All Forum Posts by: Alexander Castro

@Janet Voss I'm in the Crocker Highlands area

@Barry B. Do you mind sharing why you have a preference for closer to home. Quite a few people advocate going to other locations, e.g., midwest, as opposed to bay area. My gut tells me to say close to where I live or places where I have family and frequent (also know the market) like Seattle.

Curious about your experiences.

Welcome.

Zillow estimates have been fairly accurate in my neighborhood. I've never seen a house sell for 2x or 50% less than the Zillow estimate in the 3 years I've lived here. That said, I don't put 100% confidence in them, but they've been pretty close to appraisals I've done for Refi and HELOCs. 5-7% difference one way or the other.

Hi, I used to live in Noe Valley, and we moved to Oakland ~3 years ago after having our second child. As for the commute, it really depends on where you work in SF and where you live in Oakland. There are transbay bus lines that will take you directly to SF and back in addition to BART. I worked on Market Street and my commute was shorter than many of my co-workers who actually lived in SF. I also have an electric vehicle and can skip traffic using the HOV lanes although I mostly used BART or the bus.

$600k-$800k may not be enough to get a place that is assigned to one of the top elementary schools. Oh, and you don't have to deal with the crazy SF school lottery system. If you live in a neighborhood with a good school, that is where your kid will go.

Hard to predict the market and it can't keep going like this forever, but I'm in tech and the venture capital investors I know don't think there will be a crash. A pull back, but not anything catastrophic. At least there are no signs of that right now. Many of the firms have just raised new funds, so they have lots of dry powder which they'll focus on their existing companies first, to ensure they are healthy and well capitalized. The hedge funds have pulled out, so they'll be some drama at the high end of the market, but the bread and butter venture firms seem to be in good shape.

This advice and $2 will buy you a cup of coffee

Alex