u/FeistyPhoenix12

I moved to Novato in 2023 after living in San Rafael for over a decade. My work is in SF and I have to arrive by 8am. When I lived in San Rafael, I could leave my house between 7:20am-7:30am and get to work on time.

My Novato home is just 10 miles north of my former San Rafael home. The first year I lived here, my commute was about 45 mins to 1 hour each way. Fast forward three years, and my commute time has doubled to an unsustainable 1.5-2hrs each way. That’s a whopping 3-4 hours spent sitting in traffic on the 101 to drive just approx. 26 miles between my house and my job in SF. It often takes well over an hour just to drive the 10 miles between the DeLong exit in Novato and the Central San Rafael exit. My husband works in Terra Linda, San Rafael, and his round-trip commute is also at least 2 hours long.

What is going on???

I’m especially interested in finding out the norm annual home maintenance, repair and improvement expenses of people who bought older (not brand new) homes over the last 5+ years (since Covid) in the Bay Area. I know that the rule of thumb is to set aside 1-3% of your home’s current value every year to cover those costs. How many people actually do so? How many homeowners are finding that they spend that much (or more) every year on these things?