Arizona Vs. California?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun]What is the problem with just buying a 2 or 3 bedroom condo and parking the RV and/or boat somewhere else? I lived in a 2-bedroom townhouse with my family in high school, and wasn’t the worse for it. If anything, if maintenance is included in the costs, it frees you up a little since you can ditch the place for a month (summer trip?) without worrying about your shrubberies.

Why does everyone need a detached house with 3000 sf and a big lot to waste time on cleaning up?[/quote]

spdrun, HOA dues plus monthly boat storage can be prohibitively expensive in SD. In addition, HOA’s tend to be picky about where kids can throw their ball, skate, play, etc. And they can’t chalk the sidewalks. In short, most HOA’s don’t like dealing with kids. Even if they DO have a playground, a parent has to actually leave the house and follow them out there and stay with them while they play.

It’s not the same as the parent working inside the house and looking out windows watching their kids play in their own backyard.

For a family who needs 2+ bdrms and a yard, it’s cheaper to buy a small or med sized SFR and just work on it as finances permit and do your own landscaping.

This subject can’t get a 3K sf house in SD and it is questionable if he could buy that big of a house within 20 mi of PHX.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun]Wrong about places to escape the heat being 5-8 hr away from Phoenix. Prescott is at 5000 ft and is generally in the 80s in Summer — 1.5 to 2.5 hr drive away depending on traffic on the 17N.

Basically, slightly less time than it takes me to get up into the Catskills.[/quote]

This is true, and Sedona and Flagstaff and a little further. Flagstaff is maybe four hours, depending on road conditions.

[SK in CV]

[quote=bearishgurl]
This is true, and Sedona and Flagstaff and a little further. Flagstaff is maybe four hours, depending on road conditions.[/quote]

Sedona is less than 2 hours from central Phoenix.

And just a quick word about HOA’s in Phoenix. Almost every development built in the last 25 years has an HOA even if they own no common area. Many have annual fees of a few hundred bucks or less. They do have CC&R’s, but many (maybe even most?) have no rule enforcement (some no rule enforcement mechanism), except in extreme cases.

[spdrun]

Even if they DO have a playground, a parent has to actually leave the house and follow them out there and stay with them while they play.

Is it unheard of in CA for kids to go to the park or playground in a group of friends once they turn 9-10?

This assumes the condo is in a “walkable” area, of course.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=spdrun]

Even if they DO have a playground, a parent has to actually leave the house and follow them out there and stay with them while they play.

Is it unheard of in CA for kids to go to the park or playground in a group of friends once they turn 9-10?

This assumes the condo is in a “walkable” area, of course.[/quote]

spdrun, I don’t think david’s kid(s) are in school yet. They have a long way to go until age 9 or 10.

Speaking from the experience as a FT worker-parent myself, I had many things to do on the weekends. There is no way I had the time to hang around parks and play lots for hours while none of my personal tasks or necessary labor around my home was getting done to get ready to start the next workweek. A parent of young kids would much prefer to have their own fenced backyard where they could work and also watch kids play safely at the same time.

[bearishgurl]

WOW, I just looked at the Google street view of the Strathmore property, which is at the end of a lo-o-o-ong cul-de-sac.

Since it is at the end, there are HUGE power lines running up one side of this large lot (the side that looks to be wide enough for RV access).

http://www.google.com/maps?q=10772%20Strathmore%20Dr,+92071

The power lines appear to be heading towards Miramar. Not sure if this is good or bad, but I personally wouldn’t want to live this close to them.

Of course, the listing photo cut off the house so they couldn’t be seen.

In “mousing around” this cul-de-sac, it seemed so utterly barren out there … a bit like living in AZ, I suspect :=0

edit: a chain-link fence to a (Sempra?) easement blocked off the NE corner of this property all the way up to the house. Thus, there is no RV access, even though the lot seems big enough for the opening.

I wonder if SDG&E compensated the original owner for the easement (who bought it new in May ’85 for $104,500 and sold it May ’05 for $450K, lol) and the current owners not only severely overpaid but receive nothing for this inconvenience :=0

[ctr70]

No matter what you say bearishgirl Ramona is not a place I would want to live. Yes there are some nice mansions in the hills (still wouldn’t want ’em though), but that’s not what your getting for $350k. Plus the downtown is a dump IMO, I have driven through it a thousand times going out to hike. The thought of hanging out in downtown Ramona for my Sunday stroll makes me shiver. And it’s so damn hot & brown in the summers and far from everything. To me it would suck to live in Ramona period. And Lakeside too. Santee is a little better barely, but no character there, still yuck and no really downtown, just big box chain land down Mission Gorge.

Yeah I guess if you are super “horsey” type of person and got a nice ranch on some acreage in Ramona or Lakeside, maybe for someone. There are definitely tons of cool rural areas in other states and other parts of NorCal I would live, but to me most of East County is just not “quaint rural”.

[ctr70]

I just Google mapped Phoenix to Alpine AZ and it said 4 hrs and 47 min. You can usually make it 30 min faster than Google so let’s say 4 hr 15 min. The White Mnts of AZ on the New Mexico border are gorgeous and not many Cali people know abut them. Total pine forest cool high alpine setting in summers & snowy in winters. I knew a lady in Phoenix that had a house up there she escaped to in summers. But yes that is a long haul & she could telecommute:)

[Happs]

Looks like there is a housing price boom going on in the Phoenix metro area.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/realestate/articles/20130220phoenix-area-home-values-climb-after-2011-dip.html?nclick_check=1

[no_such_reality]

Most of those medians look like the necessary Orange County down payment.

[EconProf]

Correct, Happs.
I could not pull up your reference, but noticed a few days ago that a report showed that the hottest housing market of any city, YOY, is Phoenix. They had a 20%+ rate of appreciation, way above the other cities cited.
Of course much of this was simply recovering from Phoenix’s worse-than-average collapse after the bubble peak.
But this is one more piece of information for our thread originator to weigh in his decision about relocating.

[Author]

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