Quote Originally Posted by maxpower View Post
I have to say though Frisco is going to give you the best long term return on your investment in a home.
If you mean San Francisco, I'm not quite as sure about that as I would have been a few years ago. The prices are getting so insanely high in the city, I really wonder how people will continue to be able to afford homes. That's one of the reasons the suburbs have become so built out and traffic is an absolute nightmare. (No joke, rush hour starts about 3:30 to 4AM in the east bay!) Perhaps it will continue to climb, but I suspect there will have to be an adjustment at some point in the next few years.

Also, power is INSANELY expensive in California, in part, supposedly, because they are trying to recoup all the money they paid to Enron 6 years ago. You get a baseline amount that one person living in a toolshed would use up in about 10 days, and everything over that is between 200 and 300% of the baseline amount. So, in the summer, your electricity can be 35 or 40 cents/KWH. I had a $900 bill last summer, and that was being very conservative with the AC. AJ's house, which at 4500 sqft is about 1000 sqft bigger than mine, had a $2700 bill for gas and electric last month when all the models were there.

And, in the city San Francisco... there's always the very real possibility that your home will be flattened in an earthquake, or, as some have suggested, the possibility that the entire city will break off and fall into the ocean One of the reasons I like living a little farther north (near Sacramento) where there aren't the earthquake faults