Ask HN: Best strategies for finding a living space in the valley? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best strategies for finding a living space in the valley?

2 pointslucky7id3 comments

I'm looking for any resources you guys may have to finding decent living spaces, that can also be used to work out of. Currently down in San Diego, finishing development on a project and looking to find seed capital, to get situated and launched. Any resources or information you guys have would be awesome, thanks!

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Unless you know people up here then your best bet is look for temporary housing for a few weeks while you drive around and look for places via craigslist/similar. Areas are notorious for having very high housing prices for crappy places that just have a fresh coat of paint on them, so looking on internet only without site visits is not a great option. I spent one month looking for a place in Mountain View and found that renting a condo from an owner turned out to be better all around than trying to find a suitable apartment complex. Another problem is that decent housing is super competitive here, a reasonable rental purchase will get replies almost immediately, so owners will prefer to deal with local people than those farther away to close the deal.

Thanks for the info! I was thinking of doing a 15-30 day Couch-surfing venture to scope out the lay-of-the-land. I just want to get the best sense of what I will be walking into before I actually get there. Any tips or tidbits will be duly noted!

I live in Santa Clara for a bit so I think I have an idea on this, honestly it can be rather appalling how much housing goes for there, one of the main problems there is that the geography of the bay area makes for a lot of bottlenecks when commuting so it can be rather hard to commute very far on a daily basis, I've never lived somewhere before where even the surface streets would be completely clogged during rush hour. If you're open to renting a room in a house or townhouse that may be your best bet to keep the cost reasonable, even a half decent apartment starts at like $1400

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