Here's your living room:
I Google street-viewed all of Plymouth Drive in Sunnyvale. It's the kind of boring suburban street anyone not knowing anything more about the location would probably consider nice but perfectly boring and nondescript. It's like neighborhoods in Madison where — we used to say — you could get your "starter house."
The amazing thing is I don't think it's intended as a tear down. Just a decent little place to live in Sunnyvale.
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I visited Sunnyvale once, I forget where it is. Near SF probably.
Some meeting at Lockheed.
Overpopulated even in the late 60s.
They allowed right turn on red, which was a novelty.
Hard pass on living there. Thanks for the offer though.
Property tax per square foot probably exceeds Madison's! But not by much.
Ceiling looks like less than 8'. Do they sleep like bats?
$2 million -- a bidding war also. Yikes.
Silicon Valley.
Just think of all of the ads that were clicked to pay for that house! Silicon Valley used to make stuff (chips, disk drives, computers, networking gear, etc.) ... now it's all about software, ads and click bait.
Starter house.
A college friend got married a few years after I did and he referred to his bride to be as his "starter wife." My wife rolled her eyes, and I wisely agreed with the eye rolling. I'm still married. He's not.
Almost certainly bought by some wealthy Chinese folks.
I am frequently contacted by recruiters trying to fill jobs in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Jose, etc. I ask them if a house comes with the position. It does not.
Stupid money. There's plenty of it floating around.
I look at the pictures of that house and see a builder-grade, home-depot-special ~880 square foot home that probably cost ~$100/sq ft to build tops - or about $90k max.
Which means the buyers are basically saying that the little piece of land & location is worth $1.9 million. ~34x the national median family income.
My guess is this is someone with a tremendous amount of money who wants to live a minimalistic lifestyle and this house spoke to them perfectly. And they had to have it. So they threw money on it to make it work. So that they could feel and appear minimalist.
"And they had to have it. So they threw money on it to make it work."
Some other bidders must have also been throwing money. If I'm next door, I get the name of the next-highest bidder and ask if they want to take a look.
A relative of mine is finishing up a pretty prestigious fellowship at Stanford. The family is not staying in CA (although both H&W could pretty easily find positions there) because it's too expensive. They are returning to the Midwest with their kids in large part so they can buy a nice house at a reasonable price.
848 square feet? Holy smokes -- not a lotta livin' space.
Sunnyvale? Nice place, but nothing special.
Yeah, the Bay Area is really, really screwy with its housing market. Basically, if you own a home in a nice area, you're rich. If you own a couple of houses, earning rental income, well, then you're really, really rich.
When I first moved to the Bay Area, it was not too uncommon for a guy to graduate high school, get a blue collar job, get married and buy a 848 sq ft house at about age 24 for, about $32,000.
Those days have gone bye-bye.
Re Sunnyvale - used to be a lot of cheap office parks there, and cheap suburban houses, a fine place for startups. I visited lots of these in my day. "Silicon Valley" (excellent show, but nostalgic) alludes to this long-ago situation in their fictional setting.
Its not like that anymore, and hasn't been for decades. Similar to what happened to the startup culture of the region.
Lived in the Bay Area and worked in Mountain View and Palo Alto for a few years. Beautiful weather, great jobs, terrible traffic, crazy politics and extreme housing costs made leaving an easy call.
I guess this is the result of the get woke go broke meme
I'd advise going to California as a tourist: enjoy the sights, scenery and great restaurants then leave and let the locals fight the big battles.
The Southwest is full of retirees from California who woke up one day to find that the house they paid $100K for years ago can fetch a million five today. Hence the California Exodus.
There are no battles left to fight in California.
California is the future, a static, uncreative world of enormous monopolies with an immensely wealthy upper class and an ever-poorer ever-larger lower class, and a shrinking middle class. Dependent on foreigners for entrepreneurialism, investment and technology.
A Mexico, pretty much, but California and the US do not have a much wealthier neighbor as an immensely rich market from which to benefit, and so alleviate its own deficiencies.
