RE: the question about HOA or MR in Del Mar. No, most houses in Del Mar don’t have either HOA or Mello Roos. I personally don’t know of any that do, but there may be some with very low fees.
However, if you ever decide to look for real estate around here, it’s good to know the difference between the two sections of Del Mar. One is the City of Del Mar, which is governed by its own City Council, has strict design regulations and is not part of the City of San Diego. This area, which is bordered basically by Crest Canyon to the east and the ocean to the west with lots of zigs and zags in between, is also sometimes referred to as “Olde Del Mar”.
There is another area, loosely bordered by Crest Canyon on the east and I-5 on the west, which is still technically Del Mar and has the Del Mar zip code, but is instead governed by San Diego. The Barbados Way property mentioned earlier is in this area of Del Mar and would presumably be a much easier fixer than one in the City of Del Mar/Olde Del Mar since it’s governed by San Diego building dept rules and regs instead of Del Mar.
Since jpinpb seemed to refer to “Old Del Mar” and “Del Mar west of 5” as being the same area (unless I misunderstood), I thought it might help to point this out since it does affect property values and, also even more importantly (at least if you’re considering a fixer), design/construction regulations.
For example, we live in the City of Del Mar/Olde Del Mar, and when we renovated our house, we had to jump through huge hoops with the City of Del Mar Design Review Board, which took many months and added unanticipated costs, such as an entire french drain system (designed by a civil engineer whom we had to hire) surrounding the entire property for runoff…it’s good stuff in the long run and of course, important for the environment, but it can put quite a damper on a tight budget.
Also, as with many houses in the City of Del Mar/Olde Del Mar, we can only build on 25% of our lot and cannot go up more than one story. So, even if you have a 10,000 sf lot, you’re looking at only a max of a 2500 sf house, 440 sf of which is usually a 2-car garage, so you’re left with just over 2000 sf living area.
This is a great size for a 2nd home, empty nesters or even smaller families, but it becomes tougher as our 3 kids grow older and we all feel like we’re always in each other’s space. Seriously, our kids drool over some of those mega-CV homes with the pool and the gigantic game/movie rooms (while my hubby drools over the 3-4 car garages). Still, we talk to our kids about how we value being near the beach and the benefits of living in a cozy, well-designed home, but sometimes kids just don’t understand. Hmmmm…imagine that! Anyway, you may get a bit of the same feedback as your twins grow older, but maybe not.
So…that was long-winded and somewhat off-topic, but I think my original point was to say that houses in both the City of Del Mar/Olde Del Mar or the Del Mar area west of 5 don’t normally have HOA or Mello Roos!
By the way, I’ve found that if you want to get a good birds-eye view of what’s available in a certain neighborhood, you can use the Zip Realty website (and probably others, too, but this is just one I’ve found). Of course, you have to register, but then you can click on “search for homes” and then “interactive map.” You can then click and drag the mouse around the map to immediately view a snapshot of properties for sale in your price range in any given area of the map. This is helpful if you don’t know street names or just want to check out a neighborhood, or you want to see if there are any houses for sale on a certain canyon. Maybe everyone but me discovered this tool a long time ago, so excuse me if this is old news, but I think it’s really helpful!
