5 ms·

What's your commute like? My friend that moved there who tries to convince me to move out there, has a 2hr one way commute. How many sq feet is your living sp

What's your commute like? My friend that moved there who tries to convince me to move out there, has a 2hr one way commute. How many sq feet is your living space for you and your family?

kcorbitt 10y ago
My commute is a 15-minute walk, or 5-minute bike ride. :) I chose the apartment based on proximity to work -- could have saved $100-200/mo with a longer commute, but the savings would have been more than eaten up by the gas/car maintenance costs and I hate commuting. I still own a car, but don't use it to get to work. We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). We'll have to upgrade when my baby outgrows his large walk-in closet, but it fits our needs fine for now.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  > We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. I'll never move to the SF Bay Area. I encourage others not to, either. Get the companies there to open up to remote employees instead.
  - the_gastropod 10y ago
    Yes. Urban areas are typically more expensive than rural areas. Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living, this price gap would shrink.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
      >Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living What do you mean?
      - nothrabannosir 10y ago
        Tax deductibility of mortgage interest is essentially renters subsidising homeowners. Some countries in Europe do it, and the EU is not happy with it. I'm personally grateful they're shoving the repeal of this tax deductibility down the member nations' throats (very very controversial measure). Homeowners have a stranglehold on politics because renters don't vote enough :(
        ghaff 10y ago
        That may be true (although there are tax deductions for renting in some places). However, people own property in cities and rent outside of cities so I'm not sure how relevant it is to the subsidy comment. (Which presumably is some variant of the oil/cars/roads claim because cities can apparently somehow exist in isolation of everything surrounding them.)
        nothrabannosir 10y ago
        This is a good point. In retrospect, I think you are right, and I didn't understand what op meant.
      - Retric 10y ago
        There is huge cash flow to rural areas. The problem is the same infrastructure is cheaper when shared among large groups. You need more road per person when people have 80 acres vs 0.5 acres. Further, things like farm subsides, rural health care, and even poverty programs are just huge money sinks. IMO, it's important to separate things that must be in rural areas vs. things that are more expensive because they are in rural areas.
        bluGill 10y ago
        It is easy to pick on rural subsidies when you have enough food to eat. It is to everyone's advantage to ensure that there is more than enough food so that in the worst case years nobody starves to death. How best to ensure that is debatable. However don't knock the rural subsidies unless you have a better plan to ensure that even in drought years there is enough to eat.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      > Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living, this price gap would shrink. Rural areas produce, raise, and educate workers that end up working in cities. So small towns (and small countries, for that matter) make big investments in their children and they just move away. Cities don't grow solely due to birth rates, so they are only "sustainable" from a limited perspective. The rural/urban split is a give-and-take relationship at least as complex as figuring out what an "equivalent Bay-area" salary would be.
      - akiselev 10y ago
        I'm not so sure that's true. A not insignificant portion of those people move back out to rural (not suburban) areas to raise families, escape urban burnout, or because of evolving personal tastes. When they do, they often bring significantly more wealth back than they "cost" growing up because of the opportunities they had in the city. It seems that the life and death of a small town depends far more on economic factors like competition from globalization, or environmental fluctuations (droughts, hurricanes, etc). In the US many, if not most, big cities would easily grow from immigration alone. Obviously cities depend on rural areas since it's far more economical to grow food on cheap plots of land than in steel hydroponic skyscrapers and few cities are built on top of vast fresh water reserves. However, not all rural areas are alike and the majority of the land in the US isnt fertile enough to sustain a competitive agricultural industry like in California, which produces far more of the nation's food and other natural resources than it's share of the population.
  - nilkn 10y ago
    If you can get a 5 bedroom house on an acre of land for $1100/month where you're looking, then honestly real estate prices in pretty much any city are going to be a shock.
    - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
      I said almost double, not exactly double. It comes up to about $1200 - $1600 depending on the property here. I live in Florida, to boot. Real estate isn't exactly cheap here.
  - drstewart 10y ago
    >Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. Wow, I found a 20 bedroom house in rural Somalia that's half that price. I'll never move to Florida and encourage others not to, either. Get the people there to move somewhere cheaper instead.
