The quintessential american dream of a white fenced single family home is alive, well and thriving in Silicon Valley. The melting pot of incoming immigrants buy into the dream, and crave to conform to the luxurious life style painted by the media and their social circle (no doubt influenced by facebook, twitter, nextdoor, ..).

However, California and Silicon Valley welcome immigrants, but not construction. Housing is in perennial shortage. The infamous NIMBY rules strong (bad), and coupled with environment protection measures (good) severely limits capitalism’s capability to meet the demand.

This results in near linear growth of house prices, over and above to the right - irrespective of seasonality seen in other, arguably more normal markets. Even housing stock that would do extremely poorly in other parts of America, remains in demand here.

I am one of the immigrants who actually owns a house. My house selection criteria:

  1. Good school district: my daughter was already in elementary school, and a reputable high scoring public school district was a must.
  2. Managable commute: I was wary of traffic snarls, and did not want a daily headache (remember this was before the pandemic WFH/ WFA friendly work environments)
  3. Tight budget: I came to America with no savings, and had to build my savings from scratch. I also am a financial conservative to a fault (post for another day). So, no stated income and jumbo loans for me.
  4. Not rundown: seriously, this was all I was looking for in this heated market. We weren’t picky, but did not want a project after paying through our nose for a home (Property Brothers not withstanding).

These constraints made it super hard for us to purchase our first home. We were either overbid, or just did not bid at ll. It was only in the aftermath of the 2009 real estate crisis that we were able to purchase our first house. My current house is in:

  • South Fremont: good school disrict, manageable commute
  • Brand new: constructed by a builder in 2009
  • No backyard: as with all new housing in Bay Area

In 2022, the post covid world is a changed place. The pandemic has made it so that:

  1. Commutes for tech workers are no longer a top concern, as working environment in tech are super friendly to remote working
  2. My daughter has finished her education, and starting her life in tech herself
  3. Our friend and neighbors have already moved out to larger homes in other parts of the Bay Area
  4. Almost all of them now have back yards and social gatherings are much more straightforward for them to host and arrange

Our family is back to the drawing board, and feeling left out - starting the harrowing journey of finding a house to fulfill our American dream again!

This time, our wish list is narrower:

  1. Larger house with a backyard, so that we can do large get togethers (though it will be rare). Today, we feel constrained.
  2. Not rundown, as living in a new house have made us even more averse to doing house remodeling
  3. Prefer a house nearer to South Bay, as we understand and are more comfortable with this area

I will be updating more on our adventures on this front.