I can’t effectively answer that so I will shuck and jive and ask another question.
Did San Diego become less desireable? That I can answer. It did so because housing got much more expensive, I would posit that most of the other things like crowded schools and roads are a Chimera(3rd def on dictionary.com).
It got almost that much more expensive in any of the other areas of the country that are desireable as well. So while on an absolute scale it seems like it got a lot less desireable, really it didn’t. I was in boston in Oct 04. I looked at realty briefly through a couple realtors windows. Houses in decent areas weren’t any cheaper there than here. In some cases even more so.
Whats the difference between being squeezed pretty darn hard in Boston, or really hard in San Diego? Thats a question each person must answer to themselves.