avocado8

The Real Estate Reality Check

About once or twice a year, something will happen that makes Al and me consider moving back to San Francisco. Maybe not seriously, but enough to check the housing prices and to start having theoretical discussions about what would be lost and what would be gained by moving.

I usually start the housing price check by looking at condos in San Francisco and houses in Palo Alto, but Al's method for determining the true state of affairs is more foolproof: Just check the listings in our old neighborhood in Mountain View for a Mackay with the same floor plan as ours. We used to live in the Monta Loma section of Mountain View, which had a few Eichlers and many, many more Mackays. There were only a few different floor plans, so it's usually easy to find one just like ours on the market.

I don't want to live in Moutain View again (it's lovely, but it's a bit too far south for me, and there wasn't much to walk to in our hood), so I never think to do a search there. After doing several Palo Alto, San Carlos, Burlingame, San Mateo, and Redwood City searches last night, Al said, "just go to Moutain View and find a Mackay". I did, and sure enough, there was a listing on a street one over from our old one. Same floor plan, but not nice as ours had been, IMHO... and listed for $250,000 more than we sold our house for in September, 2003. Yes, you read that right: The house was *not* listed for $250,000, but for a quarter of a million dollars MORE than we sold our house for less than four years ago.

It really did tell us all we need to know about the cost of moving back.