Marny

jack_ie,

Your welcome. Glad I could help. One thing to remember is that traffic in the San Jose area is just as bad, if not worse than traffic in the San Francisco area or in or around any major city in California. I guess that it's one of those things that we all get used to after a while. I would not let that deter you from moving to California. Best of luck in your relocation. Hopefully when you visit some of the places on your list you will get a better idea of where you might like to live.

Leslee

Hi Jack_ie
This is Leslee. I'm still undecided, but I'm glad you're getting soooo much helpful info. What's really stumping us is that both our families live on the Eastern side (Georgia, Carolinas) and we love the Western side - so driving would not be an option....Hmmm At least these are good decisions to be making/contemplating. Best of luck to you.

jack_ie

Hi Marny,

I got in late last night and typed my previous post in a bit of a hurry. I really do appreciate your offer to help with the budget and I hope I did not seem dismissive of the value of working within some sort of structure in that regard.

To elaborate on the scope of the problem though, from what I understand rent is even more disproportionate to what I currently budget for than the overall financial picture. If I could overcome the problem with the cost of the rent, I might be able to cope with the other financial adjustments.

I am currently paying $475/mo to rent a nice little 2 bedroom brick house in a good neighborhood. Nothing fancy but it does have a garage and a nice little fenced yard. I have my own washer and dryer and don't have to schlepp my laundry to a laundromat.

Now from what I have seen on several rental websites, I would expect to pay 4 times that amount for a one room studio apartment in SF. I have heard that rents have come down in some areas recently but even factoring that in, I doubt that I could find something for much under $1500, even for example in the Mission District, which by the way, is an okay neighborhood as far as I'm concerned. The last time I looked though, there was a move on to renovate that area and raise rents there too.

Thanks for all your good info and help!

jack_ie

jack_ie

Hi Leslee!

Thank you for the original post about moving to San Diego! Had it not been for your post, I would probably not have reconsidered the possibility of relocating to San Diego in time to factor it into my plans.

I'm not sure I understand your post about the Carolinas and Georgia and the east side versus the west side. I'm assuming here, that you mean the east coast versus the west coast.

I know it can be difficult to be so far away from your family. When you say that driving is not an option, does that have to do with the time involved?

This forum has proved to be a wealth of information and I hope that it has helped you as much as it has helped me. Best of luck to you, as well.

jack_ie

J_Correa

In San Jose, I pay $900/month for a 1 bedroom apartment with a small deck and 2 parking spots. It's in a fairly nice neighborhood, but on a busy street so I get a lot of noise. The building is about 25 years old.

Rents have come down a lot in the past couple of years. During the dot com boom they were astronomical. Even then you could still find good deals though. Our landlord was more concerned with keeping good tenents than charging huge rents, so even during the boom, our rent never went up more than $25/year.

jack_ie

WOW! J_Correa, that really is good news! I had no idea I could find anything at all, except maybe some sort of sublet/roommate arrangement anywhere in the entire metro area for less than $1000/mo, especially in San Jose!

I am especially heartened by the info about the landlord who is more concerned with keeping good tenants than charging high rents. One thing that had really turned me off of apartment living is that they keep raising the rent every 6 months or so, till you could easily buy a house for less. An increase of $25/year is not bad at all, especially for SF.

Are there a significant number of apartments where the owner and the manager are the same person? Is the landlord you mentioned and his far-sighted approach to apartment management more the norm or the exception? Is it difficult to rent an apartment prior to having found a job to put on your rental application? Everyone says, "make sure you have a job before you move" but I have noticed that most prospective employers and employment agencies won't take you seriously or work with you till you have completed you move. Kind of a "catch-22" type thingy! haha

Thanks for the good news!

jack_ie

J_Correa

I think that the larger and newer compexes are the ones where you find the higher rents - usually those are listed in the apartments.com and websites like that. The local papers are the best way to find good deals. The larger the complex, the more likely they are to be owned by some corporation and managed by an agency.

Places managed by the owner or managed by someone hired directly by an owner would be your best bet.

Also, San Jose has rent control. Any building built before 1980 I believe, a landlord can only raise the rent 8% a year. So that really helps.

I think that the farsightedness of my landlord is pretty common for owner managed properties, but pretty rare for corporate managed properties.

As far as finding an apartment before having a job, I don't know. I've never been in that position. I think that if you have enough in the bank to cover several months of living expenses and good credit, a landlord might take a change. Another option would be to try the roommate thing until you get settled - rent a room in an existing household. That might be easier.