My brother and his wife sold their 1800 sq ft house in San Jose for $1.3 million. They bought it in 1987 for $200k. Never did anything with it, but painted the wall before the sale.
So they bought a 3000 sq ft house and 3 acres for $600k up in Truckee.
I told them they could have bought 160 acres in Wyoming for half that!
Idiots...
Is it near the Hellmouth?
Oh, I read Sunnydale at first.
What a great country we live in. That, no doubt, is the reaction of all the neighbors on that street. And they're not wrong.
"I told them they could have bought 160 acres in Wyoming for half that!"
But then they would have had to drive 50 miles for groceries.
Man. My husband's parents had a house in Sunnyvale -- bought in the early 70s for $70K or so, sold after they died (in the early "oughts") for $1.4M. But it was an Eichler, and way bigger than 848 sqft.
It was a nice, convenient location, just a couple blocks from Homestead HS. But, as Ann says, the neighborhood looks like generic suburbia.
"Is it near the Hellmouth?"
Yes. Its just a short drive up 101 to Google HQ in Mountain View.
I love the "staging": the violin hanging on the wall, the effort to make the tiny kitchen look bigger by putting in a tiny kitchen table, etc.
Sunnyvale has some beautiful Eichler mid-century modern neighborhoods... this is not one of them
As they say, location, location, location. Sunnyvale offers good access if you work in the Valley or on the peninsula. It's close to SFO and corporate jet aviation as well.
Sunnyvale neighborhoods were the 'burbs that housed the aerospace/defense industry workers, techs and engineers. Prior to AMD, Apple and Yahoo, Sunnyvale was home to Ames Laboratory (precursor to NASA), Lockheed, Northrop, Moffett Field (P3 recon base) and the Blue Cube.
I'm old enough to remember trains laden with half-tracks and tanks headed to the ports.
It was a nice, convenient location, just a couple blocks from Homestead HS. But, as Ann says, the neighborhood looks like generic suburbia.
Yep, pretty bad. Why, they don't even have snow in the winter for entertainment, and it takes almost an hour to get to the Pacific ocean.
Not to mention San Francisco is forty minutes away. Sunnyvale sucks !
Tcrosse: the real estate prices finance the California Exodus, but the state's political priorities are the root cause.
I left CA 2.5 years ago.
I live in Sunnyvale. The buyers are buying the dirt, not the house. Zillow estimates every house on that block at $1.8-2.0M. The lot actually might be worth even more WITHOUT the house. There will soon be a 3000 sq ft house on that lot. Guaranteed. Whether the new structure incorporates the old is the only question.
My ex-girlfriend used to call it Scummyvale, which wasn't really fair. It wasn't scummy. It's just that there's no there there.
Do you spell bubble with 2 b's or 3?
A college friend got married a few years after I did and he referred to his bride to be as his "starter wife." My wife rolled her eyes, and I wisely agreed with the eye rolling. I'm still married. He's not.
So, your friend wasn't wrong!
I suppose if you have the sort of money to drop $2 million on a starter home, most likely you have money to go out and about a lot. The less time you spend at home, the less house you need. It just becomes the matter of finding somewhere comfortable to sleep and safe enough that no one takes your stuff.
But it is nice to see feudalism make a comeback. Oldie but goodie.
California is the future, a static, uncreative world
California is many things but uncreative is not one of them.
Hardwood floors are expensive in Sunnyvale.
Artificial intelligence alone is the most creative undertaking in the history of mankind.
My wife and I have a nice enough house. Three bedroom, two full baths, attached garage, about 1500 square feet living space. Its in a nice neighborhood, but not a spectacular one. I've had a couple of California expats tell me that it would go for at least $500,000 in the L.A. area. The thing is, I work in the computer field, and I don't commute. I work from home. With broadband access, Skype, and chat apps their is no need to be in the same physical space any longer. I work with people in California and India all the time. Yet the supposedly cutting edge tech companies keep building expensive campuses. Wonder why that is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JJeBpO9yE4
"California is many things but uncreative is not one of them."
