[quote=“wuqijun, post:78, topic:2638”]
I also have the lower end ones in Oakley, Martinez, and Concord.
[/quote]You consider these Bay Area?
Contra Costa county is one of the 9 BA counties
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Would you consider the San Diego area? I myself would include that area as a desirable place to live or retire.
Yes, I think I would add San Diego, Boston, Seattle, and Reno/Tahoe to the mix.
How about buying farmland in Fresno? Or at least buying homes with acres of land?
Or buy a mobile park in Valejo?
These are certainly unorthodox choices. Might work out might not. Personally I wouldn’t do it. I like to stick with the familiar when it comes to real estate investments. Saves headache!
If you have $500k cash, where do you invest in?
South Bay (San Jose, Santa Clara, Milipitas, Morgan Hill, Gilroy) or
East Bay (Fremont, Union City, Newark, Hayward, Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville, San Leandro, Oakland, Walnut Creek)
South Bay.
San Jose, Santa Clara, Milpitas, Morgan Hill or Gilroy.
Ignore the expensive places like WSJ & other cities of South Bay.
Morgan Hill and Gilroy are big no nos. best bet is Santa Clara, or San Jose 95117, 95128. Then Milpitas or SJ 95132.
I would add a caveat. When i recently bought, we were looking at places within a certain radius of where we lived so that we can manage the property ourselves. This included parts of Santa Clara, San Jose, and Sunnyvale and we ended up buying in the latter. So that might change your calculus. Convenience of management and local knowledge vs cost.
Actually I was thinking where to buy when the next recession hit. I doubt the highly desirable neighborhoods are going to decline sufficiently for considerations. If no recession, I would continue to blindly buy in Austin every year, DCA per year.
In descending prices, Santa Clara/SJ then Sunnyvale/WSJ/ Cupertino then PA/ Menlo Park.
The whole Bay Area has gentrified soooooo much. When the next recession hit, only very specific neighborhoods are going to decline. Here’s my list:
San Francisco: Hunters Point only
Peninsula: NONE
South Bay: Alum Rock only
East Bay: Richmond and Antioch only
North Bay: Solano County
Forget about Santa Clara, Milpitas, EPA, etc. These neighborhoods have gentrified and will NOT decline again.
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Drawing my experience of Singapore RE, I’m not so sure. Prices climbed 7 folds over 10 years, then declined 50% over 3 years, finally climbed back to previous ATH after 17 years. So those who bought at the ATH essentially enjoy 0 appreciation over 20 years.
RE in SFBA bottomed in 2009, now is at 8th year of appreciation. In Singapore, the price acceleration started at the fifth year and lasted five years. The price acceleration of SFBA started around 2012, now is the 4th year. Not saying price behavior in SFBA follows the same type of curve for Singapore… My wild ass guess without any basis is if it continues to appreciate for another 2 years, price should decline to 2016 prices, if corrects now, declines to 2014 prices. Completely no basis 
Then you would have to look at the entire US market as a whole. You see that from the Case-Shiller Home Price Index prices climbed continuously from 1975 to 2005. Then dropped to bottom from 2005 to 2012. Now came back to the top in 2017. Since the last climb was 30 years (from 1975 to 2005), and we’ve only had 5 years of climbing in this cycle (from 2012 to 2017), that means we have 25 years left before the next real estate bust.
So, don’t worry about anything! Keep buying until 2042!!! 
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I plan to start selling until 2042, by then I will be 88…
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What I see is:
Every 5-7 years, correction of 10-12%.
Every 30 years, big drop of 25+%.
Depending on neighborhoods, recovery began between 2009-2011. So we’re at 6th year for the late neighborhoods.
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If you look at the chart though, you see that the “10%” decline was actually really shallow. More like a 3% decline and less than a couple years at most.
Data!
As you can see, there is a long slide from 1990 to 1996. All in that’s a 12% decline over 6 years. And then a sharp but short 6% drop from 2001 to 2002. Of course later we had the Great Recession. Note that there is actually another 9% drop from mid-2011 to 2012.
So yes, it may be hard to believe, but Bay Area RE can drop sometimes…
This is live data in case you want to get the actual numbers:
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I’m sticking to my 25 year forecast
I think the only thing that can bring down the BA is a catastrophic earthquake. 3 times the severity of the one happened in 1989. That could generate big balls of fire that engulf most places plus a tsunami to completely inundate the rest.