The reason is that San Diego is way to expensive for what you get…. Thats the position behind this part of the thread. I do find it hard to get away from San Diego, but when you look at the price you pay for the laid back, mellowness it makes you wonder…..
I think the problem is that the prices of real estate have gone up disproportion ally to the value of the area. I think that that may be the overwhelming sentiment of the Piggington site in general.
I lived in NYC in my 20’s, in Long Island for my early 30’s and back to the most expensive part of Manhattan for a couple of years in my late 30’s (before moving to San Diego). NYC does have its pros and cons… And it is way more expensive than San Diego… Part of the problem is our setting of definitions, of apples and oranges.
Manhattan and downtown San Diego do not compare… This is part of the comparison problem. Downtown San Diego is almost non-existent. One tiny area of Manhattan has more action, more people, more nightlife, more parks, more interesting attractions, more museums, culture, and personality than the entire downtown experience combined. Manhattan has more cool clubs on one street than exist in all of San Diego.
I live in La Jolla, and the only comparison I can make is one of the Nassau County towns which have money – but the difference is that a lot of people there can hop a train to Manhattan and be there in 30-40 min… (by the way right downtown). In Westchester it’s even better (15min-30min) and really in midtown. Subways, buses, Central Park, etc.
Both places have bad traffic, but San Diego has no other options, NYC does (real mass transit – even the wealthy use the subways (including the mayor – but he drives a convoy to get there!).
As to the rest of San Diego (including the north county) it’s a vast wasteland of brutally overpriced homes, suburban shopping and little else. It’s a nice place to raise kids, but doesn’t seem to have the real sense of community that you get in other places. (Just my opinion – probably because of it’s massive growth and the influx of foreigners!! (I mean me and the other Mid-west, North-East, North-West big city leaving folks!)
I’m not trying to bash San Diego here!!! I’m not! I somewhat like my life-style, but I’m an anomaly. I am just trying to be realistic about it’s economy, it’s job prospects, it’s business costs, it’s quality of life in comparison to it’s real estate prices. I am semi-retired (currently) and am looking at the next big thing business wise, and I’m not sure that its the place to be. I know I absolutely wouldn’t be here if I had to work for a living, getting a mediocre salary and had to accept sub-standard quality housing and traffic at big city prices and expenses.
This brings me to another point… San Diego’s more exclusive areas are funded and built up by the very wealthy, the very elderly wealthy! It’s our growth industry – a soft climate and old folks…. I almost can’t stand La Jolla for the combination of little old rich people and tourists who seem bored out of their minds.
I think that as the air is let out of the bag, this place will suffer far worse than most other parts of the country. I think that it is a microcosm of the US but sort of one on steroids…. I think that because it lacks the underlying fundamentals and it has been built by speculators and bubbles that it will fall further and harder than most other areas. I talked to a couple from Switzerland yesterday – I asked why don’t they buy a condo here? With their economy and purchasing power. They said that they were bored, ran out of things to do, felt like they were in an old folks home, it’s too far away for them to ever use it, and they were on their way to NYC for the next 10 days. I think that the foreign investment was also speculator money – they aren’t coming here in droves and they aren’t here to stay – they bought into the cheap (to them) home/condo prices but see that the prices aren’t holding up.
