I tried picking up some properties in Carmel Valley last year as well as early this year before I just gave up. Fortunately we weren’t desperate to buy like some of these families now looking for houses to move in to them before the school year.

We were trying to just pick up a townhouse not a SFH but we know several friends that bought in Carmel Valley in the past 6 months or so. A few of them seemed like they weren’t totally in love with the property but just got desperate and “beaten down” looking.

I was having lunch this weekend with one of our friends that bought a SFH in Carmel Valley in December and she said she just felt beaten down and like it was a full time job looking for a house. She “gave in” and bought a house there.

I really think many people are going to have some serious buyer’s remorse here in a few years because they bought properties they weren’t in love with.

I think the numbers out there tend to show that about 30% or so of the buyers out there are cash buyers. I’m not sure if that is still the case but the last time I checked it looked to be about 3 out of 10 buying in cash here in the SD area. I’m not sure if it’s higher in Carmel Valley or not but some of the properties we lost out on were cash buyers.

I went in with 50% cash offers on a few properties and we got beat out by 100% cash offers. I don’t blame sellers for wanting cash and being able to close quickly. After all, a few years ago when we were buying…we paid cash for our house to negotiate a good deal and got a really great price that way. More deals were falling apart back in 2011 vs. today.

FlyerinHI makes a good point about legitimate business people. I agree. I’ve met a TON of families here since moving here from other countries. I can’t believe the number of Colombians I’ve met here in San Diego. As well, Russians and several Mexican families. I’m starting to meet some Argentineans and Brazilians as well. Previously I mostly saw Argentineans and Brazilians buying on the East Coast (Miami, NYC, etc) but I’m seeing some shift some of their funds to SoCal now.

It’s funny because sometimes I hear all this talk about wealthy Chinese buying here in San Diego. Just where is this happening and have you guys seem examples of this? If so, where? You realtors on the board…. are you seeing wealthy Chinese buying here with cash?

I was just curious about that. I’ve read about it on a few forums but when I press for actual developments where this is happening no one ever has anything to say. So if you guys are seeing it, please post as I like to keep up with actual trends.

You have to remember that real estate is still fairly cheap here for many foreigners. It might be expensive to Americans but real estate is very expensive in many countries. Even countries that are relatively poor or with tons of problems still or poor economies are expensive. You have properties in some of these major cities in these countries that are much more expensive than San Diego. So to them it’s cheap.

As well, traditional cities where foreigners tend to buy like NYC are VERY expensive today. By rotating out of traditional cities like NYC and getting some of those funds to SoCal properties here is really cheap for them compared to places like NYC! Especially at the sub $1.5 million dollar market. Here $1.5 million actually buys quite a bit of house! In NYC..not so much… Plus some of those HOA fees in cities like New York are absolutely crazy. Here HOA fees even in upscale communities is relatively cheap.

The dividing line of crappy tract homes in the $700s to $800’s really starts to drastically improve on the quality now once you can go over the $1.1 million or so range.

And add in Proposition 13 and buying here with 1% property taxes along with capped increases in property taxes and our property taxes are VERY cheap compared to the East Coast. Heck, even compared to crappy cities like Dallas our property taxes are CHEAP. In some of those cities they are approaching 3% a year.

You have to also remember that in many of these countries it’s totally normal for the locals to pay CASH. In fact, in some places it’s the norm, not the exception. So it’s nothing to them to pay cash for a property.

I do think that some of the cash buying is people that are cashing out of their stock market portfolios. I know tons of people that have liquidated their stock market portfolios here in the past few months and have tons of cash on the sidelines. I’ve even heard of people raiding their retirement savings or borrowing from their 401Ks to buy real estate which I think is totally foolish.

As well I’m 100% sure there are lots of people that are using credit card balance transfer offers out there. Credit card companies are starting to relax their standards again. Just like during the bubble. It’s actually surprising! I’m getting these 0% balance transfer offers with the 3% fee weekly now. From ALL of my credit card companies. So I know that most others are probably getting them as well.

Many of them say 0% until August 2014 on them. The banks are essentially getting free money and they are using higher risk gimmicks like this again. I’m really surprised at some of these things. I’m sure there are people out there leveraging and using credit cards out there as well in stock market and also real estate market.

So on one hand they are paying cash but they are taking those funds from essential sources that they definitely shouldn’t be raiding. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

I’m also curious to see how a few properties that I’ve seen that went into Escrow within a few hours/days close at. Definitely an interesting interesting market!