You pretty much just described Los Gatos. I have two teenage kids and have been living in Los Gatos for 15 years now. Some of the best schools in the country, great downtown area with fantastic restaurants (including Michelin-star rated restaurants), within your commuting range, etc. Great jumping-off point for rides and runs. PM me if you want to meet up to have a look around.

-John

Mountain View.

Man, you're going to be in for a RUDE awakening when you see the housing prices here.

I would not be surprised if to get the equivalent footage of the 4-bdrm house you currently live in NJ, that you will have to pay north of 1.5 million dollars. I live within 20 mins of the airport driving and houses that big go for north of $2 million, no joke. It's nutzo. A 4 bdrm in Los Gatos is similarly if not even MORE expensive.

Make sure you have housing lined up before you take the plunge - as awesome as Norcal is for cycling (you can ride in shorts ALL year even in January!), triathlon, (not so much swimming though), and education and culture (you'll make some truly amazing and talented friends here), if you go in too deep on housing, you're gonna hate life.

A four bedroom house will be around $2.5M.

 
How is Campbell?

Median home price in Campbell is $1.2mil right now and probably more for a big place. Bay Area median price was at $909k as of last month but that is averaged out by small condo that go for $500k.

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_________________________________
Fit Endurance Coaching - Head Coach|Facebook
USAT L1 Coach | BikeFit Certified Fitter | Contributing Writer - Triathlete Magazine | ROKA

 
How is Campbell as a town?

Menlo Park/Redwood City is pretty cool, got a good friend that lives there with his 3 teenage kids, well two are left now. But he says it was a great place to grow up for the kids. Of course anywhere in this area you are bidding against the dot com newby rich kids who work in Silicon Valley. Hope that new job is a good one...

I moved here 2yrs ago and Campbell was my pick. Its a bit "younger" and often referred to as what LG used to be.

Campbell, LG, and Saratoga are all great. They generally are in a linear rise in age and $$ in that order. All 3 offer what you are looking for so i think it will come down to purely which house you like/can afford in those 3.

I also really like the Almaden area south of 85.

Its tech central and with Google looking to build a new campus, $$ are continuing to rise!

 
Sounds good.
How is access to trails / rides from Campbell and Saratoga? (already checked Los Gatos (seems good))

Phenomenal but i guess its all relative. The Los Gatos Creek trail, while busy with walkers, is a great way to access most good routes safely. (its not a training trail but a commuter trail) The LG Trail basically connects those these neighborhoods.

The riding is so good around that area, that if you're concerned about tri training, id select by access to pool...The biggest thing for me was to make sure your commute is a reverse commute at all costs! a 15min drive can be a 45min drive in no time in rush hours.

 
I like what you say there. I always tried to find reverse commutes wherever I lived or have really short commutes.
What is the general flow in the area? What puts me in "reverse commute" relative to SJC?

There are none.

It's a fucking pit of crushing overpopulation, blindly living life in the fast lane, soul-swallowing traffic, and astronomical living costs. Any enclaves you find that are improvements on one or more of those metrics have significant compromises on the others.

Get a couple drinks into me and I'll tell you what I really think.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

 
I hear you. That is exactly my impression from my visits there.
But since my impressions are just from visits I was hoping to learn that there are places that have less of the overpopulation and, while there obviously will be traffic everywhere, maybe find some good commuting route. I do realize that it will be expensive.

Don't listen to renorider. If renorider had lemons, he wouldn't make lemonade, he would just kill himself.

It's expensive because it's amazing to live here. I hate rat races, and over population, but I don't notice it that much because I do so many things that I truly love. I just moved 5 miles from work and now I avoid traffic. I avoid the 101 so now I am happy. I embrace my $4500/mt mortgage because the life here is awesome and I can bike all year round. I lived in San Diego for 2 years, and would choose San Jose area over any place in the country.

