What is it like to live in San Jose, CA?

Question

My wife and I live in Fort Myers, FL and hate it. We have been to San Jose a few times and liked it very much. We are curious about the job market and what is it like to live in San Jose. We have read many postings about how high the cost of living is but have also heard that you have the opportunity to make a lot of money to compensate for it. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

First, please ignore the first response here, since you can't base anything on what something was like in 1981! Please! There was no Silicon Valley, for one!

As for living in San Jose, you will definitely have to both work, and at good jobs, if you want to buy a home there. Now I am assuming you are not planning the whole sub-prime loan thing and actually want to be able to AFFORD your home too. My wife and I are both in technical jobs and were fortunate enough to buy in 2002... we would have a much harder time trying to afford our place now.

The person who said homes were around $700k is really generalizing. There are some homes in crappy areas of SJ going for around $520k and there are good homes (not palaces) in great areas that are in the $900k range. I strongly recommend you not get locked on the San Jose label only. Look at surrounding areas, like Milpitas, Fremont, Campbell, etc. They have a lot of solid neighborhoods and are still in the Silicon Valley region. Basically, keep your options open and remember that there are freeways to everything here and (except for during commute times) it's pretty easy to get from place to place.

Now I am not sure how much of the traffic you got from your previous times here, but it can get pretty packed at times in a lot of areas. So finding a job and being relatively close are somewhat important too. There are still a lot of people who couldn't afford a place in the Bay Area and moved out towards and eventually into the Central Valley (like Tracy, Stockton and down south to the Los Banos area) and do excrutiatingly long commutes daily. Not at all what I wanted, so we just saved until we could put down a small down payment and bit the bullet to buy a home.

Like others said, you cannot beat the climate and the close proximity to the beaches, the Sierra Nevada mountains and the City life. Maybe that's also a reason prices are still so high (although they HAVE started to come down a little bit).

Hope this helps and that you can enjoy the move!

Answer 2

Actually San Jose among the top 10 safiest cities in United States to live. Yes it is very expensive here, especially Real Estate. Dont get tricked by the myth that they pay you more here. Yes they do pay a little bit more, but it wont compensate the expensive you would have to deal with. 60% of new comers in Bay Area dont last a year. But good luck, I would say Bay Area is the most fun part to live in US. There is so so much to do around here...you will never get bored. Well if you have a good education, especially in high tech industry than I would not see a reason why you would not come here. But if you are blue colar worker, it will be very tough. Most of the people here work a lot of overtime to make up for living.

Answer 3

I moved to San Jose over a year ago to marry my husband who had been living here. Yes, the cost of buying a house is totally insane, but if you can do high tech work you have a good chance of making enough for a home. Other than that, jobs may pay a little more but not a ton. Expect to pay close to a $Million for a normal family house in a good neighborhood. But the climate is very mild and we don't have any humidity. I don't blame you for hating FL. I could never live there with the humidity, bugs, and flat terrain. We have lots of hills here, beaches 30 minutes away that are beautiful and not crowded at all (Santa Cruz & Half Moon Bay), and close proximity to San Francisco, which is always fun to go to for the day. Plus hiking in the redwoods is awesome.

Answer 4

Burbank is definitely part of the "Hollywood machine" you seem to dislike. You do realize that NBC and WB studios are located there, right? If you want to get away from that crowd (and still remain in the L.A. metropolitan area), you need to look into working class cities like Long Beach or the exurbs of Riverside/San Bernardino. San Jose is the most "L.A." city in Northern California (if it were run by a bunch of computer nerds instead of actors). It sprawls across a vast basin of strip malls and freeways. If you want something different from Los Angeles... try San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and Santa Cruz for Northern California. For Southern California... try Santa Barbara, San Luis Opisbo, and San Diego. It seems to me that all your choices, thus far, are actually very similar to what you already have.

Answer 5

Too fast, too furious!!

Lol, that was my first thought when I saw your question.

I would say that home is where you make it. It may be expensive to live here, but the pay rate is high enough that if both of you work decent jobs, you can make it easily.

It's beautiful because there's lots too do. There's many pro's....

But we live here in Santa Clara and had moved away from San Jose to AZ for awhile... we can't wait to get back to Arizona. SJ is just a fast pace of living. I don't like it. I like the slower more easy pace. But that's me. It's not for everybody. It's very crowded in San Jose, but those are the only drawbacks I see.

I have a friend who is moving from San Diego to Florida for one year. She is renting her house as an option to moving back if it doesn't work out. Maybe that is an option you can consider - renting your house?

If you make it to San Jose for the holidays, be sure to go to Christmas in the Park and experience the beauty, the fun, and of course the crowds!!! :-)

Answer 6

My family left San Jose in 1981 because of the rising crime rate- we lived in a new subdivision with only 2 entrances/exits so no one but residents should have been there, but someone came in and stabbed another person right on the street! And this was a nice neighborhood! I don't know if it's changed, but it's something to think about! Also, while it's true that there is money to be made there, it all depends on what line of work you're in. Do a little more research would be my suggestion. There are other, nicer towns- in my opinion- in the area. Redwood City, San Carlos, Belmont, San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Menlo Park. Check out these towns- they are way nicer than SJ! They are also a llittle closer to SF and still close to SJ as well if you want to go to the "big city" for something like museums, symphony, ballet, restaurants, etc. Hope this helps. Good Luck!

Answer 7

Great weather, safe city, plenty of activities, about an hour away from San Francisco.

Houses are around 700k+, this is silicon valley.