Oyinbo

I lived on this street for three years until my daughter got to the point where we needed to flee to get a quiet street with a greater sense of community.

We bought one of the newer spiffy townhouses on the very heavily trafficked Sunnyoaks and LOVED the place. Very modern, very spacious. In a word: beautiful. And we knew what we were getting... A wonderful space that was all about indoor living. It's the outside that sucks.

The street itself is an major access road to the back neighborhoods with cars going by at about 10 a minute on a Saturday (leaving soot and dust all over the homes on the actual street). A 7-Eleven right down the street generates a TON of unwelcome foot traffic from the crappy apartments a few blocks away and copious amounts of litter on the street. We used to have people buying food at 7-Eleven and then they would have their little lunch ON OUR FRONT STAIRS. We even had to push past them sometimes to get in (keep in mind, this is a condo with a private entrance, not an apt building!). I pushed past a guy one day and before I got in the house he wrapped up his garbage, and tossed it in my bushes right in front of me! I hadn't said a word or even made eye contact, so WTF? And yes, there is the one or two homeless folks around, one of whom decided to sleep in our little side yard one night and DEFECATED there before leaving. Awesome.

My final gripe is about the 1,000's of Harley owners in the back neighborhoods that use Sunnyoaks as their main access road. Our place had triple-paned windows and these bastards would wake up our baby every 20 minutes or so flying by at night. Guys, no one thinks you're cool on your bike when you make little girls wake up crying.

Let me finish by saying Campbell is overall a very nice town. Downtown is cute and continues to develop nicely (and has the best farmer's market in the south bay). The government is reasonably responsible (though their building and planning seems a bit fast and loose with monster homes being built in odd places on tiny lots). The schools seem to be hit or miss, but you can request specific elementary schools for your kids. There are also MANY nice quiet neighborhoods. However, Sunnyoaks is not one of them.

Hollycrest Drive is part of the Live Oak Manner neighborhood which is a relatively unknown pocket of Los Gatos. It is in the Los Gatos school district, is quiet and clean (with neighbors that keep up their homes nicely), unpretentious, safe, close to good shopping areas (three minute walk to Trader Joe's!) and packed with lots of good families who like each other and have kids constantly playing up and down the street.

I am from the East Coast originally and wanted that tighter neighborhood feel I grew up with for my family and we found it here. We hunted high and low in the south bay looking for a place that was quiet, safe, and with good schools. The one thing we could not have planned for is how sweet and fun the neighbors themselves are, which we found out the weekend we moved in when we spontaneously ended up BBQing with the folks next door. It's the sort of cohesion you can't scout out in a real estate hunt and if you drift a couple of blocks away they don't seem to have the same glue that Hollycrest has.

The one thing to know is this is not your uppity Los Gatos street. Most of the houses are modest ~1600 sq ft ranches built in the late 50's. Most have been upgraded so much that they don't at all resemble the track homes they once were, so there is personality to the homes, but the vast majority remain single story dwellings for now. The great thing is that as a buyer, the lots are large enough to qualify under Los Gatos' strict building codes to add a second story which gives you quite a bit of upside to your investment if you decide to go that route.

To sum it up, I feel like I found the perfect place for us to raise our family and I smile to myself virtually every day as I pull into my driveway. It's a great feeling to be in a wonderful place surrounded by great people and I would not be surprised to find myself still here in 20 years.