I have been in SJ for 6 years now. I work a block from SJ Airport. I lived in Los Gatos (rented) for 4 years, then bought in SJ (Willow Glenn neighborhoods). I (tri) train 10-12 hours a week, so environment for me is everything. Hands down, Los Gatos is the best. Out your front door, you have access to the best cycling (epic scenery and climbs) and LG High School now has masters swimming. Running is also very nice. I would do the LG Trail for flat runs or tempo sessions, and then Lexington Resevior for hills and dirt trails.

Now in Willow Glenn, so I now have to drive to bike spots. Last week I drive to LG to start my bike. Uhg. I miss LG.

If I could buy any where else, I'd want to be near Canada/HW 280 in Redwood City. Epic riding near there, but over 20 miles form SJ.

Seriously, any house that's north of $2million is pretty much a reverse commute. If it's under 1.2 million, likely not.

Psst....he’s moved to Santa Cruz. :-)

But yes, Menlo Park is awesome. Bring money.

Ian

I second this... I work in Fremont and live in Pleasanton.. traffic is barely tolerable for me and I work some early hours to miss the peak traffic times.

When you say 20 min from San Jose Airport can you say the exact cross streets. Based on that, it can vary substantially where you end up living based on your criteria and a disaster commute. My 2 cents if unless you are going for CxO positions and have high school age kids and unless you are not transferring from an equivalent housing market, then it makes zero sense to move to Silicon Valley if your current house is say $500K. To get the same, you're spending $1M - $2M more. Unless we are talking RSU cash outs in the $1M to $8M range, you just end up in corporate slave mode.

Better to live somewhere else and have all that net worth liquid and not tied up in housing and have flex to spend it how you want to get to nice weather and places you need to go to. Nothing worse than having the corporate yoke around your neck and having to be a yes man because you need the next paycheque, or have to hang on for this year's low end RSU cash outs in the sub CxO range in most companies. I was asked multiple times to relocate but turned it down each time. The math never worked out.

That being said, I am at the point that I would consider it given that my son is done in college in the spring. That's a different phase of life. I don't need to get tied down in the housing market (and keep my investments in the stock markets), just rent and get paid enough that it's a wash.

Dev

Welcome! As you've quickly realized from other replies, it's very expensive to live hear. I'm up near Oakland and even that is expensive.

Commutes pretty much suck at all hours. There is simply too many people here. If you can, I would consider a smaller place closer to work - though by the airport is kind of a sketchy place to live.

On my comment about being close, think about how much time you could have to be with the family vs not when considering 60-90 minute commutes each way. Depending on where you go, that might be reality for something as close as 20 miles away. Keep that in mind - if you move too far, the house might be great but you could also end up not being able to watch the kids up and all that.

I agree as well. I live in Marin and commute to SJ two times a week (down from four) and while I did consider looking in the south bay that time has long passed. It's less expensive now for me to commute than relocate and try to find something reasonable. It's ridiculous. It's also ridiculous that I find living in Southern Marin more reasonable than the south bay.

One thing I would add given that the OP is triathlete, is just pick where your family needs to live and just ride to work. The shoulders in San Jose are awesome (my relative perspective is riding around in Taipei at rush hour during a biz trip with my folding bike), and you can ride all year in shorts. No reason really to even get in a car, unless you have to use your car for work to visit customers/partners/suppliers/investors etc.

So if you choose to ride, you can take the commute out of the picture.....60 min ride each way is 18+18 miles per day.....10 hours of riding per week, 300K per week, zero time in the car, pick a slightly cheaper place to live, spend zero on gas, get extra training in. Everyone wins. If I lived in the Bay area this what I would do. It baffles me how few people ride to work there compared to my Greenland Iglooland deep freeze zone in Ottawa Canada where tons of people bike commute in crap weather. Almost no reason for a triathlete with teenage age kids to not be able to leverage the bike to get to work. It's not like you need to drop kids off and pick them up from daycare.

