The Parent Perspective: Home Buying

It's funny how a baby changes your perspective in life on just about everything. I remember after CC was born it was as though I was looking through a brand new lens. This lens is a beautiful gift and it also complicates things on occassion.

My husband and I have been in and out of the home-buying market for three years. 1,095 days later, yep we're still 1st time homebuyers. The struggle is to stay in the bay area where our heart is though from time to time our minds have wandered to our hometown near Sacramento and at one point wandered 1300 miles to a suburb of Denver. Come to think of it, we almost were Colorado residents but something in my gutt felt wrong, REALLY wrong. My husband was heartbroken...needless to say we weren't speaking in the airport on the way home. But a strong marriage survives and learns from such squabbles...I'm told it even survives buying your first home. (Heck, we survived the birth of our first baby and almost 3 months of his unknown dairy allergy so I'm confident we'll be just fine :-) Needless to say, we're exhausted and trying to stay hopeful.

Prior to having a baby we may have purchased property in a less than "safe area" or new construction in a high traffic neighborhood. Now when we're looking at property if I'm clutching my baby close, I know we're in the wrong place. Recently we were in a peninsula neighborhood I was questioning only to, minutes later, witness a drug deal 50 feet from us. That was it for me...on to the next idea.

The bay area is where we've resided for more than a decade after leaving the small town where we grew up to attend college (my husband is pushing 15 years but he's older than me, wink wink) and for better and for worse it's our home. We've also made the decision that I will stay home for the next couple of years to raise CC and a future baby #2 and therefore our purchase price is limited by our one income. In many neighborhoods this puts us on the price border of a townhome or a single family home...thus a big part of our delimna. Many of the townhomes are newer and need less work, tend to have more square footage than the tiny sfh we can afford and sometimes offer amenities such as a pool, playground, and regulations to keep your neighborhood looking well-kept. BUT, there's also that pesky HOA fee, regulations on what you can paint and how you can remodel, not to mention the close proximity of your neighbors.  The sfh we're able to purchase are SUPER tiny but do offer a garage and a yard (even if it's an amazon at the time of purchase).

Our latest search has lead us to the Willow Glen and Cambrian areas of San Jose. We'd love any feedback you may have, email us at SFPeninsulaParent@gmail.com