I took the photo below at the San Francisco Zoo. If only my housing issues were as simple as a ladybug’s. This looks like an inviting place. <\/p>\n
Husband is a researcher. For months he has diligently tracked the housing market to see if house prices will enter a range we can afford. In the past couple of weeks, we have taken field trips to various parks in San Jose neighborhoods to see if we like the area, and to see what our money could buy. Unfortunately, this also means a much longer commute for Husband. He works in Mountain View, although this is not a given forever. Yet we cannot afford to buy a house north of Santa Clara.<\/p>\n
So far, we’ve learned that the house we want (about 1,400-1,700 square feet, two baths, and a small yard) we can’t afford in certain neighborhoods (or we can only afford a town home, but those rarely have yards), and the houses priced so that we could<\/em> buy are in neighborhoods that are run down or downright scary. It still galls me that $500,000 can only buy a shack. But we will continue to look, to eliminate areas and narrow down a few regions we might afford. Then we’ll see what happens to the market. It continues to move in our favor, but we’re still talking scads of money. Since we already pay $2,200 a month for rent — and since we know it will go up again this year — we might be better off at least getting some equity built up (though it will take many, many years for that to happen).<\/p>\n I took the photo below at the San Francisco Zoo. If only my housing issues were as simple as a ladybug’s. This looks like an inviting place. <\/p>\n
![\"sf](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3265\/3152786706_f5a4fce740.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"