Seeking Help/Advice: 24 y/o Female moving from DAL to South Bay
Looking for any advice or opinions as I feel completely lost and exhausted:
I have been wanting to get out of Texas for a long time. For context, I grew up in Austin, loved it, but always felt like I would regret it if I stayed here forever.
I have no kids, no responsibilities, and I feel now is the time to get out of my home state and try something new. Also, in 2021, my family moved to OR, and so that was another motivating factor for me to eventually leave.
I got a job in tech straight out of college, but based in Dallas. **I hate Dallas,** but the job has been good so far and pays me really well, so I took it. However, within the last 4 months I have been looking for ways to transfer to our other office in Santa Clara.
I was able to apply to an internal position and got it (yay) and now I am moving to CA in August.
I am so excited: excited for a fresh start, excited to be closer to family, and excited to be near my boyfriend who just got a job in the bay area as well.
**However, the housing hunt has been so stressful, I’ve started to grow pretty anxious about the entire move.**
I have talked to numerous people about where to live. Many recommended at my age to live in SF, but I have to be in office 4 days a week and the commute is too much for me. Especially coming from Dallas where I already spend 50% of my time sitting in traffic.
I’ve started looking in Sunnyvale/Mountainview/Santa Clara/North San Jose and surrounding areas - but it is insane. My max budget was set at $3k, and even then, it’s hard to find decent, clean, livable 1B1B apartments. Almost everywhere I look online has a plethora of negative google and yelp reviews: even places with 3k+ rent have complained about pests/crime/theft etc. Wtf?
Based on my new salary and relo bonus, I thought 3k would be plenty for a good place, but now I’m starting to think I might have to pay 3.5k or more… which basically leaves me no room for savings at all.
I’ve tried looking for roommates in a variety of online boards/facebook/etc, but I have two kitties, and finding roommates who are okay with 2 cats has been a challenge, so I’ve resorted to looking at 1Bs.
Anyone who is local to the south bay: any advice on where to live? apartment buildings that are within this budget that are clean and safe to live in? as someone coming from out of state, what neighborhoods do I avoid?
The housing search has been unbelievably stressful, so any help would be greatly appreciated. ♥️🙏🏼