    - dionidium 10y ago
      You're responding to a comment comparing San Francisco to other parts of the United States with all of the baseline luxuries that implies. Florida's GDP per capita is $38,497. In Somalia it's about $600. I understand that you're making a point about quality of life, but there are no serious comparisons to be made between Somalia and Florida and it says a lot about the (erroneous) views of those in the Bay Area that comments like this one are pretty common on HN.
  - Epenthesis 10y ago
    I mean, this is the fundamental crux of these CoL discussions: How much does the quality of your residence matter to you? People try and mechanically translate equivalent lifestyles from place to place, but that's probably not the best way of analyzing things. Yes, if you choose to have a midwestern lifestyle in SF, it will be ludicrously expensive. However, you don't have to. If instead, you're able to replace the utility you'd get for a nice place with the activities/amenities SF has and a small town doesn't, the cost differential is not nearly as stark. Obviously, some people do value a nice home much more than anything they could get from living in SF, and that's fine. But that's not everyone, which is important to keep in mind when understanding why people move to the bay (or big cities in general).
    - davidjnelson 10y ago
      It's not about size or fanciness. Urban areas and housing have significant air, water, and noise pollution.
      - Woofles 10y ago
        Right, and what the poster above you was saying is that people will sacrifice in that regard (or they simply don't care) to gain the benefits of living in an urban area like the culture, food, close proximity to bars and nightlife, etc. This isn't a black and white issue and it always disheartens me when people are so quick to trash the Bay Area.
        tropo 10y ago
        So, being one of those suburban family people, I'm curious. What is this "night life" you speak of, and do you actually enjoy it? Is it more theoretically enjoyable than actually enjoyable? My understanding is probably pretty bad: You pay about a hundred dollars each for a baby sitter, a taxi, and admission to the venue. ($300 so far, will be $400) There is very loud music that prevents conversation and may damage your ears, and you don't get to skip songs that you hate. You can get drinks, like beer for $10 and a cup/glass/whatever of wine for $30. You are expected to dance, by yourself or rubbing on a stranger's crotch/rear, but not traditional. Maybe you just stand near the bar and drink. That's it; this is how city folk enjoy nightlife. On your way home you get mugged. I picture the awful experiences of high school dances, but very drunk and very expensive and you don't know anybody. It seems so empty. You're with people, yet in a certain way it seems lonely. I'm also not sure what you mean by "the culture". It seems that there would be numerous cultures. If you meet a random person, the chance that they share your culture would be pretty low. This cuts down on empathy and creates misunderstandings. If you just like to gawk at other cultures, you'd do better to occasionally visit less-diluted places like Kyoto or rural Japan. You can also find American culture in many rural parts of the country. We do have bars in suburbia, sadly, though I've never been to one. I don't think I'm missing anything...? We also have food, not even counting the road kill. :-) Head over to Kentucky to experience a fried-brain sandwich. I guess you're implying that you actually get your meals at those places that charge tens or even hundreds of dollars per plate and then still expect tips? This too strikes me as odd and difficult to understand. You have to travel there. Most of those places won't let you eat barefoot, topless, or bottomless. Your kid screams and everybody gives you the hate-glare, or some other kid screams and you give them the hate-glare. The food contains ingredients that you wouldn't use. Maybe your allergies get ignored or your credit card gets stolen. You can't just relax in your own place, safe and secure and private. You can't pace around while you eat.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    And here I am, like a schmuck, paying almost 11.5% of my gross income in rent, on a 3 bedr/2.5 bath freestanding house. I think I'd have to earn more than $360k to get even close to that in SF/SV. About the only places a median-priced house is more affordable than where I am now, relative to median income, are Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, and selected places in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York. And at the bottom of that home affordability list? San Jose. Anaheim, SF, LA, and SD round out the California contingent of places where the median income-earner does not make enough to afford to buy a median-priced home. The only other places in the US that can claim that are Naples, White Plains, and Honolulu. Don't move more employees to California, people. Move more satellite offices to the Rust Belt. Before all those factories closed, the workers educated their kids for better jobs, but now there's f'kall for them to do. There's a broad talent pool there, not even close to depletion, just waiting for someone to rescue them from their restaurant websites, online insurance forms, and line-of-business CRUD apps. I would move back there in a second if there were more decent employers around.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      A nice big detached house just isn't my priority, it's not something I want. In fact, they personally sicken me, is much rather have a more cozy apartment with one or two bedrooms. Oh, and nice weather and a thriving culture scene would be nice (yes, I live in California). If companies followed your advice, they would lose way too many employees, it turns out many tech people at the high end value different things and know exactly what they are doing. We already know where the big house people are.
