Alum Rock Ave, East Foothills

The East Foothills of San Jose have to be the best almost-nice neighborhood in the entire Bay Area. Like any other foothill area, the homes are beautiful, clean, and modern, and the further up the hill you go, the bigger the houses get. The area is well-maintained, the scenery is beautiful, and it is a nice cookie-cutter neighborhood with access to a great urban metropolis, pristine state parks, and all of the Bay Area's wonderful amenities.

However, in order to get to here from anywhere, you have to drive through Alum Rock and East San Jose, the picture of poor neighborhoods in the process of gentrification. Block-by-block, you could go from mansions to a developing country and back again, but either way, there is no way to avoid this area in order to get anywhere else.

All-in-all, the area is almost like a wolf in sheep's clothing and has a big target on its back for the poorer neighboring areas, but one thing is for certain: the investment opportunities around here are great.

Overall, San Jose is a very weird city, in my mind - aesthetically pleasing but with a very sketchy downtown area and a high concentration of homelessness. However, Alum Rock Avenue offers a nice break in a relatively suburban area.

The road is nothing remarkable right off of the highway and offers little more than overpriced gas stations, like the rest of the Bay Area, but drive a little further and you will be taken into a lovely suburban escape of quintessential hillside views that are so common here. Continue following the road, and you will reach the lovely San Jose country club, a true escape from the rest of the city.

The country club is beautiful, scenic (a golf course and hilltop homes make it feel more Napa and less Silicon Valley) and surprisingly affordable if you are booking events. I came here for work in January and was utterly impressed.

I can only imagine that the real estate here is the opposite of cheap, but if you are making six figures at an IT company down here and aren't crazy about a massive commute, then this might not be such a bad area to live.