2.We live in Del Mar, west of 1-5, in the neighborhood north of Del Mar Heights Rd, south of the San Dieguito lagoon, about a mile east of the beach. This area of Del Mar is not to be confused with “olde Del Mar,” which is the village area bordering the beach. Our neighborhood is in between Carmel Valley and Olde Del Mar…still a Del Mar zip code, Del Mar in name and considered Del Mar, but most don’t realize that our services are provided by City of San Diego. Downside is that our neighborhood lacks much of the charm of olde Del Mar, but upside is it’s much more family friendly in terms of housing size and number of kids in neighborhood. Old Del Mar is filled with retirees and vacation home owners, with only a smattering of families.
3. 3 kids – 1 in 8th grade at Earl Warren Middle School, 1 in 10th grade at Canyon Crest Academy and 1 who just graduated from Canyon Crest Academy and is headed to UCLA in the fall.
4. Love that I can walk out my front door and go for a run or walk to the beach through the canyon trails or the village streets (also have the option to drive there in 5 mins if we need to load the car w/surfboards and beach gear), near enough to walk/run to Torrey Pines State Park hiking trails, love the San Dieguito Union High School district schools, where my kids have received outstanding middle/high school public school educations (CCA has highest API scores of any public high school in SD County; I’m not saying API scores or rankings are the only factor to consider, but do know that our kids have received exceptionally high quality educations at CCA, similar to privates), I love that our ‘hood is filled with families and friends for our kids so they can walk out the door and ride bikes or hang out w/friends w/out relying on me to drive them somewhere.
5. Don’t like that much of the architecture in my ‘hood is lacking in charm and good classic design (spent most of my life in New England, too, and miss good architecture with clean lines, not hodge podge style). Our neighborhood is full of dated-looking and poorly constructed 60s-70s style homes (not mid-century modern cool stuff but boring old tract or tacky big homes with wild angles and stained glass, built in late 60s-70s). Hard to believe that they still go for between $1-2 mil, but it’s all about location. Many, like us, focus on finding a good lot on/near the canyon and do a remodel of the existing house.
We moved here from Fairfield County, CT about 10 years ago and much as I miss a lot of things about the east coast, we love it here and can’t imagine going back. I did a very thorough search of San Diego areas when we moved here, and we even rented for a year to check it out (which I would highly recommend). We found a lot to like about many other sections of San Diego and other north county coastal towns, but for us, Del Mar has been a great fit, mainly because of quality of schools, space for kids and proximity to beach. Also, we’ve found other residents of Del Mar to be, despite its cost of living, relatively laid back (doesn’t really have the “keeping up w/the Joneses” mentality that people may think it has or that may exist in more cookie-cutter communities), or else maybe we’ve just met up with really great people.
I’m very familiar w/the lovely towns around where you are outside of Newport, having spent many summers there. Feel free to PM me if you’d like more opinions. You can find some workable homes in the $1-1.5mil range around here these days, but at the higher end of that range. Best of luck!
P.S. Note to FLU – sorry for my long-winded commentary. Couldn’t resist! Next time, will try to stick to bullet points. 🙂
