San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

I have a data set of 2 people I know from RSF. Both are down to earth. One is a guy who hired our AWFUL contractor before we did and we were finding out how many people the contractor had ripped off. He opened up his house, told us his story, was very gracious, nice, etc. The other RSF person is someone we met through Craigslist - we were buying a hospital bed for my father-in-law. The guy, again, was super nice, charming, non-snooty.

It's not a big, or representative sample. But it's all I've got.

As snobby as people from hillsborough or atherton or los altos hills.

Your description between RSF and CV is probably more due to age and wealth. RSF folks have made it, probably are older, and less to prove. CV folks are younger, up and coming (as you describe), and probably have more to prove. The worst are the soccer moms in those Land Rovers that don't work. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...(We avoid them like the plague, so most of our families are double income folks that are pretty normal.)

However, you're going to find the "rich kid" issue in RSF and CV probably equally, it will just come in different flavors.

I think the first thing to note is in general, SoCal tends to be more shallow than NorCal...Just look at how many cosmetic surgery places there are here and plenty of big boob people as far as Temecula (so I've been told). It's just different down here.

George,
Based upon my limited experience with both, you are on target with your assessment of RSF vis a vis CV.

To the question, there is old RSF and new RSF. Very similar dynamic to La Jolla

Old La Jolla people are generally very nice. Newer La Jolla residents are more materialistic, pushier and generally less fun to encounter. I think the analogy generally holds. Most snobbery stems from insecurity

RSF is different from LJ in that you are not on top of one another. You are paying for big lots and privacy. It is not a good place to raise kids if you want to keep them down to earth.

I am from pre-IPO san fran for reference. Unlike some of norcal, the rich here tend to show it (think 100K Lexus but not a Maserati) in their houses, cars, lifestyles.

I suggest you rent a house for a yr. The transition will be hardest on your kids so take their temperature as you rent.

There are rich snobby people all over SoCal and there are rich really NICE people too. The people in RSF do have A LOT of money. I've met more nice than snobby.
For me I learned it was more about lifestyle and community than being snobby.

We used to live in La Jolla and I realized I didn't want to raise my kids there based on the lifestyle. People tend to be retired or students and there aren't a lot of children. It was usually me and my kids at the park with the dog club. I met plenty of nice people but it is harder to develop relationships.

For example, I wanted to live on a street where my kids can go out and play with the neighbors and I actually know my neighbors. In La Jolla I met 2 out of my 6 neighbors after living there for 3 years.

I am guessing here but I imagine the kids in RSF go to private school, take horse riding lessons, other private sport lessons etc cuz they can afford it. I found that my children become friends with those whom they go to school, and do activities. Then I meet the parents as well. I would be interested to see how many kids in RSF go to the YMCA for baseball camp etc. Personally I think it is harder to become part of community if you are not doing the same activities.
Bottom line...I don't think its the cars and designer clothes. You will find some of that in all SD communities. I think when you have kids...the house you buy should provide a great neighborhood and community. From my experience it is a little harder to develop that in richer communities.

FLU: Dude, I grew up in Los Altos Hills (Altamont Circle, off Page Mill Road) and I remember when it was also down to earth folks with no snoot factor (unlike Atherton or Hillsborough). Same with Palo Alto and Menlo.

The Asshole Factor up there was indeed what my mom called the "arrivistes" or "new money", the people that came in with the rise of the Silicon Valley. I'm pretty sure Atherton and Hillsborough always had that snoot factor and going back to the turn of the 20th century (railroad money).

Sorry, I grew up a bumpkin in Santa Clara picking cherries while some of the more lofty cherry orchard owners were perched up in Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills after making a killing on Apple stock. Just kidding. My dad worked at Kennedy Center after relocating from Johnson in Houston, so we weren't exactly cherry pickers. It was much worse though during the dot com days :)

New money does interesting things to people. Post-IPO but Pre-BubbleBurst NorCal people can get pretty bad

Better yet, buy a ranch in Temecula and steer clear of those phonies from CV and RSF.

But what about all those folks at the local PF Changs? :)

Why do you care how the people in RSF are? You live your life, have your friends and go about your own business. Teach your children common sense and tell them not to take anything for granted. I think you're doing the right thing, live below your means and stay out of financial trouble.

The OP mentions Olivenhain... That's not the same as Carmel Valley is it?

FLU: I had a job at Apple during high school (1982), cleaning printed circuit boards (back when Apple fabbed their own computers, the IIc and IIe). This was right after the Apple IPO and, pretty quickly, folks there started trading the VWs in for Porsches. That was about when the attitude really started changing up there.

This may be before your time, but I remember the days of Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and the rest of the nerds hanging out at the Byte Shop in Mountain View with Paul Terrell and talking computers. That's where it all started and, back before the money, it was just computer jockeys, engineers and programmers. There were some big players, like Lockheed M&S, IBM, Raytheon and Ford Aerospace (where my dad worked), but nothing like today.

Olivenhain is a nice quiet inland part of Encinitas. It is on the way to RSF from Encinitas. It seems pretty laid back and chill in my opinion.
Based on his information Olivenhain seems more like a good fit, plus the Target is just down the street.:)

I think I was in 3rd grade then around 1983 was when I got my IIe (thanks dad! :)...Helping my teacher use the IIe for a class presentation. I was one of the few kids that had a IIe ...A whopping 128k memory, 80 column text card, joystick, floppy drive, and a ImageWriter dot matrix printer. My dad coughed up $3010.99 for that thing those days...I still have the receipt. Mine was partly made in taiwan. My friend on the other hand had a "Orange IIe", which was a Apple IIE illegally copied and smuggled out of Taiwan.

