I know there have been a few threads here lately about high housing costs in CA, so my apologies if people are tired of this, but I think this article sums up the problem here for many people:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5625631/Condemned-Bay-Area-home-sells-1-23million.html

"The house was on the market for just a week before the owners received three cash offers way above the $1million asking price."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5625631/Condemned-Bay-Area-home-sells-1-23million.html#ixzz5Cwcqi96X


My mom emailed me the link because we lived in Fremont when I was growing up. Fremont is an East Bay suburb (south of Oakland, north of San Jose). When I looked at the headline, I thought, o k, this piece of junk sold over for over $1 million because it's in some very upscale part of Silicon Valley...but trust ne, Fremont is not that. It's a perfectly nice city, but there's nothing outstanding about my hometown. If anything, the increasing traffic and congestion arguably have made it a less pleasant place in recent years. I would never have expected someone paying that much just for a tear-down.

Pretty crazy.

But the Bay Area isn't all of CA. I know you know that...just a reminder :)

Where I live, $1.23M would get you 10 acres of land and a 5,000 sq.ft. beautiful home (probably with a pool). And then some.

:)

Are there good jobs where you live? Because that is the dilemma- do you live where you want, or where you need to?

slskipper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Are there good jobs where you live? Because that
> is the dilemma- do you live where you want, or
> where you need to?

I live where I want to :)

Yes, there are good jobs. 40 miles from downtown San Diego, but it's "country" (rural residential zoned, minimum 2-acre lots, tons of open space, in the shadow of Palomar Mountain). A rural country community of a little less than 10K people.

San Diego is dessert climant ain't it?

Nope, no ice cream sundaes or whipped cream in our climate :)

San Diego climate is complicated...

https://www.sunset.com/garden/climate-zones/sunset-climate-zone-san-diego-area

We live near San Diego on an acre, in an approx. 4000 square ft home.
It's just perfect for us and we love San Diego.

Where I live, $1.23M would get you a nice home on waterfront property, possibly with 180 degree water views of the Chesapeake Bay. You could get a pier with possibly deep water docking capability for your boat. If not, your boat would be no more than 10-15 minutes away. There are lots of good jobs within roughly an hour commute or less.

I'm continually amazed at what people will spend for not much at all in return.

My brother tells me that our childhood home, in a very nice part of a picture-perfect town in southern Connecticut, is not worth a huge amount of money as one might expect. The reason? Few good jobs locally.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2018 02:58PM by summer.

All my friends and relatives there have died by now.

But I've kept track of the house I grew up in. The land was purchased for $1200 in the late 1950's (I have the original title.) It was 3/4 acre, on a hilltop.

My father built a small cottage for my grandmother (hers was done before ours) and Dad always said that he built her cottage to teach himself how to build a house.

Then he built our house, next door to the cottage. We all did, actually. I was about 8 or 9 when I learned to drive a nail in without bending it. I nailed in a substantial part of the sub-flooring of our house. It was built in increments, and on weekends, over a period of years.

My parents both worked; one paycheck was used for living expenses. The other went for home-construction supplies. Dad did all the work himself except for plumbing, electrical, and installing the windows. Pretty remarkable for a self-taught builder.

Last I knew, the house had sold for over $300,000. Nice job, Dad.

1.23 million would get you 20 acres and a 5,000 square foot home where I live!

I live about 45 miles south east of Sacramento. The recession in 2008 saved my financial rear end. I bought a 2500 sq ft house for $378k in 2004 (borrowed $329k) and in 2009 I bought a second 2900 sq ft house at auction for $145K and a third 1400 sq ft house at auction for $95k. If I had sold the first home at that time I would have only gotten $225k for it so I stayed living in it and rented out the other two. I finally sold the first house for $385k in 2016. I live in one home and rent out the other. I could now sell the third home for enough to pay it off plus pay off the second home and be out of debt. If it hadn't been for the recession I never would have been able to get my debt low enough to retire here in California.

I bought my California home in the nineties, after a price crash. I paid ninety thousand bucks for it. I'm retired now in the same house.

I know someone ;) who, for his high school years, lived in Hayward and Castro Valley.

He says that it is his understanding (from his siblings, I think) that the Tesla plant is going to be built in Fremont...

...and if this is so, someone in Tesla upper management will buy this lot (before, or after, the teardown) immediately.

There's already a Tesla plant in Fremont; it's the old Nummi plant. I heard recently from a friend who works for tesla that they are planning another Fremont location, however.

Please everyone stop reading/clicking/linking to the Daily Mail. It's a verified propagandist paper/site that is anti-feminist, anti-gay, ant-trans, anti-Muslim and generally white supremacist. Thank you.

Indeed it is. That's why some of us like it!