Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley

#61

Post by barrkel » Wed, Mar 05, 2008, 11:30 PM UTC

All I can say is, people moaning about how expensive the valley is haven't lived in London, especially at today's exchange rate.

A single-floor flat in a house with 3 general rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen (allocate rooms as you like to make bedrooms), in somewhere not terribly appealing (but not nastyville or dangerous either) costs around $2400/m. About 1 hour commute to the city centre via tube. If you want to drive into the city during business hours, it'll cost you $16 just for congestion charge. If you drive a big car (i.e. American-style SUV etc., based on emissions), that'll go up to $50 a day soon enough.

You basically can't get non-fast-food meals for less than $20 a head, to eat something fairly decent will cost quite a bit more.

Every time I visit the valley, I'm amazed at how cheap everything is.

Re: Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley

#62

Post by tachibana » Wed, Mar 05, 2008, 11:54 PM UTC

ssanders82 wrote: post #12

tachibana wrote: post #9

I'm a professional apartment manager in the Silicon Valley area. We currently (Feb 2008) have 2-bed/1-bath apartments renting for $1500/mo and 1-bed/1-bath apartments renting for $1100/mo. Water and power typically runs in the $100/person-month range.

Can you be more specific on location?

Around Homestead and Stelling (Cupertino/Sunnyvale). Within walking distance are - Safeway - Longs Drugs - Loehmann's - McDonalds/Starbucks/Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza Hut - near I280 and CA-85.

Re: Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley

#63

Post by tachibana » Wed, Mar 05, 2008, 11:56 PM UTC

jdavid wrote: post #13

tachibana wrote: post #9

I'm a professional apartment manager in the Silicon Valley area. We currently (Feb 2008) have 2-bed/1-bath apartments renting for $1500/mo and 1-bed/1-bath apartments renting for $1100/mo. Water and power typically runs in the $100/person-month range.

a link to the 2 bedroom? we are moving out in april/may and we are looking for a 2 bedroom.

We just rented out our last room this weekend. If you're interested, I can send you a link when another unit opens up. Unfortunately, the rental market where I work is such that vacancies don't stay vacant for very long.

Re: Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley

#64

Post by kirubakaran » Thu, Mar 06, 2008, 5:04 AM UTC

Todd wrote: post #60

tim2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried that last year for a little while in a very inexpensive part of Europe. Holes: 1. Connections, funding, publicity. Kiss those opportunities goodbye. 2. Travel expenses will cost you, add another $2000(?) just for that. 3. I didn't speak the language at all... Makes it extremely hard to get a good deal on housing. Affects quality of life. 4. Places with very low costs of living and relatively high quality of l…

In general, anywhere in Europe is a bad idea for someone from the US if you want to cut costs. The dollar's at an all time low of $1.52 to the Euro today. I moved to France two years ago. I did it just for the experience while contracting with companies in the US. If you work for a company here, then the Euro rate won't be so bad. That said, you'll have to get used to a much lower rate than people in our line of work…

Wow. Thats crazy!

Re: Ask Hacker News: Cost of living in Silicon Valley

#65

Post by powerflex » Wed, Mar 26, 2008, 1:57 AM UTC

curi wrote: post #33

powerflex wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a one bedroom apartment in SF, and have 2 mac mini's, a laptop, and two servers - all are on 24/7. Electricity is $20 per month.

2 cpu g5, imac, sometimes an old pc or macbook, don't use electricity for much else besides light, varies but often 80-100. in berkeley. i wonder what's causing the large difference. edit: i'm buying this http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-Kill-Electricity-Moni...

update: Im now at about 300Kwh/month for a bill of $35...