I also live in San Jose but south side. Renting an apartment in San Jose is a waste of money. If you must, you are better off renting a small room and invest the rest of the money in an index fund or a down payment for a house. If you are renting an apartment like that, you are just throwing money away and making some else rich. I used to rent also but realize I was just wasting money. I work in tech and I bought my house in late 2019 for 800K. Now it is worth $1.2M. House was old and needed some repairs but I learned to fix a lot of it myself by watching how-to videos on RU-vid. The best investment I every made was buying a house in San Jose. No apartment living will ever beat having a full front yard , garage, and back yard along with a driveway and your own property separated by a fence. I was able to put down 20 percent down for my house by living really cheap and investing in Vanguard index funds. Good luck to you.
