The entire southern california coast has pretty similar weather. I grew up in Marina Del Rey and Venice and after 18 years moved down here and have been here ever since. My personal recommendation would be San Diego but your lifestyle may be more of the LA type. If I were to have to live up in LA I would consider Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Manhattan Beach and other South Bay coastal areas. The OC (Orange County) is nice as well. Nothing wrong with it. However for my money San Diego is still more preferable to those areas. I am not sure why you are so hung up on the Coronado waether. Honestly the weather in San Diego is pretty consistent. We get crappy coastal fog on an intermittent basis for about 2-3 months out of the year. Usually April/May through July. It ebbs and flows between a few miles inland down to the coast and it doesn’t matter if you are in Coronado or Oceanside. If you want to understand the phenomenah more google Catalina Eddy and you can learn about it. This localized pattern produces crappy inland overcast known as June Gloom basically along the entire Socal coast.
Getting away from the weather a little bit, my strong strong advice would be for you to come down and rent for awhile. What concerns me is that your posts DEFINITELY indicate that you do not know the area that well. In that situation the probability they you end up purchasing a home somewhere that IS NOT ideal to you is much higher then the probability that you purchase one in the ideal location. Think about it, you are going to be spending ALOT of money on this next residence correct? Don’t you think some legwork and due diligence are in order. Getting opinions and advice is nice but again, odds are that you will (in the long run) make an incorrect decision.
