I am one of these SD renters, and I also make the median SD income (or slightly below), and, bonus, I am also in Mira Mesa. So I will describe my situation and see if it sheds light on things.
My work is up in Rancho Bernardo. Minimum I can hope to rent a 2BR place for up there (or even, anywhere in a radius of 15 mi from there) is $1500. 1BRs are slightly less but not enough less for the reduced space. I refuse to live north of Lake Hodges because the commute is horrific– 45 minutes to drive 4 miles to work. I lived that for 3 months in 2006 and got the hell out.
So anyway, $1500 would be 30% of my gross pay, which is the max they advise for people to pay for housing. What is not mentioned is that this is about half my take-home pay. I could improve the latter ratio but that would mean reducing my 401(K) payment– not gonna happen. I am only 23 years away from retirement, max, and I refuse to screw myself that badly.
By living in a $1500 place I would have nothing left over to save up for a down payment. Which would mean that I would be renting theoretically until I retired (a dead-end road in itself), but the way rents have been jacking up (and pay hasn’t), I would probably hit the financial wall a lot sooner than that.
So, instead, I am renting two rooms in a friend’s house in the southeast quadrant of Mira Mesa, with my appliances in storage at the movers’, for $600 a month. And yes, I fully realize that this is a steal deal, as normally a single room rents for about $600 in this town. Part of my “rent” is cleaning the place (which I assure you is indeed a time sink as my friend is messy).
One upon a time I was thinking of buying in Mira Mesa, maybe a house on this same street. No longer. What a bunch of noisy gits for neighbors– teenagers pulling up to the house across the street with their car stereos at night, multiple cars loitering in the street and and their drivers “chatting”, the other neighbors having all their friends over for the ball game and whooping and hollering through their open front window. And these houses are packed very close together (as all San Diego houses seem to be) so you hear everything, even with the window closed. So basically, forget about taking an afternoon nap or even going to sleep before about 9:30 or 10:00 at night, unlike places where I used to live up in RB.
The only places around MM that I would consider living in permanently are out around the edges, and go for more like Rancho Bernardo prices ($600K-ish) currently. I wonder who is “snapping up” all these $400K MM houses and if they are OK with the quality of life/neighbors/lack of quiet they are buying into.
More comments on rents and why they are so high: At least in the RB/RPQ/CMR area, I think there is a multiple whammy going on– one, all those people who got burned out of their houses in the fire last fall are renting currently, soaking up units. Two, those who got foreclosed out of their houses and moved out are forced to rent (esp the 4S/4Closure Ranch schmoes). Three, in the RB area there were 4 or 5 apartment complexes that got condo-converted in the past 2-3 years and that took a LOT of rental units off the market in the area.
In 2006 I could find several units on offer for the $1200’s, including one I wound up renting. Now such rates are “unobtainium”. (In answer to why I moved out of the $1200 place, which would have been financially tolerable– I was literally forced out of it by toxic fumes– new cheap paint and carpet which refused to stop stinking even after a year’s ventilation, and which literally made me sick over the winter.)
I have also been looking closely at the “active” listings on Realtor.com for the RB area. It is amazing how many of these are condos, mostly the aforementioned conversions. Also amazing are the number of liar realtors; you go to look at a “single family home” listing on Realtor.com here and find that no, it is actually a condo (which should be listed as “condo/townhouse”). I think in actuality it is about 4:1 ratio of condos:houses for sale up there.
Craigslist for the area is also pretty amazing– there are a bunch of flippers and converters trying to rent out their bling-crap condos to get some kind of cash flow out of them. I would not rent anything west of the I-15, particularly if it has granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and other moronic bling, because to me this is a sure sign of an underwater flipper unit which might get foreclosed out from under you, the hapless renter, shortly. And of course, all of them going for at least the ambient $1500/month.
So, much as I hate my current crappy noisy neighborhood, it looks like if I am to do anything remotely sensible for my financial future, I have to bite the bullet and continue renting (and saving up) here for a while. And hope I can keep my job.
