I was one of those that moved here in January this year. (reaching my 1st year anniv. :))
Anyway, my wife and I moved here from WI, we had good jobs back at home, and were thinking of buying but held off because we have always wanted to move to CA.
We knew about the housing prices, and were really discouraged. Yet moved anyway because we knew that where there’s a will there’s a way right? If other people were buying out here then so can we! 2 white collar professionals, I got around a 10k pay increase and my wife got around a 20k pay increase with good bennies, both positions were good career steps. (we lucked out, we applied when we got here)
I don’t know how many people are willing to do what we did though. My wife and I are both outdoors type people, and back in WI you are very limited because of winter. So for us it was worth it. I couldn’t live in AZ or other places due to allergies, or heat (this summer sucked though) plus, I wanted to be a surf bum lol.
It has worked out well, and when we initially got here we saw that it was a “buyers market!” asked people what they did and how they got loans etc. Quickly got approved for a 7yr fixed interest arm (though the realtor and broker thought I was being too conservative.) It was a 80/20 loan (we blew a large portion of our savings on the move) with the 20 being fixed for 5 with the hopes of having the 20 payed off in 5 years so we could refinance (it would have been possible) I look at it now and think, “what the hell was I thinking” I came here with the “midwest” attitude that if you are renting you are wasting money.
Put a couple bids on some condos, so many owners didn’t want to budge on price, we put ourselves on a limb and put a higher bid that we didn’t feel comfortable with, they declined still, we pulled out of the market to save until we can get a regular mortgage. (I posted that I saw that condo on the market many months later for 30k less than what we bid) Our thoughts were if we couldn’t buy in 3-5 years, we probably shouldn’t be living in SoCal.
We still have that feeling. If things don’t get affordable by 2008-2010.. we’ll move somewhere else, and take our nice size savings and buy there instead.
To be honest though, I don’t think we’ll have to move 😉
