After spending most of their grownup lives in Arizona, Dennis and Sherry Weiss talked a few everlasting relocation to the San Francisco Bay Space. It wasn’t the primary time they’d had the dialog.
The couple — who had been collectively greater than 30 years, and married for eight — had been circling the subject for a decade, because the first of Ms. Weiss’s three grandchildren was born in San Francisco. (She has two grownup daughters from a earlier marriage residing within the Bay Space; Mr. Weiss has two grownup sons in Ohio.)
“We went backwards and forwards on it,” mentioned Mr. Weiss, 70, a semi-retired psychiatrist. “‘Nobody retires to California.’ We heard that rather a lot.”
However household concerns received out, and their plans accelerated because of unexpected circumstances. In January, simply earlier than the couple have been to fly in for a go to, Ms. Weiss acquired a name from one in all her daughters.
“Carly says, ‘Mother, I’ve Covid,’” mentioned Ms. Weiss, 69, a retired public-school trainer. “So we stayed on the resort in Palo Alto and waited for her to check adverse. It was like, ‘Effectively, we now have days to kill. Let’s drive round and take a look at homes.’”
[Did you recently buy a home? We want to hear from you. Email: thehunt@nytimes.com]
The couple, who had casually scouted East Bay places previously, focused on a strip of 20 miles or so alongside the San Francisco Peninsula, from San Mateo south to Sunnyvale. One afternoon, whereas taking a look at listings that they had seen on Zillow, they discovered themselves struggling by a pounding rainstorm. They ducked right into a Berkshire Hathaway workplace in Redwood Metropolis, instructed the receptionist they wished to purchase a house, and requested if a dealer was out there.
“I can depend on three fingers the variety of occasions one thing like that has occurred in my profession,” mentioned Michael Smith, the agent who was within the workplace that day. Mr. Smith, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, rapidly pulled collectively listings, and the hunt started in earnest.
The sale of the Phoenix house and small workplace bungalow that belonged to Mr. Weiss, together with large run-ups in long-held shares of Apple inventory — “I by no means bought, and it type of sneaked up on us,” he mentioned — put the couple within the surprising place of having the ability to work from a $2 million worth level with flexibility.
They wished a single-level place with loads of room to host the grandchildren, in addition to a glimpse of San Francisco Bay, if attainable. Proximity to Ms. Weiss’s daughters — one in San Francisco, the opposite in East Palo Alto — was a precedence.
Amongst their selections:
Discover out what occurred subsequent by answering these two questions: