Having spent pretty much my whole life up in Norcal (I’ved lived in Mt. View, Sunnyvale, Peninsula (San Mateo area), East bay, SF even…), buying and living there only works if you are in the areas of employment where you can make the big IPO bucks and that’s assuming you aren’t one of the basic tech workers getting outsourced or cut back.
That said, real estate up there is insane and unless you’re making bank from an IPO, you’ll be competing with a ton of people who are extremely wealthy. Pretty much, 1 mil up in the best areas gets you some 1950-1960 track house with 3 beds and 1 or 2 baths. All the folks I know up there has had family help to buy (sorta easy if family drops down 500k for you). Cupertino, Mt View are crazy.
It IS true that compared to here, buying in SF will always be more resilient due to what SF offers, but I don’t think it really has anything to do with how old the lots are. It’s simply SF vs SD. You can’t really compare them at all because they are so different. SF employment (and generally the South SF (Genentech, biotech), Peninsula (VC), Santa Clara (Intel, Google, AAPL, most startups) is a ton more diverse than SD with just their biotech.
There has been new places built up there in the peninsula (I know since I’ve looked), but they tend to be smaller and extremely crammed in I’ve noticed.
As flu said, I think if you are working at the forefront of tech, nor cal is probably the only place you should be at. Jobs there pay a lot more than SD and you have folks you probably know helping you network as well.
SF Rentals are extremely pro-renters. We used to pay maybe 1200-1300 for a 1 bedroom and there were people in the same building renting for 300 bucks/month in downtown SF. Maybe like in NY, some folks keep apartments since it’s cheaper to just keep it to crash when they go out to party than to let someone else move in and let the landlord raise the rents then. Parking sucks though at 300/month too at least.
Anyhow, buying in SF has extremely low cap rates so it’s for folks who are in it for the very very long haul I’ve read…
