West Coast vs East Coast Housing Prices

When we lived "Out West," we felt we couldn't afford a house, or certainly not one within a reasonable commute to work, so we rented. One of the reasons we came Back East is so we could buy a home again. Which we did. The housing prices in the Triangle were still quite reasonable in 2000, and we are pleased with our home.

A few years ago, a landscaper we hired asked us where we were from. I said California. He told me he had wanted to move to CA, maybe to San Francisco. I said, Well, you know, it's really expensive to live in Calif. That's one reason we moved back here.

He said, Really? Well about how much would a house like this one cost there?

I thought about it for a moment, and then told him that a single family detached home with our square footage on a quarter acre lot would probably cost about eight hundred thousand dollars in San Francisco - if you can find one.

He said, Wow ...


A Blast From the Past

I had a co-worker come visit us from the Silicon Valley. His first comments upon walking into our home was how magnificent everyone's homes seem to be in the East. I never thought of our modest home as magnificent, but his comparison to his five hundred and fifty thousand dollar condo in Sunnyvale made him use that word for our home, so who am I to argue.

As the Triangle grows, housing prices have had their peaks and valleys since we bought our house in 2000, but no matter what, they are still much more reasonable than what we saw in the Silicon Valley/Bay Area.

.