I hate to be discouraging, but years of trying to maintain a greenbelt, limiting the height of downtown buildings, being near Silicon Valley, and not building enough student housing has contributed to one of the worst places to rent or buy housing in the nation. We are perhaps slightly cheaper than New York, Santa Clara, San Jose, and San Francisco, but not by much.
In response to a query about moving here, I recently surveyed the classified ads in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Here were the results:
Studios ranged from $495 in the mountains to a high of $975 with $600 being the most common range. 1 bedrooms ranged from $850 to a high of $1000 for 450 sq. feet. 2 bedrooms were from $1150 to $1950, 3 bedrooms $1800 to $2900, and I saw a 4 bedroom for 3 thousand dollars!
Rooms in a house (which is what many santa cruz liberals do, share housing) ran from $265.00 out in the boondocks (read: mountains) to $1000! There seems to be a lot in the $500 to $650 range with only a few below that and several above.
The worse time to look is August-October, as students have returned and are looking madly for housing. Some never find it and camp or couch surf. The best time to start is June, when they leave. (Smart UC students keep their home during the summer.)
To find a decent place allow a few months for the search. Come prepared to pay a hefty deposit and last month's rent in addition to first month's. It can easily cost you over 2000 dollars or more to rent your own apartment or house.
Rest assured that all affordable ones will have a huge crowd of applicants and many landlords have the luxury to be very picky about credit checks and references. Some of the cheaper rents end up being for shacks that you won't believe people would live in--but in Santa Cruz, they do.
You can search classifieds at santacruzsentinel.com You could also do a search for local property management companies--sometimes you can get leads directly from them before an ad goes in the paper.
I myself have decided to move out of Santa Cruz so I can buy a house for less than half a million dollars (even two bedrooms are in that range now). I'll be leaving in Autumn of 2001.
This page updated on August 6, 2000.
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