Marny

jack_ie,

I've included some links with information about San Jose and apartments in the greater San Jose and Silicon Valley area. I am not too familiar with San Francisco area rents, but basically rents in both San Francisco and San Jose are fairly comprable from what I have heard.



http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/S...apartment.html

http://www.sjaptstore.com/

http://sanjose.forrent.com/search/de...+Jose&state=CA

http://www.amechad.org/san_jose.html

Marny

jack_ie,

Here are a couple of more websites for you to look at.


http://apartment.rent.com/sanjose_ca/

http://sanjose.areaguides.net/detail...uide=gen_intro

jack_ie

Hi J_Correa and Marny!

J_Correa, thank you for the sources of info; apartments.com and newspapers. The rent control is reassuring and I wish they had it everywhere.

The characteristics of apartment management are about what I expected. Would you say that there are plenty of those owner-managed or owner-directly-involved places in San Jose or do you pretty much have to be placed on a waiting list or something for them? Do the owner-managed places typically advertise as such, in their ads?

Thanks also for the info on getting an apartment before getting a job. Looks like this could prove difficult. But hopefully, no sweat for a sweater. haha

Wow Marny! Thanks for all the great website links. While I haven't had a chance to look at all of them yet, I'm finding them to be a wealth of information on my options in a practical sense that I've not found elsewhere. That is, some of the apartment listing websites I've visited in the past were just a dry listing of properties and a limited menu of their features.

The thing that I really love about some of these links you gave me is that they include anecdotal info from tenants on their experiences with the apartments being discussed. In this way, I'm getting the "low down dirty", as well as the good points about these places. Also, some of the more difficult types of research I'd done on my city candidates was the "man on the street", opinion of your city/experiences stuff. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I resorted to "mining" the personals and polling people based on their profiles to get this kind of info. I found it interesting that the residents of some cities seemed more helpful than others in this regard. San Diego, New Orleans, and San Francisco were the places where I got the most responses and the most helpful and friendly replies while in Corpus Christi, I got no responses at all. Typically however, I'd have to send out roughly 100 or so queries per city to net 5 or 10 responses. Also, I went to various travel sites and sifted through the reviews, advisories, and warnings about my candidate cities.

I did so and this is so important to me because statistics can be misleading and it was really important to me to see the cities through the eyes of real live, passionate humans! Anyway, I wish I'd known about some of these websites you've directed me to about a year ago, when I first got into this most intense phase of my relocation research. It is sooo good to have it now! Thank you again!

Well, this whole project has been quite an experience for me and I like to think that I have grown in the process. Certainly, I have met some really great people on this message board and I sincerely appreciate all the advice and insights you have so graciously provided.

jack_ie

J_Correa

That's an interesting question about the percentage of owner operated buildings and whether they advertise that in the adds. I really don't know. I've rented 3 apartments in San Jose and they were all owner-operated or had really involved owners. All of the apartments we looked at were the same way. All were in small complexes. None were particularly fancy, just a regular apartments. We used the classified in the local paper to find them. I don't remember anything about being managed by the owner in the ads. I think in general, the newer developments are more likely to be owned by corporations.

jack_ie

Hi J_Correa,

From what I'm seeing on the websites, it looks like the types of apartment complexes I'm looking for, i.e., matching the criteria we have discussed here, are more often found in older areas like downtown. This would seem to match the fact that you and other posters have said that the best prices and management are usually found in the older, smaller complexes.

Two places I have identified at this point as being very promising are in the 95113 and 95129 zip code areas. I think in the one with the 95113 zip codes, the info I looked at expressly mentioned that it was a downtown location. I'm not sure where the other one is but I'm guessing it must be an older area.

I've just about worked those websites for all they're worth and will be getting a San Jose newpaper soon to continue to narrow my search. Is there one newspaper which has more apartment ads than the others and is it better to get the Sunday edition for more apartment ads or will any edition be good for that purpose?

Thank you.

jack_ie

shadow204

I've read through the entire thread briefly and have a little insight I'd like to share. . .basically just put in my 2 cents! I've lived in both San Diego and San Francisco. San Francisco is a real city that I just adore. San Diego thinks it's a city. That's the big difference between the two. Housing costs in San Diego are outrageous. We paid $1,900 a month for a 900 sq ft, 2 bed apartment. Downtown San Diego is a joke. The Gaslamp District is a tourist trap with overpriced Italian restaurants. San Diego offers all the hassles of living in a city without the benefits. Sure the weather is good, but is that enough. Sure San Francisco has traffic and high housing costs, but you get something out of it. A real city. Real interesting people. Great restaurants, theatre, culture. San Diego is nice to visit, but I couldn't wait to move from there. It was very bland with miles of cookie cutter homes and even more miles of traffic. My advice is to move to The City. . .San Francisco.