House Hunting Part II
So after the Brentwood trip last week, hubby and I proceeded to browsing at older houses in the area on a website. Lo and behold, the woman who ran the website called and convinced my husband to go look at houses with her this weekend, in THIS area (the heart of Silicon Valley)! Well, at least I didn't feel bad about wasting her time since hubby explicitly told her we were just browsing and not yet seriously looking. Nonetheless, she said she'd still show us what we can afford in this area.
The agent, a Chinese lady (go figure), showed us 3 places. I suppose we can borderline afford something resembling decent (but far from my dream house) in this area, but here's what it came down to:
(1) we have to really squeeze to come up with the 20% downpayment and
(2) then we decide on
(i) a smaller unit which would potentially appreciate faster or
(ii) a unit of the ideal size for us but in an area that doesn't appreciate as
fast (we are talking about 10 years).
All of the above decisions make me wonder: was it worth it? All this just to have a house in the bay area, and neither hubby and I even like the area enough to want to stay here on a semi-permanant basis!
What prompted me to think more was the words of the real estate agent, she assumed I'm a typical Chinese. She said things like, "You know us Chinese, we work 7 days a week. We are always out there trying to make more money." She told us about her investment house in Hawaii. And she also assumed that we own some high profile dotcom stock (ebay, google), which we don't.
I don't really feel bad that she is obviously more wealthy than us, but I guess it makes me wonder if I really should be like her and spend every waking moment scrambling to make more money (I exaggerated, she said she tries to stop working at 5 PM every day, Mon - Sat. I guess many jobs work longer hours than that.)
She didn't understand why we are reluctant to sacrifice our lifestyle for a worthy investment (buying a house in the bay area), given that we are still young (and therefore can and should suffer a little, I guess). I sorta feel guilty about my reluctance to make such a sacrifice, but I also couldn't help but wonder.
Is it really necessarity to go above and beyond to make even more money? Sure, one can never have enough money. Isn't that why it is important to know where to draw that line? We already own a house, albeit not in the Silicon Valley. We have a decent income. And we do have reasonably retirement plan. Taking all those into consideration, should we really sacrifice more time and quality of living for more investment? I am going to have to say that's a personal choice.
Most I know don't know more than 1 house, that doesn't seem to have an impact on their quality of life. Others chose to have children, but we chose the lifestyle. We are comfortable without stretching our means, I think that is good enough.
The agent, a Chinese lady (go figure), showed us 3 places. I suppose we can borderline afford something resembling decent (but far from my dream house) in this area, but here's what it came down to:
(1) we have to really squeeze to come up with the 20% downpayment and
(2) then we decide on
(i) a smaller unit which would potentially appreciate faster or
(ii) a unit of the ideal size for us but in an area that doesn't appreciate as
fast (we are talking about 10 years).
All of the above decisions make me wonder: was it worth it? All this just to have a house in the bay area, and neither hubby and I even like the area enough to want to stay here on a semi-permanant basis!
What prompted me to think more was the words of the real estate agent, she assumed I'm a typical Chinese. She said things like, "You know us Chinese, we work 7 days a week. We are always out there trying to make more money." She told us about her investment house in Hawaii. And she also assumed that we own some high profile dotcom stock (ebay, google), which we don't.
I don't really feel bad that she is obviously more wealthy than us, but I guess it makes me wonder if I really should be like her and spend every waking moment scrambling to make more money (I exaggerated, she said she tries to stop working at 5 PM every day, Mon - Sat. I guess many jobs work longer hours than that.)
She didn't understand why we are reluctant to sacrifice our lifestyle for a worthy investment (buying a house in the bay area), given that we are still young (and therefore can and should suffer a little, I guess). I sorta feel guilty about my reluctance to make such a sacrifice, but I also couldn't help but wonder.
Is it really necessarity to go above and beyond to make even more money? Sure, one can never have enough money. Isn't that why it is important to know where to draw that line? We already own a house, albeit not in the Silicon Valley. We have a decent income. And we do have reasonably retirement plan. Taking all those into consideration, should we really sacrifice more time and quality of living for more investment? I am going to have to say that's a personal choice.
Most I know don't know more than 1 house, that doesn't seem to have an impact on their quality of life. Others chose to have children, but we chose the lifestyle. We are comfortable without stretching our means, I think that is good enough.
posted by cahalan @ 09:59
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