Former Californian

As stated in my earliest posts, my wife Kathy and I came to the Triangle Region of North Carolina from California, specifically the Bay Area, more specifically the San Jose region, and even MORE specifically, Morgan Hill. Morgan Hill is a quaint little town just south of San Jose and just up the road from Gilroy, the self-proclaimed Garlic Capital of the World.

We originally moved to San Jose in December of 1988, having tired after two decades of the snow and ice in the northeast, specifically Pennsylvania. We rented an apartment in that massive city for a year while we scoped out the area to find a house. During that year in the big city, we had our car broken into, which cost me a radio and a tool chest, and we had our bicycles stolen from our second floor deck. It was time to leave.

In 1989, we moved to a rental house on the lake in Morgan Hill - quite a departure from that apartment in the city. 1989 was the year of great earthquake that caused massive devastation in the San Francisco Bay Area. We experienced many quakes during the ten year tenure California had on us.

But it wasn't earthquakes that shook us to want to leave the state - it was the ridiculous cost of living. Granted the weather was fantastic, but the housing costs were astronomical, and the longer we waited to build enough equity to afford a down payment, the higher the costs to take the plunge became. We were literally priced right out of the market.

Finally we decided that if we were to have the chance to own our own home at all, we'd have to leave the state. Home prices, taxes and the cost of living in general is much better here, and in 2000 we bought our first house in over twenty years. We may have lost a decade of nest egg growth, but in the several years we've been here, we've already amassed a bit of an egg just from being in the right place at the right time.

Those considering moving to the Triangle Area had better do so quickly. Real estate prices are climbing, and they're probably not going down any time soon.