[quote=SDEaves]Thanks for your worry about the neighborhoods being too expensive for us. If this helps, we have toured many homes in our price range in all four locations (over the past year). We’ve looked at many different neighborhoods in San Diego before narrowing down the search to these favorites. Now it’s just deciding townhouse vs. SFR and your posts specifically have helped us IMMENSELY! Oh and yes, we checked out La Mesa. Certain areas we found to be right up our alley (north of the 8 and near Lake Murray) but the south-west area (near Rolando) was pretty scary.[/quote]

SDEaves, you never stated here (until now) that you had been looking for a year and have not yet purchased a property ;=]

You also didn’t state if you would be willing to do any major (or minor) work before or after moving in. If the answer to “major work” is a “yes,” I feel your options for a SFR of 1600+ sf would open up exponentially, perhaps in LM.

Have you made any offers on properties which were not accepted?

During this past year (while you have been looking at properties) have you noticed an uptick and firming of prices in any of your areas of choice? Have you noticed if properties you’re seeing have already been snapped up by cash buyers?

North of the 8 and near Lake Murray is actually San Carlos (SD 92119).

I didn’t look at any properties online on your behalf so don’t have any idea of the inventory in your areas of choice right now.

The price you stated you could qualify for ($360K) just so happens to be within the range cash investors are willing to spend for a rental property or “flipper.”

The above reasons are why I felt some of the areas mentioned on this thread were “too expensive” for you.