May be moving to San Jose area from Tualatin, OR advice !!!

Lovely, but again, also the disgusting commute. ;-)

I agree with Sue about Pleasanton. Have you looked at Mountain View or Sunnyvale, particularly west of El Camino Real - they're both south of Palo Alto.

Re. my earlier reply about Emerald Hills, probably anything with a 94062 zipcode, that isn't in the city of Woodside (gorgeous, but expensive) is Emerald Hills.

ooh haven't looked at Mountain View - I did look at Sunnyvale (thanks for the reminder) I don't have it on my saved search.


at least it's sunny here today, but cold - the bird bath still has chunks of ice on top.

Sunny here, but super duper windy! 50-60 mph, sure makes visibility awesome across the valley.
No ice here LOL!

Ice, what's that? LOL!

Yes, definitely include Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino, maybe even Menlo Park (just north of Palo Alto - fairly pricey), San Carlos (north of Redwood City), San Mateo (if DH wants to commute a bit farther on this side of the bay). Anything I'm missing Sue?

I think you got it all covered! LOL
Once you find out which job he gets, you can start from there and expand out. Personally, I was always grateful my husband has a short commute, family time is important and keeping a working father the least stressed from fighting traffic is a blessing.

Hey, don't forget South San Jose, Morgan Hill and GILROY!~

Gilroy is great but ya have gotta luv garlic ;~)

ha ha ha imapigeon - we are a family of garlic LOVERS ! Is there a garlic festival?

yes, I do like to avoid stressed fathers at any cost - we will look closer to Santa Clara (all 3 co. are right there close to eachother), there are alot of good neighborhoods and we will keep our eyes on all of them. Thank you so much for the list, lizz all suggestions are so helpful. And it's becoming my new pastime looking at real estate : ) !

Gilroy's garlic festival is out of this world! Plan on attending it no matter where you decide to live!

And when they are processing the garlic you can smell it for miles!

Oh man, we can certainly keep you so busy, so much to do and see just from this centrally located Silicon Valley. Lots of parks, hiking, biking, amusement parks for the kids, ocean, mountains and the best weather.

Oh Sue , Beau-Ti-Ful !!! We cannot wait to explore, my DH's parents are down right now, *you may meet my fil, he's apparently asking every person he meets how it is to live in Silicon Valley lol - I think they may move with us, they love it.

....it's 20 here this morning,,, brrr and the school bus broke down, the girls and I were outside for a while waiting for the dang bus. Next year no cold toes - yahoooo !

I have been watching this thread for awhile. I was born and raised here in So. Oregon, but lived in the bay area for 28 years, then 10 years ago, moved back. I have lived in several cities there but my last home was the nicest of all. It was in Santa Clara but I had Cupertino schools which are famous for being the best. My house was right across from a very nice park, Maywood, the elementary school is right behind the park, the area is located off Pruneridge Ave which is a large main street. I loved my house, bigger than usual yard and it was so close to everything, great schools and nice park. The zip was 95051. Older homes with hardwood floors, really nice area. But expensive and always was. This track of homes is on both side of Pruneridge Ave, the side with Cupertino schools is very much more expensive for the same type home, same builder, etc. You pay for the school district.

I don't know if this is still the same, I have not lived there for 10 years, but an added bonus was Santa Clara had their own utilities which made electricity a whole bunch cheaper than the other cities. You would need to check this, may have changed. For these reasons sometimes homes are more expensive but worth the higher cost.

If I could not afford that I would pick Fremont. I worked in Fremont and fell in love with the city. Its very much smaller, less congested, I found it much easier to drive around in and not get in a traffic jam or lost. I think the schools are good as well.

Good luck with it all, its a big decision. I do think I would rent for awhile to avoid surprises. These days its very difficult to sell a home so not easy to fix a mistake. If you bought into an area and later hated it, you would be stuck for awhile, I think,

Thank you Rebecca! I appreciate all the information I can get regarding schools. Cupertino & Fremont both sound great, and we have them on our list - it sounds like you had a fantastic house in a perfect location !! We do need to be very selective, for re-sell and also I don't want to move again anytime soon.

Thanks for piping in !!

