My wife and I just sold our VP condo (thanks SDR) a few weeks ago. We really wanted to rent for a while, and we knew that our 1450sf condo was not going to be a place to plant our roots…but our experience in VP was very enjoyable. Aside from college, it was the first condo we’d ever lived in, and i have to say that my reservations about condos (noisy neighbors, poor construction, HOA issues, etc.) were never realized. The VP condo we owned had extremely thick walls or very good insulation (or both), because we almost never heard ANYTHING from our neighbors (we shared two walls). And because of our location within the community, we had excellent parking and felt like we had a ton of privacy. We’ve since moved into a SFR on a cul-de-sac w/o any neigbors behind us and yet we feel much less private because the homes are rather close to one another. In fact, we are constantly telling our 3 year old daughter to keep her voice down when we get home after 9 at night…because our driveway is about 12′ from the neighbors windows.
Regarding the HOA in VP: while we were there (5 years), the HOA re-roofed, recovered the driveways (streets are being done this summer), put in new vinyl fences, re-painted, and are supposedly planning on getting new garage doors (roll-up) next year. So an HOA may be a headache to somebody wanting to swap out their existing ’72 Porsche engine for a ’88 Jaguar Diesel using the driveway as a parts warehouse. But for us, they did an exceptional job of keeping our home looking nice and maintaining the structures and ammenities.
We probably would have stayed, but we didn’t want to own in this market…and as long as we had decided to rent, we wanted something that had a yard. I jogged around the greenbelt all the time, and we enjoyed the playground and pool as well. HOA wasn’t cheap, but I’m sure there is some trade-off with regard to utilities and things of that sort.
Encinitas is a wonderful city, we love it. But i’m sure you already know that. When we bought we didn’t seem to have much of a choice at the time (buyers were submitting cover letters and interview tapes along with offers) because things were selling soooo fast. But we had looked in Saxony, and almost made an offer, but ultimately we liked the neighborhood of VP a little better. We were very happy with our decision.
