Buying a House

Please stop linking to these stupid blogs, these house hunting tips are the worst EVER. Why the hell would anyone look for a house in the East bay and the South bay at the same time? Does this author have no concept of the geographic distance? You choose a criteria and pick a house that fits the limit you have set. Who the hell looks at homes from 400k – 1+ million range(East bay to Evergreen)?
Why take house buying tips from a person who can’t even spell properly and doesn’t know the usage of a spell check tool?
Is it just me or do you keep linking to the same bloggers? Sujatha, WAngel, 30/05, Kribs, Sepia, Anita and any foreigner who makes a business trip to India.

Sucharita, a counter post would be fun.

And since you asked, it is just you.

Hi Sucharita,

Not sure where you are from, but if you have been interested in buying a house in the Bay area, you would know that you do indeed look from the east bay to the south bay to the peninsula. You cannot limit your search given the compromises you have to do while buying a house. You can get houses at the same price in all areas, its just a matter of which aspects of a house you would compromise on i.e. age of the house, distance from your work, neighborhood, school district. Its a matter of which compromise you are able to handle! And if I were you, I wouldnt commit myself to a statement “400K – East Bay to 1M – evergreen”, you would be surprised if you research more

I looked at houses from Mountain View to Evergreen and all the way upto Union city. when I had bought mine 4 yrs back.

btw I had sent in the tip as I thought it had useful resources to look at while looking at houses in bay area. These kind of resources would certainly have helped me back then.

Patrix, just take a look at your archives and you will see what I mean.

Mihir, we bought a new single fam house in 2001 in SJ after the crash and got a great deal. We are ahead 300k right now but will never sell this house because we got it for so low and have low prop tax. If the market slows even more, we will be buying a 2nd house and renting out this one. So I know a little something about house hunting/buying.
First we wanted an easy commute so we only looked in SJ- S’vale, Mtn View were too expensive and we did not want a 30 yo house with maintenance problems. Cupertino schools are good but the tough competition means extra pressure on kids.We don’t have kids so we were not worried about schools. Milpitas has the garbage dumps and the summer stink is notorious. We had a budget and found something in that range through newspaper ads. SJ is having a construction boom along the VTA line and we were the last ones to get affordable single family home. So we got lucky but also because we did a lot of research at the library and used the newspaper.

Good for you Sucharita! And you do note yourself that even though you did your research, you were lucky in getting the bargain on your house. The research alone wouldnt make you lucky. We did exactly the same things you did and still saw 75(!) houses while buying a house in early 2002., and then we got lucky! Our requirements were slightly different than yours obviously.

Do consider the assumptions and compromises you made while buying your house. Folks with kids will have to make different compromises. And it is hard to come to terms with the housing market and the compromises. You have to stick around and see houses in all neighborhoods if your requirements are more e.g. schools, neighborhood, price range etc. No amount of research in library will set you up for the ground realities.

Coming back to the post, I feel the research you and I did in library and newspapers is now available online through all the links in the post, which is precisely what I appreciated in the post.