HECK YES there is a Garlic Festival---it's literally world-famous, and been going on for over 25 years. My DH was chairman of parking committee, and I volunteered directing traffic for 15 years. All the profits go to the organization each person volunteers for (people donate to everything----high school athletics, local children's groups, the hospital, SPCA, etc.) The way they set it up & run it has actually been a model for a lot of "younger" fests. It's one of those really cool "small town" things I was talking about....LOL! You should plan your househunting schedule so you can attend!

http://www.gilroygarlicfestival.com/

This is a wonderful link done by a local guy for great Bay Area resources of places to see and things to do, with links for "Places to Take Young Children" and "Best Places to Take School-Age Children". You can really get lost there!
http://pages.prodigy.net/rhorii/home.htm

oh we will DEFINITELY be there for the garlic festival... and by the end of July we should be at least renting somewhere. I think school goes mid-June here, so we would leave right after that. How great you volunteered there so many years - and your husband, too. I thought about Gilroy when I was chopping garlic for our pasta last night - with roasted pine nuts, tomatoes, kalamata olives, feta & basil - yum! oh, and parmesan, we eat way too much parmesan cheese in this family!

Thank you Sue, I am off to check that website out right now, this is perfect information for us.

okay, if anyone has a minute - this house has a fantastically big yard (for San Jose) and I like the kitchen - not many pics. The house isn't gorgeous from the front, but the school ratings are good. Why is this only $869?

Parts of San Jose are pretty bad, like any big city. If you give the area someone from San Jose can give you the details. That rent tells me something is up, it cost more to rent a house here....

Oh, the garlic festival! We in Santa Clara were well aware of it due to the fact that we could smell the garlic from all that distance. Its wonderful, something everyone has to go to at least once. Surprising how huge it is as well.

I think she means it costs $869,000 to buy it. RTP--Did you mean to include a link to the house you were asking about? If the whole neighborhood is cheaper than expected, then it's probably close to a big highway or a landfill or on the edge of a worse neighborhood or next to an apartment complex or something else that makes it less desirable. Or maybe it's a neighborhood of slightly older homes but it's competing with a bunch of new construction.

Or if the rest of the neighborhood is normal price and it's just that house that seems cheaper, then it could be that they redid the kitchen but the rest of the house is in full 70's glory and needs a ton of updating, or maybe there are a lot of things that need fixing, or maybe the owner got in financial trouble and wants to ditch the place before they wind up in foreclosure, or got a job out of town and needs to sell quick, or maybe the owners are among the few sellers out there who realize that the market isn't in the best shape so they should price their house at what it's worth, and not what they think it ought to be worth.

If it's the neighborhood, I'm sure someone who lives around there can tell you that, but if it's something with the house that doesn't show up in the couple pictures they posted, then you might have to go see the place to figure out why it's more of a bargain than other places. Sometimes if you read between the lines in the listing you can figure out what's wrong with it...if it says "convenient to the highway, train, etc" or something along those lines, that probably means it's practically in your backyard. "Ready for you to put your special touch on it" means most of it is horribly outdated. "Original owners" is another watchout, usually they haven't updated it and since it hasn't been through a home inspection in the last several decades, chances are there are plenty of things wrong with it.

that's weird - I swear that link was there ?! I'm losing my mind !!!!!!

http://www.movoto.com/real-estate/homes-for-sale/CA/San-Jose/606-Calpella-Dr-100_765600.htm


even if they haven't updated the rest, I love the large lot - and the kitchen was redone nicely. Anyway, yep all those things ring true for any city .... I meant to put the link just in case anyone had an idea ..... I'll google earth the address, too to see if there is something unsightly near it.

When my son and moved back to the Bay Area from Fresno a couple of years ago, I spent nearly every night after work looking at houses in San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, etc. with/for them from July till Sept. It was.....how shall I put this? A nightmare! My (then) DIL, still living in Fresno, would find an online description/photo/price of a house, our real estate agent would set it up, and my son and I would go look at it. Frankly, most of the houses in their price range that had a yard big enough for the three dogs she had rescued were just indescribably awful. Then one day when we were making a u-turn to get far, far FAR away from yet another hideous "crack-house", we saw a sign outside of a cute little place with a big yard in a nice neighborhood a block away. It had been completely remodeled by three guys who thought they were going to make a killing, didn't go about it the right way, and then hired a new agent that didn't know what he was doing.....it was like it was MADE for the kids. It was priced at the top of their qualifying range, but our real estate agent made it work. She did half of the seller's work for him because their agent was a total novice.
The DIL is gone, but my son and the dogs remain in this house he loves. The neighbors are wonderful, and it's worked out beautifully.
The lesson I learned was to find a good agent and give him/her a LONG list of what's really important to you, and don't make any assumptions based on the photos and description on the internet...LOL!!