He might want to try Atherton and move in next to Joe Montana's house.

though you can't commute to San Jose, Marin is the best. i have to choose whether to ride by redwoods or oceans so i usually choose both. there is more protected open space to run in than developed areas. we can walk to school, grocery store, etc and yet on any given day there are deer, coyotes, quail, turkey, etc out our window. i count my blessings every day that i live in heaven

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2018 Races: IM Santa Rosa, Vineman Monte Rio, Lake Tahoe 70.3

Saratoga or Los Gatos. Both are very tri-friendly .

I live in Menlo Park and work by SJC, and it’s about a 40min commute and getting worse. Don’t even think about living further north.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

One other thing to consider re location is also where you may end up working in the future. You’re near SJC now, but if you switched companies, what are the likely locations? Mid-Peninsula (Menlo Park/Redwood City) gives you reasonable access to the South Bay, the Redwood Shores Oracle corridor and SF, especially if you can work from home some of the time. The riding is great on the west (280) side, there are tons of trails to run on, and you have decent pool choices, plus open water options in Foster City and Redwood Shores.

There are a lot of people, high costs and traffic, but it’s for a reason. If you were here right now, you’d understand - the past couple of weeks’ weather has been about as perfect as weather can be.

Ian

Plus Marin is far better than living near San Jose.

--another marinite

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https://markmcdermott.substack.com

When I quit my day job in tech, Marin is where I want to be :-D!

You'll need drinks here every night to forget why you moved here, if you are not made of money.
No reverse commute unless you work at night.
Make sure you make at least 25% more to come out somewhat even (most of that will go to housing, e.g. mortgage and taxes).

I can't believe people think the riding in the South Bay is great....maybe MTB, but road? Please enlighten me.
On the Peninsula, there is exactly ONE area where road riding is decent and that is around Mountain View / Palo Alto / Menlo Park area. People drive there from N and S, even as far up as from SSF.
It is relatively good for running, but you also may have to drive to the Parks. Pool access in the South Bay is good, and two Masters Programs I know about around the SJ area. Even better on the Peninsula.

Otherwise it is Paradise.

Mount Umunhum for climbing.

I wouldn't even stick a toe in at Redwood shores (maybe Foster City in early summer).
Our rule is no swims in the Bay south of San Mateo bridge.
I have seen the results from water testing and the risk does not outweigh the benefit, but YMMV.

The "corridor" up and down 101 is a cluster fuck other than from 8PM-6AM and 10AM-3PM.
But he could commute from Santa Cruz, which takes about the same time it takes to get from PA to SJ, unless it isn't possible at all to get over. J.K.

Don't get me wrong. The more the merrier...and weather is perfect.

If Caltrain is an option for getting to your new workplace, seriously consider taking advantage of that opportunity - makes looking for housing a bit farther north more attractive. Caltrain is very bike friendly as well.

The key is getting deep into the mountains, of course. You're limited for sure on 1-2 hour before-work road rides. But I think people are thinking of the all-day long rides with big loops around Pescadero, Tunitas, along Skyline, OLH, and Big Basin when they're thinking peninsula and south bay riding.

Also, here's a great resource for the real estate market near where I live - I have no affiliation with the guy who runs it, but he has great weekly breakdowns of the local RE market. Haven't looked for a little while - amazing what happens when you run out of space to build...

http://www.whiteoaksblog.com

If you're going to work near the airport, willow glen (95125) is the best choice. Nice Main Street (Lincoln ave) and great neighborhoods. Easy to ride to Los gatos and then up through Palo Alto, woodside, etc. I do this ride almost every weekend so despite what a previous poster wrote, there's no need to drive to LG to start your ride. You can even ride south through Morgan hill.

WG also gives you good access to Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, and Monterey.

Access to the Los Gatos Creek Trail is generally a short run through neighborhoods and goes all of the to Lexington Reservoir.

LOL. I think you've had too much of the kool-aid there :)

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Excellent point, and I think this is one of the biggest problems with the bay. People move there for -career- security, not -job- security. And as finding appropriate housing is such a shitshow, especially with a family involved, that should your job change, which it will if you're doing anything related to tech, you'll be loathe to give up your housing. And this is why people end up with insane commutes.