It is very uncreative compared to, say, 1988 or 1998 or even 2008. Nothing really new, no really disruptive stuff out of anyone in the last five years.
And the cutting edge is not here, at best they contract out or buy up what someone elsewhere is working on.
And the cutting edge is not here, at best they contract out or buy up what someone elsewhere is working on.
Most of the cutting edge stuff seems to be coming out of universities or being produced by hobbyists working with open source software.
"Artificial intelligence alone is the most creative undertaking in the history of mankind."
AI was figured out long ago, computing power just caught up with it.
Used to converse with the late John McCarthy, the inventor of one of the first AI languages (LISP).
Couldn't you live in a hotel at that price? $2 million dollars translates to 56 years at $100/night.
Opportunity cost and all that...
Never mind Google HQ in Mountain View. It's ten minutes from Google's newest campus near downtown Sunnyvale and twelve minutes from Apple's new HQ in Cupertino. Looks like it could be walking distance from the Community Center. But if you see police lights in Sunnyvale, they're probably headed for the neighborhood a few blocks north of there across El Camino. Still, if they want to gift it to me, I'd make do.
AI was figured out long ago, computing power just caught up with it.
That's true of a lot of stuff. Mainframes have been running virtual machines for decades. Chrome OS is just an implementation of the thin client concept, possible now because of the availability of broadband.
Fabi said...
Hardwood floors are expensive in Sunnyvale.
3/2/18, 3:42 PM
Older homes came with hardwood. People covered them with wall to wall carpeting.
Pull the old carpet, sand and varathane and you in style.
"Older homes came with hardwood. People covered them with wall to wall carpeting."
True. All those mass produced San Francisco tract houses they used to sell to the proles, 1910's-1940's - hardwood floors, every one.
I feel sorry for children who are born and raised in the expensive areas of California, as they will have to move down in their living standards unless they inherit the house, become wealthy, or live beyond their means.
My brother lives on this street and his house is larger! We told him he was crazy when he bought it for $400,000 in 1992.
Both the Left and the Right want to portray California as American socialism incarnate. In fact it represents a modern Gold Rush of innovative entrepreneurial capitalism, with all the riches and inequality that implies. Nowhere in America comes close.
"In fact it represents a modern Gold Rush of innovative entrepreneurial capitalism"
Was so, once. Is not, now.
property tax $2750.00
@MrCharlie2 California property taxes work in a strange way (due to Proposition 13) - the value the owners pay taxes on is effectively capped, so property taxes for houses that have been occupied for long periods of time are not related to the actual property value. The new owner will be paying somewhere around $25k/year.
The house has a big yard. It's definitely a tear-down.
And, yes, it's insane.
Was so, once. Is not, now.
During the original California Gold Rush, miners spent the East Coast equivalent of a week’s wages on a breakfast of scrambled eggs and oysters. During the new California Gold Rush, engineers spend $2 million on a two-bedroom starter home not much larger than a double-wide trailer. In the next twenty years, artificial intelligence will creatively destroy and recreate much of our existing economy, and California engineers will prosper wildly as entire industries lay off their human workforce and replace them with robots. Today's innovations of search engines and social media will pale in comparison to the next California entrepreneurial revolution.
They paid that in the expectation that the market value will continue to climb smartly. Oops if it doesn't.
A revolution that will not come out of the massive piles of consolidated, process bound companies that constitute the SF Bay Area. Back in the day, it was not like this. It was the lean and hungry, recent grads and refugees from some earlier wave of innovation, turned into the old guard. These would scramble for VC funding.
But you simply don't have that anymore, there are few lean and hungry types going off on their own and challenging the consolidated monsters.
The "Silicon Valley" TV shows (Go watch it! Its great) protagonists are such a lean and hungry gang, and the villains are such a monster - the model for Hulu there is in fact Google. The problem with that is the protagonists of Silicon Valley are obsolete, they no longer really exist. All you have is Hulu.
