[quote=drboom]Fletcher Hills, 92020. I grew up in the house my grandparents bought in 1946 or 1947. It’s about a mile from the house my wife and I bought last year. We’re both true second generation natives, which is odd enough to draw comment, so this subject has come up before.[/quote]
Ah, Fletcher Hills, that’s actually one of the East County areas that came to mind when I thought of “stability.”
[quote=drboom]Your opinion isn’t supported by either my or my wife’s experience (she’s a native too, and she’s a teacher so she sees all the transplants when they arrive with their kids) or by looking at a chart of the county’s population over time: it has tripled since 1960 and doubled since 1980. All of that increase is “immigration”.[/quote]
drboom, I agree that there has been a lot of immigration. I don’t think a very high percentage of it is domestic. I think there has been a lot of immigration into SD County from MX, and to a lesser degree, Asia. In South County, however, these Mexican immigrants moved here to join relatives who were already here. What school or area does your wife work in? Certain parts of East County as well as San Diego and North County are more transient. There are pockets of East County that are more inexpensive to live in than the rest of the county and thus, more transient (more renting Navy families, more apartments, etc). Schools which serve high concentrations of Navy families (Naval housing complexes situated nearby) also have a more transient student population.
[quote=drboom]I’ll see your transplant opinion and raise you three native opinions and some hand-waving at census numbers. 🙂
I agree that an agent with twenty years in the same area–a rare bird indeed–would know a thing or two. . .[/quote]
These agents are NOT THAT RARE, drboom. Along with agents still working who have been licensed 25+ years, there are many more agents licensed 15-20 years who are natives to the areas they are working in.
[quote=drboom]I’ll stand by what I said even if you know of some exceptions. The reason I brought it up at all is because you were so emphatic that “civvies” absolutely require professional research services. It ain’t so.[/quote]
I’m sorry in that I don’t know what you mean by “civvies.” Not every property needs to be “researched.” Not every buyer even cares that a particular condo complex is sitting on a former radon field. What I’m saying here is that a serious buyer, at no cost to them, can get expert guidance from a professional RE agent specializing in their area of choice. That agent typically, by hook or crook, knows a lot of things about their market area that are not widely disemminated information that did, is, or could affect the value, uses or future marketability of a property . . . and may even be esoteric in nature – only an interested party (read: potential buyer) would really be interested.
As you stated in your post, agents have varied backgrounds. Many are retired from other careers. The things they learned in their previous careers could serve them very well in real estate. Agents may have been privvy to litigation details while an HOA case was active or related local case law, for instance. Maybe an agent and their classmates stood over a canyon for two straight weeks in 1986 while walking home from school watching Shell Oil cover over a massive pipeline with infill so Fieldstone could later raze over the top and build houses. You can’t take a person’s intellectual property away from them. You can’t purchase this information or learn it in school. And most of the neighbors don’t know it because they moved in later. You have to have lived it.
drboom, you are very fortunate to have family and extended family living in close proximity and have strong ties to your community.
