Some Background: Our Search. Part 2

Where did we consider? 

All over the Bay Area.  This was a pretty hard decision - since one of the first things a realtor will ask is  "Where do you want to be?"  So it's like you should actually pre-shop the neighborhoods, before even going to the banks for a pre-qualification or a realtor.  It's a lot of research, but it really kind of comes down to - do you like it or not?  Does it fit you?

We did a search twice and took a break after the first time.

2010 - 2011 Search

East Bay.  We quickly discovered we didn't want to go East. Neither of us wanted to fight Bay Bridge traffic and we just didn't fall in love with the idea.  However, for a split second, we did consider Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill.  Both with BART stations!  But it might just be WAY TOO HOT FOR US!

Then we started looking seriously at the Peninsula and the South Bay.
First, we looked in Pacifica and San Mateo,  We didn't quite know what were doing, but the Peninsula didn't quite mesh with us (and neither did our realtor).  San Jose was a little too far for us and we didn't even consider it. 

In the City. We then considered some foreclosed homes in San Francisco, including the Ocean Beach House we were living in.  The house was spacious, had a rental unit, next to Golden Park and a skipping stone away from Ocean Beach. But no yard, only 1 bathroom,  and some water damage, leaning on one side, which meant probably some foundation work, and transients living in GGP kept peeing on the side of our house and breaking bottles all over the sidewalk.  We couldn't even walk our dog outside our door.  It was a fixer-upper.  We looked at other houses as well, but the neighborhoods weren't quite right, and for what we wanted in a home, it was just too expensive.

North Bay - Marin. We moved in February 2011 to Sausalito, with our little dog, right by Marin Headlands.  We wanted to be closer to Napa, but still be close to San Francisco, to commute to work.  We barely unpacked.  So we started to look in the North Bay, considering Mill Valley, San Rafael, the places in between, and for a second, Petaluma.  At the time, we were reading reviews and lots of people really had a problem with the Petaluma to SF commute.   We were looking at a lot of houses in San Rafael, but we didn't really mesh well with our realtor this time either, having found him randomly without interviewing other people. Mistake!  Interview realtors or at least look at their Yelp reviews.  Seriously.

2012

We started looking again in July 2012, focusing on Petaluma, after visiting the town a few times and looking at open houses.    We really liked Petaluma and talked to a couple of friends who lived in Petaluma.   They all loved it.  We drove around the neighborhoods and used sites like Trulia and Zip Realty for open house announcements and price comparisons.

We revisited the idea of the commute everyday to San Francisco, and for the expanse of the house we could get, we think we can live with it.  We can either take a bus (Golden Gate Transit) or drive to Larkspur Ferry.

When we felt like we were ready to *seriously* look, we chose a realtor to represent us and give us more information about the neighborhoods.  Before we decided on a newly constructed home, we also looked at older homes as well.