re: Please tell me about the San Francisco bay area

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It seems as if I will have a job offer there and I know little to nothing about the area.

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@ Kolache King ..... just curious of your profession and job offer title


Been to SF a half dozen times (honeymoon, business, vacations, golf, DEAD concerts) and I'd consider living there for several years with my family if I had the $$$$ to live comfortably

since your young with no kids, take the leap of faith as it will likely pay off in the future

best of luck brother

If young and single, geaux for it. beautiful area. you have the rest of your life to live in a cookie cutter house in ascension parish.

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It seems as if I will have a job offer there and I know little to nothing about the area.

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Hope your job pays a lot of money (This is the OT so I'm sure it does) or else you're going to live in a cool area and not have money to do anything.

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We're on page 6 of this thread. By this point I understand it is expensive.

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There was no way I'm reading 6 pages of people telling you to buy lube.

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I'm not going move across the country to pinch pennies.

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Alameda is a great little community and you won't have to pinch pennies there...guaranteed.

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Please tell me about the San Francisco bay area

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Born-Raised-Been in the Bay Area my entire life. Here's what you need to know:

Economy-The Bay Area economy is extremely robust right now. More jobs=more need for housing, which is at a high premium. This is leading to gentrification throughout the Bay Area. Even places like Oakland, Richmond and East Palo Alto (the per capita murder capital of the USA from the late 80's through mid 90's).

Housing-If you thought is was ridiculous prior to the 2008 crash, wait till you see it now. I live 45 miles north of San Francisco (considered a suburb) in a 22year old, 2600 square foot tract home on a 10K sf lot in a middle-class neighborhood. Nice house but nothing fancy. Appraised at $970K. In 1994 I paid $300K for it. One bedroom apartments up here are going for $2200/month.

Oakland-Stay north of High Street and east of 580 and you'll be good. My youngest brother and his wife just paid $560K for a 900 sf, 2 bedroom bungalow on Kansas Street in Oakland. Not a bad neighborhood.

Crime-Violent crime in the Bay Area has been on the decline. Well except for San Jose. Once know as the safest big city in the USA, that was until 2009. During the crash of 2008, the mayor of San Jose blamed the cities fiscal woes on the police department. So they gutted roughly 1/2 the department. Result....Higher crime. Who'd of thunk it.

Traffic-Sorry, but expect to spend a lot of your waking hours in traffic unless you take public transportation (which is actually pretty good). Just remember BART does not serve the North Bay or South Bay and Caltrain does not serve the North Bay. Look, there are 9 Bay Area counties that are home to over 8 million people. Do to the economy and extremely high cost of housing in those 9 counties people continue to come to the Bay Area (for work) but are forced to find housing beyond the 9 counties and then commute in. Commutes of 70-90 miles one way are not uncommon around here. I commuted 75 miles one way for the last 24 years of my career. Traffic in the Bay Area sucks. Sorry, no way to get around it.

Taxes-California property tax is 1% of the purchase price of the property plus the addition of bond measures. And there are always bond measures. Depending upon the county, expect to pay 7-9.5% sales tax on almost everything. Gas.....Prices are very high compared to the rest of the country and the rest of California. Why, WTFK. The northeast bay is full of refineries, yet we pay such a high tax on gas. It's truly criminal. Also California's clean air act requires we have Summer gas and a Winter gas. Gas goes through the roof in April and September when the refineries have to deal with switching over. Oh yeah, we also have about 20-25 "Spare the Air Days" a year where it is illegal to BBQ, use a gas powered lawn mower ect...

LIBERALISM-It is truly hard to explain. It's almost like sports out here. Like organizations try to recruit the best players to make their team better than the other teams they're competing against, the liberal folks try to follow or recruit causes that are more liberal than the other liberal's causes. Like it's a competition. You can actually deal with it fairly easily if you don't give a shite.

But, you trade all this for living in a beautiful, vibrant area, unique area with great weather. Well worth it.

you have to pay extra for plastic bags in the grocery store....NO THANK YOU!

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I did the math and would have to make 460k a year there to maintain the same standard of living I have in Louisiana


Good luck

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This always gets over exagerated.

Lets say you have to get a 1 million dollar house to be nice like your house now.



So $7,000 monthly mortgage payment

Your take home pay is 20k a month with 430k a year salary. So you have 13k after your mortgage payment now. That is what you have now fin?

real estate isn't the only thing that's more expensive

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Price difference in San Francisco, CA
Groceries 29% more
Housing 267% more
Utilities 15% more
Transportation 25% more
Health Care 40% more

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