Mary Pope-Handy and Clair Handy 408 204-7673 mary@popehandy.com

Relocating from San Francisco to Silicon Valley

by | Jul 25, 2023 | Relocation, San Francisco

Coit Tower in San Francisco

Coit Tower in San Francisco

How hard could relocating from San Francisco to Silicon Valley be? It’s the same time zone, the same “San Francisco Bay Area” region, and depending on which part of Silicon Valley you target, the drive time could be all of 20 minutes – or perhaps well over an hour.

Relocating from San Francisco to Silicon Valley can be a little bit of a culture shock, which is surprising given the close proximity of the two areas.  What’s so different? In short:

  • Scenery
  • Density / Sprawl
  • Weather / Climate
  • Parking / Transit / Traffic
  • Events & Dining
  • Housing Sticker Shock

We’ll go over each of these below.

Silicon Valley Scenery

Most noticeably, the scenery is different.

You won’t be seeing the Golden Gate Bridge,  facing frighteningly steep hills, or catching a view of the Pacific Ocean from the Cliff House when you’re in Silicon Valley. Nob Hill, the Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Union Square, Market Street, Mission Dolores, the SOMA district and so many other colorful parts of the city will be places you visit on weekends rather than drop in on some evening for supper. The scenic beauty of San Francisco may be the thing you will miss the most if you move out of that fabled city.

Beauty isn’t absent from Silicon Valley, though!  There are views of the San Francisco Bay in many places (Foster City and Redwood Shores especially).  Scenic vistas of the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains can be enjoyed from many locations in the South Bay, especially Los Altos, Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Gatos, and the Almaden Valley in San Jose. Part of Silicon Valley reaches into North San Jose, Milpitas, and Fremont, where views of the eastern foothills can be quite lovely, too.  Some of these communities have a high elevation and can see the bay as well as the valley.
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San Jose and San Francisco rank as some of the most expensive cities in the world

by | Jul 8, 2015 | Global real estate, San Francisco, San Jose

Realtor Magazine ran an article declaring that many global home buyers consider U.S. real estate prices a bargain.  (Related article that was the basis for this piece can be seen here.) Get into these articles just a little bit, though, and you can see that San Francisco and San Jose are exceptions, as are Los Angeles and San Diego:

The study found the following major markets were the most unaffordable:

  1. Hong Kong
  2. Vancouver
  3. Sydney
  4. San Francisco
  5. San Jose
  6. Melbourne
  7. London
  8. San Diego
  9. Auckland
  10. Los Angeles

This study included medium and large cities.  But what do you think would happen if they looked at the most desirable cities and towns nearby, the suburbs with low crime and great schools (or the areas of those 2 cities with the same)?  That’s right, it’s worse – much worse.

Nicer suburbs will really cost you, especially those on “The Peninsula” or San Mateo County.  Here’s a glance at the median and average sale price of houses sold last month (June 2015).  Countywide it is $1,300,000 with homes selling at about 110% of list price.

 

June 2015 San Mateo County SFH stats by city

June 2015 San Mateo County SFH stats by city

Heading south does help.  Just as San Jose is a little less expensive than San Francisco, so, too, is Santa Clara County a bit less than San Mateo County.  San Jose considers itself the Capital of Silicon Valley – a big suburban, sprawling city of 1 million people reaching out to meet cities like Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Santa Clara all here in the South Bay’s Santa Clara County.  It’s not cheap here, of course.  But compare the $1 million median sale price of a home here compared to $1.3 million a little north of here, and you’ll understand why it’s not just the better weather than brings people a little further south (the Peninsula gets more wind and fog than the South Bay does, generally).

June 2015 Santa Clara County SFH stats

June 2015 Santa Clara County SFH stats

These are tough realities for newcomers to the area, whether buying or renting (rents are possibly harder to swallow than purchases). I’d be doing you no favors to sugar coat the situation.  Some companies will help by improving your relocation benefits package.  None of them will enable you to move here and get as nice a house as what you’ve got elsewhere for a reasonable amount of money.  They cannot and will not pay you enough for that to happen.

Even so, it’s worth it to make the leap.  There’s so much to love about this vibrant area: great minds, fabulous international flavor, excellent education, wonderful weather with 300 sunny days a year in a subtropical climate, access to nearby beaches, San Francisco, the Monterey Bay, Wine Country and so much more. (And you don’t need to go to Napa or Sonoma for wine – there are about 2 dozen wineries in Santa Clara County alone! See A visit to Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino as one example.)