If you are looking for where are the low-crime, where are the high-crime areas, a splendid San Diego County resource is the crime maps website, http://mapping.arjis.org/default.aspx.
I tend to pay more attention to North County, but what I know of in that area is that Poway is extremely quiet for crime, but the decent areas are mostly single-family houses in the $600K-900K range. There are apartments, but they’re pretty dubious-looking, most of them.
Rancho Bernardo is fairly quiet for crime too, but not as much as Poway. Stay away from Escondido, period. If you are really well off, you can rent a place in Rancho Santa Fe.
The beach communities, and the areas south of I-8 and north and east of Balboa Park/downtown tend to be high in crime, as confirmed by the ARJIS maps above.
If you can, rent a place now and wait a year or two before buying, it looks like you will be able to get a better price.
