Carlsbad is tricky because it represents 3 different school districts. Based upon what you’ve said about education for your kids, you’ll want to be in Southwest Carlsbad – 92009 in the portion that falls in the Encinitas/San Dieguito School Districts. In 1.5 to 2 years, I beleive you will be looking at homes that are currently in 800 to 850 range. You can see what that will get you on realtor.com. Basically, its a 4BR 2,500 sq ft home built in the late 70’s to mid 80’s. With a little luck and the assistance of a good realtor, hopefully it would be on a nice size lot (10,000 sq ft or more) and be very nicely remodelled/updated. Based upon my assumptions, with a little more luck it could be a 2,300 to 2,800 sq ft home built in the mid to late 90’s on a smaller lot but in a really nice neighborhood with lots of youngsters running around.

I don’t know that much about OC but dont see how there can be that much difference in the path they take even with the stronger job market up there.