Everybody here seems to be very familiar with SF and Peninsula (old fashion definition cut off at MV). Hardly anyone talk about South Bay (old fashion definition starts with Cupertino and Sunnyvale, includes Campbell, Santa Clara, San Jose, Saratoga and Los Gatos). Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Saratoga, West San Jose and certain neighborhoods of Los Gatos are very expensive now. However, there are many cheap neighborhoods in Campbell, Santa Clara and San Jose.
I was considering Saratoga because of the big lot, nice house and good schools, but longish commute to 101 kills the idea.
Sunnyvale is convenient, but I don’t think it commands close to 2M price range in the nicer neighborhood (but the market proves me wrong).
Cupertino is nice if you don’t have to commute north, good schools, grocery and eat out options, shops, perfect if you are apple employee or work close to santa clara.
I gave my friend a lift early morning back to his house in Campbell, then drove back up north via hw85 at around 8:40am. The traffic gets progressively worst real fast, since you have cars coming in from each exits (including Saratoga etc).
I really love Belmont and San Carlos as a mid-point between SF and South Bay. That was the reason I looked there 5 years ago. I will still vote for them today.
About South Bay, what happened to the old forum crowd? It used to be the other way around. Everybody talked about the South Bay and no one cares about SF…
I am sure some people here know south bay. Some members seem to live in Cupertino School District from their posts. Why don’t you post your questions and see how it goes?
sunnyvale is for rich googlers and facebookers who are yet to hit their 30’s so they can make payments but maybe a 3 million house is just out of their range. So they setlte for 2M in sunnyvale.
My husband and I grew up in the Lynbrook High School area but we aren’t familiar with the rental market. My husband plans to rent out the SFH he inherited there starting next year. It’s a nice place to grow up but I think the neighborhood we bought in Mountain View looks better and it’s a lot closer to work too.
I live in Lynbrook neighborhood.
I think rental demand is high here due to school.
I see quite good number of my kids’ friends move to different rental properties during summer so that they can stay in the same school. Usually condo.
A lot of them recently moved here from Asia.
Thus, I assume such rental demand would last for a while.
One thing I like about my neighborhood is it is really quiet.
I used to live in Peninsula (rent of course) and there were a few party families on our street.
To me, it was big disadvantage.
So far, my kids and I are very satisfied with school especially because of advance curriculum in STEM.
Compare to where I used to live, I feel like there are more resources for working mother.
My kids’ on-site YMCA after school care opens almost everyday except summer even on the day before Christmas! (I know that is too extreme and haven’t used the care during winter break. However, it still gives me peace of mind.)
However, there are too few non-Asian families here. Most of non-Asian families I know are Jewish.
Thus, this(lacking of diversity) could be quite critically negative point to some people.
For price wise, I saw about 10% price jump last year but don’t see any jump or drop this year. It seems to be flattened.
However, there have been less houses on the market with much less attractive options this year.
One thing I notice recently is townhouse price seem to be still going up getting more and more close to entry level SFH.
I was checking out rentals in West San Jose a few months back. SFHs are very expensive and I wouldn’t consider them for rentals unless you don’t care much about cash flow. I checked out a couple of condos next to 280. However, they have restrictions on rental units. Not feasible.
For non CUSD part of the west san jose and maybe campbell, I am seeing price coming down from peak. I don’t know if anybody else is seeing the same thing. I haven’t done much research in that area though so I really cannot recommend anything.
I couldn’t find any neighborhood in this area for numbers to work for rental investment unless you care about appreciation only. For me, it has to cashflow or at least neutral (if I really like the area) as safeguard for down run. For that reason, Daly City, SF & Oakland (still researching this one) works better for me as investment.
Berryessa part of San Jose in the Ruskin Elementary area. BART is coming there next year. It’ll be 1 hour to SF. Plus, it’s close to all the N SJ tech stuff. Apple is building a 15,000 person campus off N 1st. It’s just too much of a suburb feel for my taste.
I’m also bullish on the area near Dirodon and the new Whole Foods. The schools aren’t as good, but the area is improving. If you’re investing, it’s better to pay for OK schools now and benefit from the improvement.
Realistically, would you be cash flow positive on SFHs (unless you had a lot of cash spilling out of your pockets) at those inflated prices? I am thinking multiple units might get you there (but of course more expensive). Shoot, when I first bought my Oakland multi unit, (normal financing, not all cash) I was cash positive from day 1 to this day. My buddy from the IRS was amazed when he looked at my taxes back then and saw that. Oh, if you folks ever have an IRS question I may be able to get you with an IRS agent. Yes, I do know people in the right places…
Yea, at this point, I can only find cashflow positive (with 25% to 30% down) only in Daly City where you rent upstairs and downstairs unit. In Milpitas / Fremont, you might get cashflow neutral. I agree that next class would be multi-family.
IMO your goal/exit would be different since SFH your are banking on appreciation driven up by the primary residence byer, and with multi-family, you are banking on rent skyrocketing and sell it to another investor or hold forever. But good news is both are happening in Bay Area!!
But interested in finding out where we can get cash flow positive or neural in south bay. Like @RealEstatebull posted in another thread, having secondary unit might be a way to get the cash flow.
Yes, definitely doable even in SF but some folks here don’t like rent control laws. I have buddies who have SF SFHs with legal inlaws and they are cash flow positive. I have confirmed studios and inlaws going for over 1k easily so not surprising.
Rented out one modest 3/2/1600sf on Blaney, Took 1 month. Rent is not even $4K.
If one works at AAPL they want discount, haggling on rent. I let the one not wanting a discount rent it.
Yes, Lynnbrook high.
Rentals are slower to fill up this year.
