I happen to be the kind of person who values my time a lot, so I want to share some of my inputs on how I justified commute to Temecula.
I mentioned on this board before that I have to live in Temecula for family reason at the moment (that’s why I have rented in Temecula for over 2 years), now put that aside, assume my wife stays at home, but I would commute from Temecula to Carlsbad for work. Since I don’t sleep in my office, I spend no more than one hour per day comparing to an average San Diegans on commute. That’s five hours a week. However, I telecommute quite often, so that’s less than 4 hours per week.
Also, I don’t let the commute time get wasted. I listened to a lot of education tapes/cds. I have “read” dozens of books on the wheel last year. This year, my goal is to learn a couple of language (Spanish first) while I’m driving. Since it is a traffic-free extra one hour per day, driving while listening is not hard at all.
Now, let’s look at the economy side. I am actually able to afford a moderate SFH in San Diego. But I lived in Oceanside, Vista and San Marcos before, and I hated each every single one of them. I would rather my kids grow up in Temecula rather than any other city in North County except Carlsbad. However, a comparable house in Carlsbad is probably $500K more. Assume there is still air in the bubble for Carlsbad property, any reasonable person would agree that I save at least $250K by living in Temecula. That’s an extra house that I can buy whose rents would balance the “losing $20K annually by living in Temecula” in your above example.
Note also when we retire, we will no longer lose “$20K annually by living in Temecula”, but have an extra $20K (inflation adjusted) per year extra rental income in our retirement. Who doesn’t love a diversified income source in retirement when social security is really questionable going forward.
As for family time, I still spent the same amount of time with my wife after moving to Temecula and I still kept up my hobby that uses about 15 hours per week of my time. The only thing that disrupts my hobby time was the recent house hunting trips. Temecula’s housing price may still have a little bit more room to drop before it reaches the absolute bottom, but I am so happy that I don’t have to waste my time with my realtor anymore (And believe me, he is very happy as well after working with us for 5 months to finally find us the beautiful house that we bought).
In the bubble years, Temecula’s median home price was not cheaper at all comparing to San Diego. At that time, it was justified because the house is bigger and the school is very good (although not as good as Poway and CV). I think that was a stretch, but now the price difference emerges again which could really justify it for people who commutes to North County.
Exclipse,
No wonder TG gave you the official title to defend Temecula. You are very good at it.:-P
