I’m also not familiar with the players in this market, but upon reading your comment (the PA house listed at 2.88M, indeed they are fishing for much higher offers) i looked up deleon’s website and their neighborhood guide is excellent for someone inexperienced like me. I’m still going through them (with google map opened)
Since they only covered certain prized area, I’d love to learn more about the others if similar resources exist.
BTW here’s another one out of our price range, I’d love to hear what you guys think about this property
I’m trying to learn and see if I can find anything unusual/cons with any listing that I see, so if there’s one closer to 2.2 shows up, I’d be able to compare and know the things I give up (obviously 2.2 wouldn’t be as nice as this one) would make sense. Location aside, for the house I wouldn’t need so much space in the living/dinning/kitchen/master, and would rather have smaller 4br + 2~3ba
Also a bit off topics, RE prices can be a little like stock price. If the stock price got too high, you’d want to split it to increase the pool of potential buyers, thus driving up the market value even more. 1.1M cupertino house in 2014 definitely appreciated a lot more than 2M+ mansion.
Greatschools.org sometimes shows inaccurate information on school district boundaries.
When FUHSD tried to rezone the boundary of Lynbrook (which was rejected by residents), greatschools.org updated the boundary wrongfully.
For school boundary, you must check each school district’s website.
In case of CUSD, they provide tool to search for neighborhood school based on address.
I found some houses right outside Cupertino school boundary wrongfully marked as Cupertino schools in all real estate website (zillow, redfin etc). However, if you search its neighborhood school in CUSD/FUHSD website, it clearly says “no match”.
Thus, only source you can trust is really school district website.
Primary home seekers and investor home seekers have different outlook.
Your point of view is like investor’s view, trying to get max return. In that case, getting a four plex with one home with 3BD, 2BH is better than all options.
When they try to get primary home, they are going to stay for long years. It is difficult to move up or down from the used to neighborhood.
Best option is to get a good home with big lot (max possible) and the considerable size (max possible) within their affordability.
A home like this is better choice, especially the single story home, listed in the order of preference.
It means what I did when I was in Singapore . Married, bought one condo funded by one salary, the other was saved for downpayment for another condo. Idea is if one of us need to quit, just sell one condo and still have one condo to stay and don’t have to move neighborhood as you already know, is hard to do.
A run down 50s crap shack, decent size/location of lot is definitely in the $2.5m range. The $1.5m homes are for the most part small townhomes right by the caltrain w/ no yard.
I recently walked around the more affordable (for Palo Alto) Ventura neighborhood with my 1 year old. It was scary. People were sleeping in the park, the park equipment was trashed, hoard homes all over. I’d pick a nice neighborhood in Mt View over that any day.
, putting words in my mouth 
. Is for contingency such as financial difficulties.
. Married, bought one condo funded by one salary, the other was saved for downpayment for another condo. Idea is if one of us need to quit, just sell one condo and still have one condo to stay and don’t have to move neighborhood as you already know, is hard to do.
