Alexa Young and Wilmer Tejada met as students at UC Santa Barbara and spent most of their 20s bouncing around different Bay Area rentals. When they both turned 30 last year, they decided to plant some roots and buy a place of their own.

“At some point, we want to start a family,” said Tejada, a software engineer. “Buying a home would allow us to grow into a space if we do decide to have children.”

Since moving to the Bay Area in 2019, the couple had lived in Dublin, San Jose and, most recently, San Leandro, after Young took a job with the probation office in Alameda County.

With Young hoping for a quick commute to Oakland and Tejada working remotely, they narrowed their search to the East Bay. Their finances limited their options even more — with a maximum budget of $750,000, they were significantly under the median sales price of $1.3 million in Alameda County. The couple decided to narrow their search to Alameda, Castro Valley, San Leandro and San Lorenzo, which were cheaper than the areas of Oakland they were interested in, but still accessible via public transportation.

They hoped to find a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house — ideally a single-family home with backyard space.

As they began looking at homes, Young and Tejada realized they would need to be more aggressive on price — they upped their budget to $800,000. To save money, they also decided to go with flat-fee brokerage TurboHome, which they’d heard about on Reddit.

Typically, a home seller pays an agent commission, around 5% of the sale price, which is split with the buyer’s agent. But rather than collecting their share of the commission, TurboHome takes a flat fee of $8,000, and offers to credit the rest to the buyer, which they can keep, or use to raise their offer. There was a tradeoff, though — TurboHome would only organize 10 private tours for a buyer. Tejada and Young would be on their own, attending public open houses for the rest. That wasn’t a problem for Tejada, though.

“I’m the type of person to go to open houses and do a lot of research on my own,” Tejada said. “Once I need the help, that’s when I contact somebody.”

Here were some of the houses in San Leandro the pair considered:

Ranch near highway

This three-bedroom, one-bathroom home was located close to a highway — which would let them enjoy quick access to nearby stores like Costco, Home Depot and Walmart, but came with a noisy backdrop. The backyard was bounded by Westgate Parkway, with a large parking lot and busy shopping center just behind the home, and an industrial business park just to the south. Still, it would be an easy commute into the city for Young. Though the main home was just 1,149 square feet, it came with an unpermitted one-bedroom, one-bathroom mother-in-law cottage in the backyard. Securing retroactive permits for the unit would cost thousands of dollars, potentially, and presented a bureaucratic hurdle. The home was listed at $687,786.

A bright spot

This 1,050 square-foot home included three bedrooms and one bathroom. The kitchen had been updated recently with new appliances. Among the other perks were a two-car garage with built-in storage, as well as a large backyard and a covered patio. Tejada and Young liked the neighborhood — the home was a five-minute walk from Del Rey Elementary School and a nearby park. It was listed at $775,000.

Close to BART

This three-bedroom, two-bath home was located in San Leandro’s Lower Bal neighborhood, east of Interstate 880 and north of Interstate 238 in a residential neighborhood a short drive from a nearby shopping center and Target. The home was also a 12-minute walk to the Bay Fair BART station, which offered Young an option to commute into Oakland without her car. The downside was that the roof needed to be replaced, which would cost $20,000. The home was listed in October for $850,000 but after sitting on the market for a month, the seller dropped the price to $799,000.

Which was chosen?

It would have been easy to overlook the home in San Leandro’s Lower Bal — the home hadn’t been staged. Photos of the listing show a lived-in home with heaps of laundry in the corners, a kitchen table cluttered with mail and cleaning supplies, and a loose roll of toilet paper on a coffee table in the living room.

“We had nothing to lose though, so we toured it,” Tejada said.

Like most of the places they saw, the home needed some repairs, but they could see the potential. They liked the neighborhood, and the fact that it was close enough to walk to transit if they wanted to head into Oakland or San Francisco.

Even though the home was listed at $799,000, their TurboHome agent encouraged them to bid $760,000, given the meager effort the seller’s agent put into marketing the home, and its nearly 80 days on the market.

The seller was offering a 2.5% commission to the buyer’s agent. Instead, Tejada and Young decided to simply pay TurboHome’s flat fee out of pocket and tell the seller they wouldn’t have to pay any commission. That made their offer stronger — the seller would pocket $741,000 from the sale, rather than just $722,000 if Tejada and Young had gone with a traditional agent.

Their offer was accepted, and the couple moved in early this month.

Young and Tejada are still getting settled. Their first project is painting — something they’re particularly excited to do given the years of renting in which they were subject to their landlord’s choice of wall color.

“You don’t have to ask for permission anymore,” Tejada said. “There’s that space and freedom in going from renting to owning.”