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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would buy for all the reasons 9:02 and your DH suggest, at least if you intend to be there for at least 5+ years.  In a lot of cities getting a better idea of neighborhoods is a good idea, but for as crazy as the housing market is in SF, just look at the rental market.  Your rent for a comparable place will be much larger than your mortgage, with 1 bedroom apartments (and even some studios in trendy neighborhoods near transit) renting for 3K and all.  People say one of these days the housing market is going to crash, but it keeps going up every year.  I think it's unlikely to go down--it just might stop going up at the obscene rate it has been for the past couple decades.  The combination of weather, access to natural beauty, the job market, and geography (you can't exactly build out into the sea) all lend itself towards always being a desirable place to be with limited supply.

Expect the housing search to be horrendous, and to have a nasty bidding war on each house, especially since you are in a competitive price range.  You might get lucky, but you might decided buying in SF is not for you after several rounds of this craziness, and look at some of the suburbs (although the bidding war craziness is bad in desirable suburban areas as well).  It will definitely go above the list price. Honestly, Berkeley/Oakland commuting via BART is just as convenient, if not more than many neighborhoods in SF for access to downtown and there are some great neighborhoods where you can get much more for 1 million.  If you are your DH are in tech, seriously consider looking in the pennisula, since there is a lot of job hopping in that sector and it allows access to job centers in both SF and SV (I have some friends who work in tech who bought in Berkeley and have mixed feelings about it, because they love the community and hated the suburban feel of the pennisula, but it severely restricts their employment prospects if they want to not have a six hour commute daily).

Whether or not you can get anything to your standards for ~1 million really depends on your expectations.  Houses are much smaller in the city in terms of square footage (as tends to be the case in all urban neighborhoods, for the most part), and you may need to settle for only 2 bedrooms/a neighborhood that isn't trendy/ a house that needs significant work.  Good luck.[/quote]

This is a helpful post. I echo the issue about buying in Berkeley/Oakland and then finding a job in SV. That's an ok reason to rent, if you love Berkeley but aren't sure where work will be long term. I know someone who bought in Berkeley some years ago, but when old job downtown ended, found a new one around Palo Alto/Menlo Park. Price on the house has gone up incredibly, so good news there, but the commute is murder. Car is the only realistic option and it takes forever. They much prefer the Berkeley vibe so I think they will stay put, but will probably look for other work just due to commute.

About SV, I wish it wasn't so suburban. The only reprieve is the perfect weather. Maybe it is because I am not a computer programmer, I don't know. I guess it would be an exciting place if I was one. I am not alone. Now Google and the other companies have to run those commuter buses from SF, because none of the young people these days want to live in SV. Even Jony Ive lives in SF and commutes an hour each way to and from Cupertino, every day, by car!

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