The school's system had me beat...A color monitor that could display 16 colors. Woohoo.... LOGO was the king of graphics then. "Show turtle", etc...Hmmm, I should dig that out of my closet.

Those were the days.

FLU: Yeah, they were. My high school had a pair of Apple IIes and a pair of Kaypro IIs (running CP/M; remember CP/M?) and all four could connect to Stanford's Dept. of Mathematics by acoustic couplers (where you'd connect the telephone handset to the coupler device and connect at like 2 baud or so it seemed). This was considered "bleeding edge" technology and I remember downloading differential equations for AP on those old dinosaurs.

Those were indeed the days.

George I think the snobbiness factor is not as much defined geographically. I live in Scripps and we run into snobs there all the time. Gimme a break it is Scripps freeking Ranch but some of the citizens think it is the Taj Mahal. I have found attitudes like that all over town, from CV, to RSF to La Costa... I could go on and on. I think that you kind of roll the dice in any of the more desireable communities around town. Basically the values that you instill in your children will be what carries them into adulthood. No matter where you live your kids will be exposed to kids who are ... of questionable character and will not have the same values.... I think it is true that some of the more established communities that have longevity and character may also have wealthy citizens who are less concerned with exposing thier net worth which is good. I have met old surfers in places like Cardiff or Encinitas who are loaded and you would never know it. They are the nicest people in the world.

I agree. It's easier said than done but the right approach in my opinion.Besides, snobs and cliques of a sort, come in every economic class and social variation. I want to feel connected to my community to some degree though,so I would have to feel like I was enjoying some local relationships/participation, as opposed to just my friends from elsewhere. If RSF is where you want to live and you can pay for it but can't or don't want to "keep up" with the neighbors then live there anyway and deal with it. There will be plenty of upside.

You might feel uncomfortable with some situations but gradually find some enjoyable social interactions that lead to friendships. If you have a hunch that a place works well for you and your family it probably will. Once that is realized on a day to day basis, it will be easy to be less concerned with the "snobs".

SDR: True. My buddies and I used to booze at The Leucadian bar on the Coast Highway back in the day.

It turns out when of these raggedy old beach bum types was formerly with the General Counsel's Office at IBM HQ in Armonk, NY and had finally said "f**k it" and pulled the pin.

He had taken up surfing in his 50's and had a place on the water. Used to listen to Zep and Floyd and apparently smoked mammoth amounts of ganja. He was also loaded after 25+ yrs with IBM as a corporate attorney.

You never know.

Allan -

Bobby Beathard = Surf Bum...

Should have stayed a surfer...heheheheh...

Ran into him at the DMV and he is a nice guy.

LOL...my father always said....you never know who the rich guy is, he probably has some dribble on his chin...

SDR: Speaking of the Chargers... Have you been following the Ryan Leaf story in the news? Wow, huh? Talk about a complete fall from grace.

About Bobby Beathard: I seem to recall some really bad trades in the early to mid 1980s that took the Chargers out of the Super Bowl and put the 49ers in it: Fred Dean, "Big Hands" Johnson and Louie Kelcher. He wasn't the only Chargers GM that pulled some really bone headed moves.

Speaking of Louie Kelcher: A buddy and I sat in Palo Alto Bowl and watched Louie singlehandedly eat his way through the entire menu. I swear to God, the entire table top was covered in those little red baskets and he was just motoring through 'em. Big boy. Big, big boy!

I couldn't agree w/ SD Realtor more.
Why not Cardiff, Encinitas or Solana Beach?

I wish could relate to your problem a little more. We are a middle-class family trying to relocate partly due to the deteriorating school within our rental home school boundary (Escondido).

Transfers are not working due to the school districts budget.

You sound like a down-to-earth person & if you keep your kids humble - send them to the best school you can.

Good luck!

Have you tried charter schools (e.g. Classical Academy)?

CV soccer moms are the worst.......I have lived in La Jolla and now live in the CV....Most LJ people have made it and if they need to show off they do it with their multi-million dollar house...They then drive or dress anyway they please...

But when you think about it, all the homes in CV are pretty much the same...maybe a few more square feet or a bigger lot...SO they need to show off by leasing nicer cars, spending more on clothes or having really big hair....They are just whipping out their credit/debit cards, spending their husbands hard earned money, trying to think they are in the next level (ie. LJ or RSF etc.)...

They are generally rude and think they are hot stuff.....That's also why prices for alot of things are actually slightly higher in the CV than LJ..The soccer moms in the leased Land Rover don't car about saving a few bucks here and there...Thats why they all fill up at that overpriced Shell near Carmel Creek rd which charges outrageous prices for gas...too undignified to fill up in Mira Mesa....

If I see one more overweight soccer mom, squeezing into some expensive tight Juicy Coutiere labeled pants I am going to barf.....

I think you're describing general gold diggers in SoCal, no?

ummmm the Carmel Creek Shell is about 4 cents more expensive than that one on MM Blvd. It would be more economically feasible to just fill up in the CC Shell than the one on MM if you factor in the cost of driving to MM (not to mention the extra pollution you generate).

Go easy on the sour grapes dude.

LOL ! Substitute Scottsdale,(Snottsdale or Snobbsdale), AZ for Carmel Valley and it also matches perfectly, and one of the main reasons I moved out of there after several years. In the Greater Phoenix metro area there's a strong visceral antipathy to that Scottsdale/CV type of lifestyle, even somebody creating a blog site, (scottsdale-sucks.com),with witty posts on the phonies,wannabes and status-seekers. Besides the absurd soccer mom phenomenon, another common term and species there is the Scottsdale 30K per year "millionaire".

Yes