Tyler Bettilyon and his wife outside their new home in Salt Lake City.

Sarah Maddock, @sarahmaddock

Long before Tyler Bettilyon, a software engineer and educator, left San Francisco, he wondered what he would have to sacrifice in order to be financially enough to raise a family in the Bay Area. “There was a path I could follow to make $ 250,000 a year,” he says. “But part of that equation would have included a hectic lifestyle that kept me in the company office from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. every day.” (Remember to give up your expensive city too? Check out the Lowest Mortgage Rates You Can Get Right Here, and under.)

It wasn’t that Bettilyon didn’t want to work hard. He only wanted to work, but also to spend time with his girlfriend at the time (now his wife) and the children, if they ever got them. Bettilyon, who had to commute 90 minutes each way to his job as a senior engineer at a technology start-up, found the experience was grueling. “There are thousands of people at BART who will corner you,” he notes.

Even before the pandemic began, Bettilyon realized that what he really craved – time, accessible green space, a community – was nowhere to be found in San Francisco, where he had lived for seven years. “My wife and I started looking for a house in the Bay Area, and any house we liked was so far out of reach financially,” he says.

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The frugal couple saved nearly $ 200,000 in cash, he notes. In San Francisco, Bettilyon says he made about $ 150,000 even though his wife made less. They kept spending low by taking public transportation and sharing a 1,600-square-foot house in Berkeley with Bettilyon’s brother and sister-in-law for a total rent of $ 4,000 a month. In fact, according to Zillow, the typical San Francisco home is still valued at more than $ 1.5 million. “Any reasonable-priced home was either in an area we didn’t want to live in or in an area that wasn’t particularly safe,” notes Bettilyon. Adding children to a mortgage would have been financially onerous, even with Bettilyon’s six-figure salary.

Instead, Bettilyon and his wife decided to return to their Salt Lake City home, where they bought a three-bedroom home for $ 420,000 in May 2020, just as the pandemic started, he notes. The house is in the neighborhood where Bettilyon grew up and is close to friends and family. Better yet, it’s a couple of blocks from a large park. In San Francisco, they couldn’t afford a seat near a green space, and that was something the couple had sorely missed.

Moving from San Francisco to Salt Lake City saved the couple a tremendous amount of money. You’ve covered nearly 50% of the cost of your home and now your total mortgage is $ 1,250 per month. Bettilyon, who now teaches corporate computer coding courses on a contract basis, says he now makes between $ 60,000 and $ 80,000 a year, and his wife, who works as a project manager at a startup, makes roughly the same. And that works well for them, while it would have been difficult in the Bay Area, since everything from food to groceries to personal care services is cheaper in Salt Lake City than it is in San Francisco. The one expense, which may be a little higher, is that Bettilyon has more use of his car now that he can no longer walk to the grocery store – but he already had the car when he lived in Berkeley. And he couldn’t park the car in the house he lived in without paying his landlord an additional $ 500 a month – now he just parks in his driveway.

Thanks to their cheaper lifestyle, Bettilyon and his wife are saving for the future, he says. They recently installed solar panels on their home and decided to invest in a restaurant and mobile cocktail company. Every year they maximize their Roth IRA accounts and slowly replenish their savings. Every now and then they treat themselves to something totally pampering. For example, Bettilyon recently bought a piano to practice a skill he learned as a child. “It’s really liberating to be able to say that I can go out and have a good night on the town and not have to worry about how much it will cost,” says Bettilyon.

Parenthood is just around the corner – but for now the couple are focused on taking care of their recently adopted dog, who enjoys walking in the large park near their home. “I wouldn’t have got a dog in San Francisco because I was worried that this dog would get enough exercise,” says Bettilyon.

Of course, there are things the couple misses about San Francisco – the museums, the food, the inexhaustible possibilities. “Nothing is open late here in Salt Lake City. So if you’re hungry on your way home from a night out, you’d better have a pizza in your freezer, ”says Bettilyon. But as he gets older he goes out less anyway. “A lot of what made San Francisco so valuable in my twenties is not so valuable to me now that I’m married and thinking about children,” he says. (Are you thinking of giving up your expensive city too? Check out the Lowest Mortgage Rates You Can Get Right Here.)

The post This couple ditched dear San Francisco for Salt Lake Metropolis. Must you transfer? appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Posted: 09/24/2021 / 02:37 PM CDT
/ Updated: 9/24/2021 / 2:37 p.m. CDT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Tall trees are revered across California, but a towering Monterey pine at the center of a heated argument in San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhood is due to go, according to an appeals court ruling this week.

A state appeals court on Wednesday ordered a couple in the Pacific Heights neighborhood to remove the tree, which is at least 10 meters tall. A neighbor argued the tree blocked her view of San Francisco Bay and other city landmarks, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The neighbor is an 81-year-old woman who moved into the San Francisco home with her late husband in 1976. When the couple “saw the magnificent views, they were sold,” said Barri Bonapart, the woman’s attorney.

“You could see all the way from Marin Headlands to the Pacific Ocean and then the Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts, Sausalito, Belvedere, Tiburon and Angel Island,” said Bonaparte. She said her client asked to withhold her name because she feared harassment.

The pine was planted by a previous resident in 1999 and by the time the case went to court in 2019 had grown dozens of feet tall with widening, dense branches. The lawsuit was filed in 2018 after the mediation failed.

The woman “tried everything to work with her neighbors to find a common solution,” said Bonapart. “Unfortunately, they have always been adamant that they would never agree to restore their views unless told to do so.”

Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ross visited the site before issuing a ruling to remove the jaws in December 2019, citing a San Francisco ordinance aimed at resolving treetop feuds. He decided that “the tree’s rapid growth in height and width blocked the view of landmarks and vistas that could once be seen”.

The first district appeals court upheld Ross’ order, ruling Wednesday that the only viable solution in the case was to remove the tree.

The pruning might have worked when the jaw was smaller, but it has now grown too much to thin or top it to restore the prospect, Judge Ioanna Petrou said in the 3-0 decision. She cited the statement by arborists that the tree provides little shade or privacy to homeowners and could be cut down without disturbing the ground. Under the ordinance, both households would split the cost of the removal, which an arborist estimated at $ 1,800.

The exclusive neighborhood of Pacific Heights, famous for its expensive mansions and breathtaking views, is no stranger to tree disputes.

Larry Ellison, the billionaire chief executive officer of Oracle Corp., sued a downhill neighbor in 2011 for the removal of three sequoia trees and an 80-year-old acacia that was blocking his view of the bay. The lawsuit was settled with an agreement to prune the trees.

The post Court docket battle ends tree dispute in expensive San Francisco space – KXAN Austin appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.