We moved from North County to Eastlake and bought our first house in 1999 mainly due to family reasons. Otay Ranch Town Center is a nice mall with a lot of mid to high-end stores. Personally, I don’t care about the high-end clothing stores, I’m excited about Barnes and Noble. Before this mall, we don’t have any decent bookstore in the area.
About the high end stores, I’m not sure if the population of the sorrounding area can sustain them in the long run. Though the area has a high (at least compared to the whole county) median household income ($80,000), I think most of them are spending most of their income into the house and their cars. I’m quite amazed on how people afford a 1M house and a Range Rover and/or BMW 7 Series which is very common here. That’s just my observation.
To answer your question if there’s some employers to support these expensive houses. There is none. At least none tantamount to what we have in Sorrento Valley/Golden Triangle area. Most of the people I know that live in the area are either doctors or lawyers that works locally or in downtown and IT/Biotech professionals that works in Sorrento Valley.
I’m an IT professional myself (Oracle DBA) and my company is based in UTC. Commute has not been really a problem for me because I work from home several days a week and my time is flexible so I can avoid the rush hour. My wife is an RN and works locally.