I used to work with a woman who had a 120-150' commute each way. She loved her house and neighborhood but had 3 or 4 job changes in the last decade, each one with a progressively less-favorable location.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Yes, there's all the back roads in the Santa Cruz mountains. There's also Kennedy/Shannon/Hicks/New Almaden/Uvas loop and all the back roads in the Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Watsonville area. I can't believe people think the riding in the South Bay *isn't* great.

Edit- oh yeah, and Mt. Hamilton and all the roads on the back side of that. Yeah... no good riding here.

THIS. Tried it twice. Hated it. Over it. We're in San Diego until retirement, then aloha-land.

I moved to SF in early ‘97, so was fortunate to buy into the housing market then. I commuted from Pac Hghts to the 280 side of Palo Alto, and it got progressively worse as the dotcom boom raged. I had my personal commute limits, though, so when it was likely that my company would need to move south, I sold my SF place and moved to Menlo Park. Best decision ever, for me anyway.

Now I pretty much won’t take a job with more than a 20-minute commute, and even then only if I can work remotely a lot of the time (I spend a lot of time in Hawaii). Again, I chose well in my career and also had some luck, so I am extremely fortunate to be in that position, and I don’t take it for granted. Perhaps that is one reason why my experience here seems so much more positive than yours or windschatten’s - or maybe I’m just a more positive guy. ;-)

I fully agree that commuting sucks the life out of you, though, and the Bay Area traffic is the worst I’ve ever seen it. But then so are DC’s and Honolulu’s, so it’s not a problem isolated to the Bay Area.

Ian

Hi, I'm wondering if any of the locals have any love for Santa Clara?

I know it's not the best cycling area, but it does have the world class Santa Clara International Swim Center, home of several Olympic Gold Medalists and the finest swim facility I've ever been to.

http://santaclaraca.gov/...national-swim-center

I swim there 3-4 times a week when I was working near there.

Hadn't seen Santa Clara mentioned as being one of the best spots to train in so maybe a local could update the original poster.


There's an active tri club in the area that may provide good info to him as well: http://www.svtriclub.org/


Thanks!


Mark

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Fast-Finishes.com
Triathlon and Running Race Timing
Athletic Event Management

I grew up in Santa Clara, and swam at the International Swim center for years, and was also an SVTC member for a number of years. My parents love to talk about how when they bought their house in Santa Clara in 1970, it was considered 'the boonies'. Stevens Creek Blvd (one of the major roads in the area) was a dirt road, and most of Santa Clara was orchards. Now, Santa Clara is the heart of suburbia in the South Bay. With Apple's new headquarters opening, housing prices (which were already quite high) are experiencing another surge. It's quite common for houses to be selling for several hundred thousand over asking, in all-cash deals. Santa Clara has a lot going for it still... Levi's Stadium, great schools (especially if you're in the part of Santa Clara that's Cupertino High School district), a very well-funded local municipality.

As far as riding goes, you have to ride through suburbia to get to the good riding (or drive 10-15 min and park somewhere to ride) but all in all Santa Clara is still a great place. Housing varies neighborhood by neighborhood. There are some neighborhoods that haven't experienced much updating since they were built in the 1950's and there are other neighborhoods that feel much more modern, so there's a bit of everything in Santa Clara. It's worth checking out, but probably with someone that knows all the little pockets/neighborhoods.

Living near that pool would be a dream. Between access to the pool and the likes of NVidia being a 6 minute drive or similar ride away it would be awesome. Just ride over Montague on the other side of 101 and you have a choice of many great companies to work at.

Bay Area traffic is up 80% since 2010. It's not going to get any better either. I'm in the East Bay (too far away for any Silicon Valley jobs so I haven't weighed in on this thread) and the traffic is approaching L.A. levels here, in that the freeways are backed up at 2 p.m. during the week and there are traffic jams on the weekend (24/680 corridor). I'm just counting the days (years, really, unfortunately) until I can bail.