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        I presume from your tone that you are childless. "Cozy" gets really old, really quick when you have kids. And when they get larger, you really don't want them living right on top of you. As someone living outside of California, I value 40 hour work weeks and my kids sleeping in a different room. Thriving culture is nice, but a decent public school district is better. SV companies may not be losing employees now (other than to rampant poaching and job-hopping), but they certainly aren't attracting certain classes of employees for their on-site work. They can bring in the young singles who may be willing to work 80 hours a week and sleep in a broom closet for $1000/month. They can get the geniuses that can command the high salary that it takes to secure the sort of housing situation that the entire remainder of the continent takes for granted. They can't get the parents from middle America that think many SV tech employers are literally insane. Everyone in the US, aside from those specific places I already mentioned, can currently afford to buy a 2 bedr/1 bath house or condo on an income that is considered just mediocre in their area. Those are not "big houses". Our version of living in a broom closet under the stairs is a 1 bedr/1 bath apartment or manufactured home at $500/month or less. (Our version of living in a van down by the river is still living in a van down by the river.) Even a five-bedroom house is not "big" if you have four kids in it, or plan to put that many in it. If companies followed my advice, they would reduce their recruitment, labor, and facilities costs during their expansions. They wouldn't lose anyone unless they also decided to shut down offices in California.
- edgyswingset 10y ago
  > We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). We'll have to upgrade when my baby outgrows his large walk-in closet, but it fits our needs fine for now. And there's the kicker. In SLC you could afford a real house for that much. It's good that you can save that much right now, though. Definitely going to pay off.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Yeah, a lot of dollars-and-cents comparisons kind of ignore lifestyle concerns.
- stuckagain 10y ago
  You don't have to go to Utah to beat that. My mortgage on a SFH in Oakland is $2350/mo, I have 1800 sq ft and a garage and a big yard.
  - sxates 10y ago
    When did you buy? I don't think you'd be able to achieve that today except in the shady parts of Oakland.
  - sgdread 10y ago
    Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina - 1800sqft, 2-car garage ~ $1410/mo. Salaries $100-140k
- sotojuan 10y ago
  That's crazy. I pay $1,900 for a 800sqft in Brooklyn and I thought that was bad!
- jly 10y ago
  > We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment I am barely willing to live by myself in a space of this size, let alone with spouse and children. For those that are, the bay area presents an opportunity to save some of the large salaries being offered. For those that are not, it's a deal-breaker.
luminiferous 10y ago
Not OP, but I live 1.5 hours away from my job in south bay. I can stomach it for now but the commute is slowly killing me. Working in the Bay is really about balancing your rent with your willingness to commute. You can have a short commute if you're willing to live really close to your job, but those places (SF and/or south bay) tend to be very pricey. Although, south bay (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale) is cheaper per sq ft. than SF since it's more suburban. It makes a lot of sense to get a job in south bay and get a house if you have a family. If you're younger and want to live somewhere more dense or cheaper, it's harder. If your job is in SF, you can live in Oakland/Berkeley (which is a good deal cheaper than SF), and as long as you and your job is near a BART station, your commute can be sub 30 minutes. Otherwise, you're out of luck, since it takes forever to get anywhere in the city by car/uber/bus. If your job is in south bay, the commute from Oakland/Berkeley is 1 hr+, approaching 2 hrs when traffic is really really bad. And you'll need a car or a corporate bus. You could also live in San Jose and take the train up, which is much faster, although I'm not so sure about the rent situation in San Jose. Last I checked, the rent was ~2.2-2.4k for a one-bedroom, which is actually about on par with both Oakland and south bay. Although for the same price in south bay or Fremont, you'll get more room, at the expense of living in a much more suburban area.