They are buried inside those consolidated monsters. They are paid very well, but they do not really release products. It is not a bit like the intense churn of the past.
I've had a couple of California expats tell me that it would go for at least $500,000 in the L.A. area.
$500,000 will get you a two bedroom condo in Orange County. In Santa Monica, i doubt it would get that. Maybe a studio.
My daughter was being recruited by Apple a year ago. She was wondering where she would live if she got the job.
It didn't happen but she was thinking of a small motor home if it had. Then she had to figure out where to park it.
I live in a close in Los Angeles suburb in what I think of as a $35,000 tract house. I could have purchased it for that when I first got out of law school. I bought it six years afterward (it was newly built at thetime) for bit more than double that amount (but it was still nothing more than I might have paid $35 K for six years earlier). Today it might sell for a million two. But that's funny money since my wife and I don't intend to move. If the house were in Mountain View or Sunnyvaleit might be worth two and a half million.
Our children will appreciate the stepped up basis when we die.
Damn. We sold three inherited house in the east bay area in '15. I thought $650 a sq ft was a high point. One was 10 min from google. Another next door to oracle. Looks like we should have held on and just paid the extra taxes.
Silicon valley is a leftist environmental dream. There are huge tracts of land restricted from development: Moffet Field, Coyote Valley, the swamps of Palo Alto.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group are incumbents with influence at political levels and their view is tax the people for ineffective trolleys (they call it light rail) as a carrot to box everyone up in apartments. Only, the primary area for apartments, San Jose, can't grow up because the airport is in the middle of the city, and so downtown can't "grow up" due to flight paths. No spoke and hub, and so the infrastructure requires anywhere to anywhere.
It's disgusting. Punish the young folks.
Incidentally, I've got mine.
Worked in SF back in the 70's. Transfers from Seattle complained they got half the house for twice the price way back then.
Right turns on red lights still allowed - one of the perks of the California lifestyle not stomped on by Guv Moonbeam.
this house may be getting all the attention, but this is happening all over the bay area. in 1975,i bought my victorian home in oakland for 20k. today, modest bungalows in my neighborhood are being offered for 750k and, after bidding wars, selling for 900k+.
By “they” you must mean, “California.” Pace Woody Allen, turning right on red is our only real contribution to Western Culture! Sunnyvale rules, by the way. Safe, great schools, awesome neighbors. Donno about this specific house but 828sf sounds like a hella tear down to me! Four of us fit quite nicely in a 1740sf modernist tract home with walls of glass around a 300sf atrium space. Family and friends visit often and we’ve taken to putting them up here rather than sending them to hotels / Airbnb’s. I drive 8-10 minutes each way or bike about 20 to get to work. San Jose airport terminal 2 is a big Southwest hub and beautiful, clean, and easy as pie to use. Different strokes for different folks for sure but Ann you are peddling fake news clickbait by foregrounding this outlier.
True. Worst thing here is the NIMBYism enforced through miserable entitlement processes. This prevents density from catching up to income and job growth. Great for incumbent homeowners like me (since 2013) but makes affordability a huge challenge. Build build build I say ...
Wow. A different lens, I guess, to find the different reality you’re looking for. Seems yeasty AH here around real stuff - not just predatory and cynical ‘angels’ and wanna be ‘unicorns’. HomePod is the bomb, by the way. Amazing sound, and all the little Version 1.0 stupidities and awkwardnesses get fixed over time.
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With some of my distant ancestors, as with many others, the 'de' place title actually became the family surname later on. So there's that.
That’s a middling price here in Hong Kong...
I was in the South Bay yesterday, and there’s actually snow on Mount Hamilton (where Lick Observatory is) after the last storm — though not on the nearer Santa Cruz Mountains. No doubt that’s visible from Sunnyvale. Wonderful sight.
In California you can actually also do a left turn at a red light — if you’re in the left lane of a one-way facing a left-going one-way.
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