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Comment by onlyrealcuzzo | Hacker News Reader

You can get a large house that gets a lot of sun and is somewhat walkable / bikeable in Compton for $350k. With 20% down and all taxes & fees & insurance included, that's close to $1700/mo. In San Bernardino, you can get stuff for $250k, which about $1200/mo. You can get trailers in Riverside for $150k, which is about $730/mo.

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Is that new construction like in TFA?

$300k for new construction is ludicrously cheap for most coastal California cities. I was told to budget $150-250k for permits when I considered buying land and building my own house in Santa Barbara.

Both my current and my previous house would be illegal to build today because they are too large (even though both houses comfortably fit the frontage requirements, there is an additional X square feet of livable space per Y square feet of lot; in all R-1 zones, the calculation is such that a single-story house can usually hit the dwelling-space limit, so most 2 story houses in town would be illegal to build today).

Santa Barbara is a terrible place to consider for buying/building a house. Sky high property taxes and inflated property values are begging the local economy to dry out due to rental prices (The Bay is cheaper if you compare similar apartments with similar interior/exterior). The city can't expand because of geology, and it refuses to build up to preserve the "historical view of the Riviera". Sure it's a pretty city, but it won't mean much if it's dead.

Buying is way cheaper in Santa Barbara than the bay area like half to two-thirds depending on where you compare to. The only thing even close to Santa Barbara prices for sale when I checked a year ago were "unique" properties in East Palo Alto. Rents are pretty insane here though. It's a total flip from when I moved here (I was paying $50/month more in rent than a friend who got a job in the Indianapolis. I lived walking distance from downtown).

The Bay is cheaper if you compare similar apartments with similar interior/exterior

Santa Barbara is significantly cheaper than bay area in terms of renting or buying real estate.

The 2br apartment I'm currently renting in SB is $2.6k/mo. A very similar apartment in Redwood City is over $4k/mo.

There are plenty of 2br apartments for ~$2.5k on the east side of the bay (San Leandro, Richmond, etc.), and you will have better job opportunities as well.

My impression was the best of Silicon Volley jobs are located somewhere between San Mateo and San Jose. Am I wrong?

OP just pulled a part of the Los Angeles area out of their ass they figured was cheap because a rap song told them black lived there. $350k isn’t getting you something decent in any part of the city nor surrounding area.

Are those neighborhoods safe, or are they the kind of places where you have to regularly worry that you might get physically assaulted?

I don’t think those places are the best. Everywhere has pockets of good and bad though.

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