What's your commute like? My friend that moved there who tries to convince me to move out there, has a 2hr one way commute. How many sq feet is your living space for you and your family?

kcorbitt 10y ago

My commute is a 15-minute walk, or 5-minute bike ride. :) I chose the apartment based on proximity to work -- could have saved $100-200/mo with a longer commute, but the savings would have been more than eaten up by the gas/car maintenance costs and I hate commuting. I still own a car, but don't use it to get to work. We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). We'll have to upgrade when my baby outgrows his large walk-in closet, but it fits our needs fine for now.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
> We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. I'll never move to the SF Bay Area. I encourage others not to, either. Get the companies there to open up to remote employees instead.
- the_gastropod 10y ago
  Yes. Urban areas are typically more expensive than rural areas. Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living, this price gap would shrink.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 10y ago
    >Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living What do you mean?
    - nothrabannosir 10y ago
      Tax deductibility of mortgage interest is essentially renters subsidising homeowners. Some countries in Europe do it, and the EU is not happy with it. I'm personally grateful they're shoving the repeal of this tax deductibility down the member nations' throats (very very controversial measure). Homeowners have a stranglehold on politics because renters don't vote enough :(
      - ghaff 10y ago
        That may be true (although there are tax deductions for renting in some places). However, people own property in cities and rent outside of cities so I'm not sure how relevant it is to the subsidy comment. (Which presumably is some variant of the oil/cars/roads claim because cities can apparently somehow exist in isolation of everything surrounding them.)
        nothrabannosir 10y ago
        This is a good point. In retrospect, I think you are right, and I didn't understand what op meant.
    - Retric 10y ago
      There is huge cash flow to rural areas. The problem is the same infrastructure is cheaper when shared among large groups. You need more road per person when people have 80 acres vs 0.5 acres. Further, things like farm subsides, rural health care, and even poverty programs are just huge money sinks. IMO, it's important to separate things that must be in rural areas vs. things that are more expensive because they are in rural areas.
      - bluGill 10y ago
        It is easy to pick on rural subsidies when you have enough food to eat. It is to everyone's advantage to ensure that there is more than enough food so that in the worst case years nobody starves to death. How best to ensure that is debatable. However don't knock the rural subsidies unless you have a better plan to ensure that even in drought years there is enough to eat.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    > Maybe if urban residents stopped subsidizing unsustainable rural living, this price gap would shrink. Rural areas produce, raise, and educate workers that end up working in cities. So small towns (and small countries, for that matter) make big investments in their children and they just move away. Cities don't grow solely due to birth rates, so they are only "sustainable" from a limited perspective. The rural/urban split is a give-and-take relationship at least as complex as figuring out what an "equivalent Bay-area" salary would be.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      I'm not so sure that's true. A not insignificant portion of those people move back out to rural (not suburban) areas to raise families, escape urban burnout, or because of evolving personal tastes. When they do, they often bring significantly more wealth back than they "cost" growing up because of the opportunities they had in the city. It seems that the life and death of a small town depends far more on economic factors like competition from globalization, or environmental fluctuations (droughts, hurricanes, etc). In the US many, if not most, big cities would easily grow from immigration alone. Obviously cities depend on rural areas since it's far more economical to grow food on cheap plots of land than in steel hydroponic skyscrapers and few cities are built on top of vast fresh water reserves. However, not all rural areas are alike and the majority of the land in the US isnt fertile enough to sustain a competitive agricultural industry like in California, which produces far more of the nation's food and other natural resources than it's share of the population.
- nilkn 10y ago
  If you can get a 5 bedroom house on an acre of land for $1100/month where you're looking, then honestly real estate prices in pretty much any city are going to be a shock.
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    I said almost double, not exactly double. It comes up to about $1200 - $1600 depending on the property here. I live in Florida, to boot. Real estate isn't exactly cheap here.
- drstewart 10y ago
  >Whoa, that's almost double the estimated mortgage for the 5 bedroom houses with an acre of land my family has been looking at purchasing. Wow, I found a 20 bedroom house in rural Somalia that's half that price. I'll never move to Florida and encourage others not to, either. Get the people there to move somewhere cheaper instead.
