- Good Luck and make the right choice.

I understand that with landlording (house hacking or otherwise), my personal preferences of lifestyle choice don't matter. 

I guess that's a way to ask how to become financially independent or to have time freedom, options, choices, etc but i doubt many asking know their deep why.

There a tons of fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice and true and false questions.

Why don't you guys live in East Bay and use the commuter train to work/live between south bay and east bay, there're still affordable and decent housing in area like livermore,tracy and even Manteca.Livermore SFR costs $300-$400K, train: 50mins  (compare if you drive to campbell/san jose from sunnyvale or palo alto, it's still one hour since traffic is bad ).Tracy SFR costs $300K: train: 1:20minsManteca SFR costs $150-200K: train 1:40minsAnd it's much much much more beautiful than South Bay.Leaving South Bay is the best choice for me...

Out of those two zip codes, 89015 is the better choice, but it really depends on what part of those zip codes you are wanting to be in.

@Cheryle Patterson I have a student rental property business down in Columbia and have dealt with a myriad of problems over the last 12 years.

American Modern was the best of many poor choices for me.  

Your choice.

A bonus of this strategy is that I'm in a good position to do bigger/better deals in the future if that's what the market dictates.Of course they were my choices.