And get a FULL inspection before doing any negotiating or even seriously considering a place! It saved us from a termite issue, questionable wiring, and told us the chimney would have to be rebuilt eventually. The inspection may keep you from getting attached to a place that isn't going to work out.

This house was built in 1976, and the electrical system needs to be closely inspected. My DH is an electrician who works closely with our local real estate agents, and he sees a lot of houses this vintage that have electrical systems with potential issues that need to be looked at to be sure they aren't going to fail or cause problems later on for the buyers. In many cases there's nothing serious, but there have been a few that he recommended all the circuit breakers be replaced because specific brands used in those days that have a bad history.

Anything built around here in the 50s may need new electrical service to upgrade it to 220 (he's doing one of those now in Palo Alto) because they weren't designed to handle all the appliances, computers, etc. that we have now.

Just some things to look out for and ask about.

On anything that's had a major remodel, ask to see the permits! That was where the previous owners of my son's house went wrong----they thought they could save money by skipping permits and inspections, and they got caught by the city. A roof, walls taken down, and electrical done without a permits or inspections.....would have been a deal-breaker.

So not on topic - are you willing to share the recipe for that feta pasta Redtootsiepop?

Another difference between OR and CA is here in OR you can buy a property with no inspection at all. Not so in CA, when I sold my house down there I had $20K in repairs, I did not know about the problems and they sure didn't show. I bought an apartment building in Brookings and the real estate agent was surprised when I requested an inspection. Fearing the "old boy" syndrome I picked the inspector, I had 10 pages of problems. I bought anyway but at a lower price and I knew what I was getting.

I think its better to have the inspections, my house looked perfect but wasn't. I would have sold it "as is" and felt like I had done a good thing when in fact it really needed repairs. And some were electrical.

I think the advice of a good agent is key. If you have one looking for you then you can get first look at some great properties, if not, you are going to get the ones that are on the market long enough to be in the paper or with a for sale sign. My husband is in real estate and he has a list of people, when he thinks a property is to their liking, he calls them usually before its officially on the market. Lots sell before they hit the paper, even with this market. Get one you like and trust and feel you can work with well.

We've always hired our own inspector before buying our houses (even here in Oregon) and our lender hired an inspector as well .... who where never as good as the ones we hired on our own hmmmm, do they just want the mortgage to go through or what?? Anyway, the relocation programs includes $ for inspectors so we are covered there, which is nice.

Pigeon, I'm glad your son loves his home so much - even with the questionable wiring. It's always good to know what you're getting into - but if the neighboorhood/ lot was right we would not be against doing some fixing up.

I totally agree with choosing a great realtor, that will help us immensely. It's just I can't help myself but look online : ) -plus, it has been educational as far as which schools are good.


** Doss, this is a family favorite.

5 garlic cloves, minced or chopped -your preference
big glug of olive oil 4-5 T ? I use alot, but we cook a whole package of noodles to go with
big handful of cherry tomatoes, you can cut them in half if they are big, or use 2 rough chopped roma's
1 small can tomato puree
1/2 C feta cheese
1/3 chopped or whole kalamata olives
big handful of basil chiffonade
1/2 cup roasted pine nuts (you can just quickly roast these in a pan on med-low , no oil until they look a touch golden they usually start to have a nice smell as well

cook the olive oil w/ garlic for about a minute of low heat, till it starts to smell good. add tomatoes & puree stir and simmer for 2 or 3 minutes, turn it off and let it sit there. I usually add a little salt & pepper.

Boil water & cook noodles, we usually use radiatore, bowties or penne rigate (salt the water)
drain noodles when done
heat the tomato sauce back up, dump in the noodles, add the feta, pine nuts, kalamatas & basil. Throw a generous amount of parmesan on top and voila ! pure goodness.

Thanks for the recipe. I do love feta and olives. Yum...

OK--I looked at your listing. My first thought is when you go down to the bottom of the page and look at the other houses for sale in that area, I feel like your house is probably priced appropriately--it's more expensive than the others nearby, but the house itself and the lot are both larger than the others, so I think the price is in line with what I would expect given those differences. So if you're still feeling like you're getting a lot for the money, it's mostly likely the location--I noticed that it's very near to both hwy 85 & 87, and while that might be great for the commute, it also may mean a higher noise factor. Since I don't live down there I don't know how noisy those two highways are during non-commute hours, but I still suspect there are quieter places to live.

I also think their picture of the backyard may be a bit deceptive--I have an 8000 square foot lot compared to this one being about 9000, and while that's good size by CA standards, it's really not that big. I can tell by the angle they used when they took that picture they were trying to make it look as big as possible but I think if you see it in real life it won't look quite as spacious as it does in the picture. That is still a bigger lot than you'll find most places out here though unless you spend a lot more money or move a lot farther out so it's still definitely worth looking at!

Toots, I have a friend who lived off of Chynoweth, and I thought it was a pretty nice neighborhood. Yes, it's close to 87, but that just makes the commute easier. I agree with ecrane that the lot may be smaller than it appears, unless it's on the end of a cul-de-sac. I don't do well with googlemaps, so I can't tell. The way that area is laid out there are a lot of wonky little dead-end streets that keep traffic speeds down, unless the house is on one of the thru streets in the area. 85/87 is raised and new, and I don't think it has a lot of impact on noise in the nearby residental areas.

There's a really nice Summerwinds nursery on Almaden Expwy. Can't speak for the schools.

You might look at Willow Glen----lovely area; would have been my dream neighborhood when we last bought in '87 if we could have afforded it. Houses older, but really nice. More mixed styles than are in the neighborhood where this one you're looking at is. A lot of remodeling being in Willow Glen now as the original owners give way to younger folks. I know people who live in Willow Glen and just outside of it, and they love it. Great schools. DH has worked remodels for a couple of contractors there, and says the houses are well-built.

My son's house is just off 280, right across the freeway from San Jose City College. You might look on the south side of 280 (same side as the college), towards the San Jose side of Los Gatos, and maybe into Los Gatos. My son coaches part-time at LG HS and knows a lot of folks in LG. Anywhere from there south to 280 is a very nice location with excellent schools.

I have heard great things about Los Gatos, neighborhood & schools.

Yeah, the picture does make it look bigger than 9000 - there must be all kinds of wrong going on inside that house, tee hee.

Doss, I bet I dump more feta in than 1/2 cup, just taste it to see how much you like.

Los Gatos is lovely with great schools and one of the MOST expensive places around...

Lizzi, you're right, but in the San Jose area just South of LG are some very nice neighborhoods that are more reasonably priced. And I don't think LG is as expensive as Saratoga...LOL!

you have all been so helpful, let me say thank you again for all the info & suggestions.

Talked to DH this afternoon, all 3 offers are in, now he needs to decide. Ebay & Intel are definitely very strong offers and come out about the same.. we'll talk tonight and he should sleep on it.

And the decision is......[drum roll]...........?

well, he slept terrible and is having a bad time deciding. Now he's trying to read everything he can (from an employees perspective) .... I think he needs to just think about which door he would be happy walking into every morning - but difficult for him, he liked the people he met at every place. to be continued *

Did you get a gut feel from listening to him talk about them after the interviews which one he liked better? I know a job decision is something you do need to think about, but often you kind of have a gut feel what's right, but then people start overthinking things and ignore that gut reaction.

i know, I keep telling him to "go with his gut" that said, he came back from each one excited to work there. I think he'll work it out today... and I'm glad he's not just focused on the money, he needs to consider what his work life will be.

If I was him I would take a very close look at the boss. If other things are pretty equal, this boss is the one who will make his job wonderful or not. Every job I had with a boss I liked was a good job, everyone with a bad boss just sucked. IMHO

That doesn't always work though--if those companies work anything like the way mine does, people and bosses move around often enough that having a good boss when you first start may not last that long! Maybe these companies are different though, if he would likely have the same boss for a while then that is a really important consideration. Another thing he could look at is what the turnover is at the two companies--the lower the turnover the happier people probably are.