  - dionidium 10y ago
    You're responding to a comment comparing San Francisco to other parts of the United States with all of the baseline luxuries that implies. Florida's GDP per capita is $38,497. In Somalia it's about $600. I understand that you're making a point about quality of life, but there are no serious comparisons to be made between Somalia and Florida and it says a lot about the (erroneous) views of those in the Bay Area that comments like this one are pretty common on HN.
- Epenthesis 10y ago
  I mean, this is the fundamental crux of these CoL discussions: How much does the quality of your residence matter to you? People try and mechanically translate equivalent lifestyles from place to place, but that's probably not the best way of analyzing things. Yes, if you choose to have a midwestern lifestyle in SF, it will be ludicrously expensive. However, you don't have to. If instead, you're able to replace the utility you'd get for a nice place with the activities/amenities SF has and a small town doesn't, the cost differential is not nearly as stark. Obviously, some people do value a nice home much more than anything they could get from living in SF, and that's fine. But that's not everyone, which is important to keep in mind when understanding why people move to the bay (or big cities in general).
  - davidjnelson 10y ago
    It's not about size or fanciness. Urban areas and housing have significant air, water, and noise pollution.
    - Woofles 10y ago
      Right, and what the poster above you was saying is that people will sacrifice in that regard (or they simply don't care) to gain the benefits of living in an urban area like the culture, food, close proximity to bars and nightlife, etc. This isn't a black and white issue and it always disheartens me when people are so quick to trash the Bay Area.
      - tropo 10y ago
        So, being one of those suburban family people, I'm curious. What is this "night life" you speak of, and do you actually enjoy it? Is it more theoretically enjoyable than actually enjoyable? My understanding is probably pretty bad: You pay about a hundred dollars each for a baby sitter, a taxi, and admission to the venue. ($300 so far, will be $400) There is very loud music that prevents conversation and may damage your ears, and you don't get to skip songs that you hate. You can get drinks, like beer for $10 and a cup/glass/whatever of wine for $30. You are expected to dance, by yourself or rubbing on a stranger's crotch/rear, but not traditional. Maybe you just stand near the bar and drink. That's it; this is how city folk enjoy nightlife. On your way home you get mugged. I picture the awful experiences of high school dances, but very drunk and very expensive and you don't know anybody. It seems so empty. You're with people, yet in a certain way it seems lonely. I'm also not sure what you mean by "the culture". It seems that there would be numerous cultures. If you meet a random person, the chance that they share your culture would be pretty low. This cuts down on empathy and creates misunderstandings. If you just like to gawk at other cultures, you'd do better to occasionally visit less-diluted places like Kyoto or rural Japan. You can also find American culture in many rural parts of the country. We do have bars in suburbia, sadly, though I've never been to one. I don't think I'm missing anything...? We also have food, not even counting the road kill. :-) Head over to Kentucky to experience a fried-brain sandwich. I guess you're implying that you actually get your meals at those places that charge tens or even hundreds of dollars per plate and then still expect tips? This too strikes me as odd and difficult to understand. You have to travel there. Most of those places won't let you eat barefoot, topless, or bottomless. Your kid screams and everybody gives you the hate-glare, or some other kid screams and you give them the hate-glare. The food contains ingredients that you wouldn't use. Maybe your allergies get ignored or your credit card gets stolen. You can't just relax in your own place, safe and secure and private. You can't pace around while you eat.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  And here I am, like a schmuck, paying almost 11.5% of my gross income in rent, on a 3 bedr/2.5 bath freestanding house. I think I'd have to earn more than $360k to get even close to that in SF/SV. About the only places a median-priced house is more affordable than where I am now, relative to median income, are Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, and selected places in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York. And at the bottom of that home affordability list? San Jose. Anaheim, SF, LA, and SD round out the California contingent of places where the median income-earner does not make enough to afford to buy a median-priced home. The only other places in the US that can claim that are Naples, White Plains, and Honolulu. Don't move more employees to California, people. Move more satellite offices to the Rust Belt. Before all those factories closed, the workers educated their kids for better jobs, but now there's f'kall for them to do. There's a broad talent pool there, not even close to depletion, just waiting for someone to rescue them from their restaurant websites, online insurance forms, and line-of-business CRUD apps. I would move back there in a second if there were more decent employers around.