Oh I don't live there, and I'm also an extremely positive person :)

I guess my perspective comes from spending an aggregated ~1.5yrs there over the past 4 years, so I've frequently been able to compare/contrast with other parts of the world to create my viewpoint without being fully drinking the kool-aid.

All I know is that every time my plane makes that left bank over Silicon Valley, a little part of me dies inside. That's in sharp contrast to how I feel arriving (almost) anywhere else.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

That's what people there tell themselves. The reality is that it's expensive because so many people think they have to be there to make huge salaries for......$80,000 Teslas, $3 million houses, nannies, gardeners, and housekeepers.

I live in Southern Oregon where a bunch of people figured out that they don't need to be on that treadmill. They sold their Bay Area houses, bought something up here for 1/4 of the price and now lead very comfortable lives off the proceeds -- with some of best cycling around and no traffic.

The added bonus is that our kids up here go to school with normal people of diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds. Their friends are Latino, African American, Asian, and European; their parents are doctors, plumbers, and gardeners. By contrast, if you live on the Peninsula, there's a nasty divide: wealthy white and Asian Facebook & Google employees and then the Latinos who flood into Menlo Park and PA every day to mow their lawns, clean their houses and change their babies' diapers. The latter group often lives in desperately crowded conditions in East PA or RC to make ends meet.

It's funny that most of these Peninsula folks consider themselves "progressives," but the life they lead has shades of "The Help." The irony is that a few of our most progressive friends treated their "help" the most horribly.....

We're so happy to have moved away. Reno has it right.

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My latest book: "Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire" is on sale on Amazon and at other online and local booksellers

Great! So now you're telling me what I'm telling myself? Listen, I'm glad you are making it work in Oregon. Kudos to you. And then you threw in the $3 million houses and nannies... Wonderful, you just lumped over a million people into a little box you constructed. Fantastic reasoning skills. Zero of my Silicon Valley friends have those things. Yet, we are still so happy to live and train here.

But I can live wherever I want in the country, and I planted my roots in San Jose because it had the best quality of life for me and my family. Funny enough, I was offered a job transfer to Reno ... I visited .... and quickly decided: Hell to the no.

Message to all the Bay Haters: Life is what you make it. If you don't like the rat race, then avoid it. I hate the rat race, so my wife and I now have a 10-15 minute reverse commute.

These posts on this thread are highly exaggerated. You don't have to make a million a year to survive. My wife and I are not in tech, and we don't have rich parents, and we are not C.O.O's. We bought a 1300sq. ft townhome in Willow Glen, and we are still able to put away $$ each month. What's everybody bitch'in about?

Oregon huh? I'll think of you next time I am cycling in November in shorts, and swimming in a speedo in January. Enjoy the rain and clouds beeyatch :)

They sold their Bay Area houses, bought something up here for 1/4 of the price and now lead very comfortable lives off the proceeds //

Ok, but didn't they first have to live and work there for awhile to build up all that equity that they now live comfortably off of? Shouldn't we all be able to take that path? I mean you put it out there as the secret formula for a happy life..(-; I mean you are not going to buy a house in Oregon and then wait for that giant equity winning lottery ticket, probably hasn't changed there much out in the suburbs in a long time. Maybe Portland downtown?? Let the guy get his dream home, find out it really is a nightmare and then cash in and move next door to you where all the smart people live..(-;

Average rainfall: Ashland: 20 inches; Los Gatos: 17 inches
Air Quality Index (today): Ashland: 8; Los Gatos: 79 (hmm..... 7X worse)
Speedos: Ashland: none reported; Los Gatos: P3 sighted with one (Oh, the Humanity!)

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My latest book: "Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire" is on sale on Amazon and at other online and local booksellers

You reason like a 3rd grader. I bet you race on a TitanFlex and do all your swimming while wearing Xterra Lava pants.


