24Seven

Hi everyone,
New to the forum - just got my L1 visa. In a state of massive excitement. Working for a British startup - we are establishing our US office in Sunnyvale. I am moving over with my wife and 2 small children. Interested to find out where other brits in a similar position have established their family home. Ideally I'd like to live in San Francisco itself - maybe in Mission district - and commute down to Sunnyvale. Does anyone else to that? Is the commute tolerable or a nightmare? Are there any other nice family communities with good 'walkability' closer to Sunnyvale? My wife will not be going to work for at least a year and I want to make her feel as 'un-isolated' as possible.
thanks in advance.
Abe

N1cky

There have been quite a few threads on the Bay Area recently, have a search on the forum. We live in Mountain View, the next town to Sunnyvale. The Bay Area has some excellent schools, check out greatschools.com and there are loads of things to do with kids and the weather is really good. I have a few English friends, who don't work, with younger kids and they have found making friends very easy through local playgroups, parks and kids activities.

Nice areas with an easy commute to Sunnyvale are, Los Altos, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Gatos, Saratoga and Sunnyvale. All these places have little high streets with stores, cafes and restaurants. You can use walkscore.com to get an idea of how walkable an address is.

San Francisco is a great city, but personally I wouldn't choose to live in a city when I have kids. It's also foggy and cold alot of the time, that could piss your wife off when you drive down to be in the warm sunshine every day.

Rent is hellish expensive here at the moment, so depending how much you have to spend may dictate where you live.

Michael

Schools in the Mission district are pretty bad so unless you are sending your kids to private schools, I wouldn't recommend the Mission district.

http://schoolperformancemaps.com/ca/...8%2C12%2C1%2C2

The commute via Caltrain from SF to Sunnyvale is at least an hour and could be longer by car.

http://www.caltrain.com/schedules/weekdaytimetable.html

If you have the budget for housing, I'd recommend Palo Alto, Los Gatos, Los Altos, Mountain View, and a few other cities that have very good schools and a nice city center.

md95065

A big consideration will be what school you want the kids to go to - if it is going to be a public school then it will depend on *exactly* where you live.

Also consider that you will probably end up working very long hours which would make a reasonably short commute desirable - people can and do commute from San Francisco to the south bay but unless you have the benefit of being able to work from home a few days every week or have employer provided shuttles for transportation the commute will be very tiring.

I would start looking in and around Sunnyvale.

24Seven

Thanks everyone for your very helpful answers.
I'll ditch the living-in-the-city idea and we'll start looking around Los Altos, Palo Alto and Mountain View.

Bob

I can't recommend anything, but I'm sure a rough budget you had in mind would help others come up with recommendations, as well as what you're looking to rent - house/condo, something with a pool, garden, etc, etc?

city-data.com is another site worth having a look at.

Welcome to BE and good luck!

N1cky

Good luck, feel free to ask me any questions if you have any specifics.

This would help enormously.

I recently started a thread entitled 'how much is rent' (sorry I can never link threads in correctly). A few people in the Bay Area replied, this might give you an idea on cheaper areas...

markwm

Marin County, especially Tiburon/Mill Valley, is beautiful but may be a bit of a commute. To start with I'd recommend living somewhere that your wife and kids won't feel too isolated. Easy for you going to work; you have an instant social network but your wife probably won't so make that the priority.

24Seven

Thanks Bob and Nicky,
Just to flesh out the details a bit, we would be looking for a house with at least 3, preferably 4 bedrooms (one for each child and one for the family and friends that we are hoping will visit us), a back yard and a garage. No pool.
To Nicky's point about rent being expensive - I was definitely coming to that conclusion! I have seen loads of Los Altos/Palo Alto 4 bedroom houses on places like sublet.com where the rent is $5-6000 a month....what with interest rates being low and mortgage interest payments being tax deductible it would seem cheaper to just buy somewhere (although I'd expect my lack of US credit history to stand in the way of getting a mortgage). It also seems like there is only a limited choice of family houses to rent, much more available to buy.
I'll check out the 'how much is rent' thread and the other sites that have been suggested (and probably will be back with more questions!)

Michael

The following is Nicky's latest thread about rent in the Mountian View, Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Gatos area.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=755093

This is another thread where we also discussed housing in the south bay.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=750257

SanDiegogirl

Los Altos and Palo Alto are probably the most expensive areas around Silicon Valley. Lots of technology billionaires in these areas.

You will find cheaper properties in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose area.

Bob

You don't want to buy until you know the area very well, at least rent in the first year.

Selling a house in the US is much more expensive than in the UK, added to the fact you have no US credit history and unless you know the kind of lifestyle you'll have out there, it'll be hard to guess what you'd end up liking for a property.

md95065

It might be "a bit of a commute" by Los Angeles standards but up here it would be considered to be insane

md95065

It's the multi-millionaires that push up the prices in those areas - the billionaires are in Woodside and Hillsborough ...

Yes, those would be good places to start looking.

penguinsix

We rented a place with a spare bedroom for all the visitors we would have. 50 weeks a year it is for storage. 1 week a year it is when we needed to separate the kids who were sick. The other week we had a visitor.

I guess my point is that many folks kind of overestimate the number of visitors they'll have. If you have a pretty mobile family / friends and think it's likely you'll get quite a few, then go for the extra room, but if you aren't quite sure how often grandma is going to visit, scale it back a bit and have the kids sleep on the couch a few days a year. You'll save a ton of money, especially in Silicon Valley.