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    A nice big detached house just isn't my priority, it's not something I want. In fact, they personally sicken me, is much rather have a more cozy apartment with one or two bedrooms. Oh, and nice weather and a thriving culture scene would be nice (yes, I live in California). If companies followed your advice, they would lose way too many employees, it turns out many tech people at the high end value different things and know exactly what they are doing. We already know where the big house people are.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      I presume from your tone that you are childless. "Cozy" gets really old, really quick when you have kids. And when they get larger, you really don't want them living right on top of you. As someone living outside of California, I value 40 hour work weeks and my kids sleeping in a different room. Thriving culture is nice, but a decent public school district is better. SV companies may not be losing employees now (other than to rampant poaching and job-hopping), but they certainly aren't attracting certain classes of employees for their on-site work. They can bring in the young singles who may be willing to work 80 hours a week and sleep in a broom closet for $1000/month. They can get the geniuses that can command the high salary that it takes to secure the sort of housing situation that the entire remainder of the continent takes for granted. They can't get the parents from middle America that think many SV tech employers are literally insane. Everyone in the US, aside from those specific places I already mentioned, can currently afford to buy a 2 bedr/1 bath house or condo on an income that is considered just mediocre in their area. Those are not "big houses". Our version of living in a broom closet under the stairs is a 1 bedr/1 bath apartment or manufactured home at $500/month or less. (Our version of living in a van down by the river is still living in a van down by the river.) Even a five-bedroom house is not "big" if you have four kids in it, or plan to put that many in it. If companies followed my advice, they would reduce their recruitment, labor, and facilities costs during their expansions. They wouldn't lose anyone unless they also decided to shut down offices in California.
edgyswingset 10y ago
> We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment in an older development ($2200/mo). We'll have to upgrade when my baby outgrows his large walk-in closet, but it fits our needs fine for now. And there's the kicker. In SLC you could afford a real house for that much. It's good that you can save that much right now, though. Definitely going to pay off.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Yeah, a lot of dollars-and-cents comparisons kind of ignore lifestyle concerns.
stuckagain 10y ago
You don't have to go to Utah to beat that. My mortgage on a SFH in Oakland is $2350/mo, I have 1800 sq ft and a garage and a big yard.
- sxates 10y ago
  When did you buy? I don't think you'd be able to achieve that today except in the shady parts of Oakland.
- sgdread 10y ago
  Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina - 1800sqft, 2-car garage ~ $1410/mo. Salaries $100-140k
sotojuan 10y ago
That's crazy. I pay $1,900 for a 800sqft in Brooklyn and I thought that was bad!
jly 10y ago
> We live in a 680 sq ft one-bedroom apartment I am barely willing to live by myself in a space of this size, let alone with spouse and children. For those that are, the bay area presents an opportunity to save some of the large salaries being offered. For those that are not, it's a deal-breaker.

luminiferous 10y ago

Not OP, but I live 1.5 hours away from my job in south bay. I can stomach it for now but the commute is slowly killing me. Working in the Bay is really about balancing your rent with your willingness to commute. You can have a short commute if you're willing to live really close to your job, but those places (SF and/or south bay) tend to be very pricey. Although, south bay (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale) is cheaper per sq ft. than SF since it's more suburban. It makes a lot of sense to get a job in south bay and get a house if you have a family. If you're younger and want to live somewhere more dense or cheaper, it's harder. If your job is in SF, you can live in Oakland/Berkeley (which is a good deal cheaper than SF), and as long as you and your job is near a BART station, your commute can be sub 30 minutes. Otherwise, you're out of luck, since it takes forever to get anywhere in the city by car/uber/bus. If your job is in south bay, the commute from Oakland/Berkeley is 1 hr+, approaching 2 hrs when traffic is really really bad. And you'll need a car or a corporate bus. You could also live in San Jose and take the train up, which is much faster, although I'm not so sure about the rent situation in San Jose. Last I checked, the rent was ~2.2-2.4k for a one-bedroom, which is actually about on par with both Oakland and south bay. Although for the same price in south bay or Fremont, you'll get more room, at the expense of living in a much more suburban area.