You left this out:
Ashland, OR: avg temps in January 39 degrees
San Jose, CA: avg temps in January 51 degrees

Feel free to keep cherry picking your points to buttress your case. It still doesn't change the fact that your original post was irrational and full of assumptions. If you like Ashland better, then, great. I'm sure it's nice. But don't act like you need to make a million a year to survive in the bay.

Thanks for playing beeyatch :)

I would suggest living somewhere west of SJC but close enough to bike commute. The weather here is great 9 months of the year and quality of life as a bike commuter can't be beat. Cupertino has great schools and is close enough to bike commute to the airport (probably <30 mins going slow enough to not get sweaty). It's also a great jumping off point for running/cycling. The Santa Clara International swim center is world class and would be basically on your commute. Another option is Mountain View. Sunnyvale and Santa Clara are less expensive and have not quite as good schools, but would be closer to work.

As others have said, housing is expensive here, but if you can swing it it's worth it.

You know the funny thing - I've swam in that Santa Clara Int'l Swim Center pool - and it ain't all that! It's a bit run-down, actually!

They do, however have top-level coaching and masters there - for sure if I lived close enough and had the time to regularly attend, I'd be a far better swimmer than I am now!

The Bay Area haters crack me up. I've never understood people that have to shit all over other people's choices to make themselves feel better. If you don't like the Bay Area, you know where the door is. I love it here.

Hey, it's obviously great for (presumably most of) the 7-8 million who live there (or is it 9M yet? LOL). The flip side of the Haters is the frothing defensiveness of the Zealots whenever someone suggests that it's not the utopia it's made out to be.

I personally won't shit on anyone's choice to live there. Hey, if it works for you, that's all good. But when somebody pipes up to say they think it's the Nexus of All That's Evil in this World (tm), that's gotta be all good too :)

OP, based on your replies, I think you know what you're getting yourself into, and I think you're taking the right approach to find something that works for you. Enjoy the good aspects and do what you can to cope with or avoid the bad. Onwards!

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

If I lack reason, I attribute it to the shock from the image of you wearing a speedo in 50 degree temperatures. Here's the view in San Jose.




here's our view:

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My latest book: "Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire" is on sale on Amazon and at other online and local booksellers

Hey, it is looking like you are taking a beating on this thread, but 8 years ago when my company first asked me to move I actually resisted because of the kind of 2 tier strata in Bay area society which you pointed out that i found quite a bit different than elsewhere (especially in my Canadian communist world LOL...here we just have two tiers of frozen misery....cold and colder). I do really enjoy the area for training, and I really love the buzz of the tech industry there. But you can have a lot of that elsewhere.

To Lightheir, I love the Santa Clara International Swim center pool. Sure there are better 50m pools, all over the world (the 50m pool that I train at here at home is nicer, but it's indoors), but you can't beat training in the same lane that Mark Spitz did!

Personally when my son was in high school, I ruled out going there, but now that all is done, I guess I would not totally rule it out, but I don't need a big fancy house. Just rent a small condo for the time there.

Funny... that's pretty much all you've been doing in this thread.

Big difference between "I think it's a festering pit," and "you're a fucking idiot for living there, jkatsoudas." One of those I feel totally justified presenting as an opinion, and the other is unfair and unwarranted. Enjoy your evening.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

...and neither of those is relevant to the question the OP asked, but if folks who don't even live in the Bay Area somehow feel better about themselves by turning a request for input from locals into a shit show, knock yourself out.

Admittedly, I thought this was hilarious when I read it. I really have no dog in this fight and personally hate densely populated areas, but, coincidentally, came across this Forbes article after reading this thread. According to Forbes, people that work in SF and SJ are happiest:

https://www.forbes.com/...ppiest/#107faa317492

Actually, I think the single biggest determining factor in where you live in Silicon Valley is how much money you make. All the places with nice commutes and proximity to great outdoor riding/etc cost millions.

If you've got millions - it's a great place! If you don't have millions, make sure you know what you'll be settling for before you pull the trigger. It's a very different lifestyle if you can't afford what everyone is talking about.