end. The deck overlooking Cupertino and Los Altos was the middle of the U, and the pool on the deck ran into the living room, so you could begin your laps inside the house.
“So our kids can drown in the comfort of their own living room,” we said.
And since the house was on the hill, there really wasn’t room for the kids to run around. But the house was so funky and unusual that we kept talking about it the rest of the day. A house with a little personality really puts the vast majority of the cookie-cutter ones in the shade.
Unfortunately, we’re probably going to have to find a run-downish one and spend El Dinero Grande to add some personality to it.
(The title of this entry, by the way, is a play on a complaint Darin’s heard a lot over the past few months. Some kind of prize to the first person who posts the actual complaint. I know! I’ll send you a postcard.)
Still no TABBED BROWSING.
I think it’s funny that on a million + house they still have to point out that, yes, it has an oven and garbage disposal. Never mind the three car garage and pool, look at that garbage disposal!
Okay Emily, send me your address!
I’m pretty sure the oven/garbage disposal thing comes from a standard checklist realtors check off when listing a house. Skylights, ground floor bedroom…
Gulp. 1.3M? That would buy you a whole city block in my little Atlantic Canadian city. Good luck with the house hunting.
So, that house you link to is about two-and-two-thirds times as large (square-footage-wise) as my townhouse and costs just over three times as much as I paid 16 months ago (which makes sense since it, like, not a townhouse, and is arguably in a better location in many ways).
I can barely wrap my mind around a 3000 square foot house. Granted, I’m single and kidless, but I grew up (with my sister) in a rather large house on the east coast and I’m pretty sure it was smaller than that. Are you really looking for something that big?
Speaking from the perspective of someone who works in Cupertino but cannot afford to live there (hurrah public education job): Cupertino is one of the most expensive housing markets (still) around here. If you look in San Jose proper, or Mountain View, or Sunnyvale, or even a little bit northward in Redwood City, you will find that real estate has depreciated considerably more there. People are starting to get desperate to get rid of their property. Not, however, in Cupertino. Actually, one of my co-workers is moving to Maui in June and is selling her 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in Santa Clara. I’ve never seen it, but it’s in the Cupertino Elementary District. If you’d like her contact info, send me an email and I’ll pass it along to you.
Well, yeah, we’re looking in Cupertino and Los Altos and Saratoga because they have good school systems. (Now, at any rate. Gray Davis, though…) So of course we’re looking at expensive houses. Things could be worse: we could be looking at Palo Alto, with its median price of $1.1m.
As for size of house: we have a 4 bedroom house now. We have a 3000-sq. ft. house now. I guess we could live with a whole heck of a lot less space — but let’s see: there’s our bedroom, and Sophia and Simon will eventually need separate rooms, and Darin’s parents visit often enough to warrant a guest room, plus Darin’s office, and, while it’s not as crucial, I’d like a place to work as well. And it would be nice for the kids to have a playarea that’s not also our living room, so that we don’t have (as many) toys strewn around all the time.
Maybe this is completely unreasonable but…it’s the way we live right now. Whoo hoo — move to the Bay Area, take a serious dive in your standard of living.
It’s not the final price tag that gets me, it’s the estimated MONTHLY payment that boggles my mind: $6,468 Per Month. Holy crap.
There’s a not-terribly-fascinating but workable 4-bedroom for sale across the street from us (Saratoga, with Cupertino schools). The elderly gentleman who lives there alone has had it on the market for several months and might be getting tired of waiting. Or maybe you already looked at it and rejected it. And didn’t wave because you didn’t know we lived across the street. 🙂
Another Diane