California dreaming… or hallucinating?

[Chris Scoreboard Johnston]

Chris Johnston

Ironically, I am moving down from OC to San Diego county because of how much cheaper it is than OC. Only Rancho Santa Fae is anywhere along the lines of the prices in prime OC areas. Even Encinitas is very cheap compared to what you get for the same type of thing up here. The place I am buying down there would literally be 3 times the price up here. Most places obviously do not carry that multiple, but it is without question cheaper down in SD.

The reality is that even with a sharp correction, if you do not make well into six figures, you are never going to be able to comfortably live in Southern California, except in outlying areas. This is sad but true. Even Poway, which in the old days seemed like it was Green Acres, has seven figure tract homes.

I even considered leaving, before I went into escrow recently, and I can comfortably afford to live in most places. It does seem that the values are ridiculous compared to other places, and it makes you wonder on some level, if it is worth it.

[eikoph]

Rodeos, high school football, and Monster Truck rallies

I guess if I wanted my life to revolve around rodeos, high school football, and Monster Truck rallies I would move to Arlington.

Having been a Piggington’s reader for a while, I know the emphasis is on presenting data to back up your assertions. So I’ll point out that while I’m personally not interested in Monster Truck rallies, if I was, it would be easier to see one if I lived in San Diego than in Arlington, Texas. A check of the Monster Jam truck rally schedule shows four upcoming dates in California, including one at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. According to the schedule, Monster Jam isn’t coming anywhere near to the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, much less Arlington.

Are there rodeos here — yes there are (well actually, none here in Arlington itself, but in Fort Worth and Mesquite, yes). Again it’s not something I’m particularly interested in, and so far nobody has forced me to attend any against my will. And in 16 years, rodeo is certainly nothing that’s come up in conversation with my colleagues at work or with friends or acquaintances. Maybe I’m just hanging out with the wrong crowd.

I’ll go out on a limb here, but I’ll hazard a guess that high school football is also played in San Diego. Same as nobody forces you to go to the games if you aren’t interested, it’s the same here. This is not Odessa, the small west Texas town of “Friday Night Lights” fame. The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metroplex has a population of 5.1 million and is the fifth largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Arlington itself has a population of over 330,000. Maybe you were thinking of Major League baseball, since the Texas Rangers play in Arlington. I do usually go to a couple of Texas Rangers games every year. Again, in 16 years here, I can’t recall any colleague or friend that has brought up the topic of high school football. Lots of talk about the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Mavericks though, but I’m guessing they probably talk about the Padres and the Chargers occasionally there in San Diego.

And how can you stand those Texas summers?

Texas summers are hot — I conceded that in the original post. I also pointed out that summers wouldn’t be any cooler in the Palmdale/Lancaster area, which is where I could find a comparable home at a comparable price to the one I have in Arlington — except that then I’d have a two hour commute each way to a job in LA. I’ll add, having also lived in Florida, that I’d rather spend the summer in Texas than in Florida (a lot less humidity here). Are the summers cool and refreshing if you live in La Jolla or Coronado and catch the Pacific breezes — you betcha. However, I couldn’t afford to buy a house in either place, so that’s a moot point.

There is a reason people live in Arlington and a reason people live in San Diego: People live in Arlington because they have to; people live in San Diego because they can.

Actually, with marketable IT job skills, I could pretty much live wherever I wanted. Per the original post, I turned down a job offer in LA — I live in Arlington because when I weighed all the factors that mattered to me, it clearly offered the best quality of life.

I was in no way bashing San Diego — I’ve caught rays out at Pacific Beach, body surfed at Mission Beach, jumped off the cliffs by La Jolla Cove and swum into the caves — I had some great times. Something tells me though, that if I’m working overtime (or more likely two jobs) to afford a $3000+ a month mortgage nut and/or spending 15-25 hours a week commuting, I’m not going to have too much time to hang at the beach.

[PerryChase]

A friend of mine is an SAP project manager and got transferred, kicking and screaming to Dallas (Frisco, i think). He was living a 1 bd in Mission Valley. Now he still has a 1 bd in Dallas but twice the size and with an attached 2-car garage. He got a big salary increase and a bonus to make it worth his while. Now he’s OK with it and likes it. He says that Dallas is liveable but not as scenic as San Diego.

I like San Diego because I like never having to worry about the weather and what to wear. I also like the diversity of population here.

Never having been to Texas, I imagine it to be like El Cajon or Lakeside, or Campo but flat. I’m sure that it’s better than that.

The church thing happens here also. My dad retired in San Diego because us kids are here. The parents and kids in the neighborhood sometimes ask him to join them in church. I think they mean well, but if you don’t believe in organized religion, then church is the last place you’d want to be.

Overall, I find that San Diego has the best weather in the whole Continental USA. The city is cosmopolitan enough (but still on the redneck side). Culturally, I’d rather live in NYC or Europe, but San Diego has good combination of everything. San Diego is not the most exiting place, but it’s a physically comfortable place to live. I can vacation in the more exciting places.

I applaud your decision to buy a mid-century modern house. I plan to find and rehab one in Point Loma, if I’m lucky. I’m so done with the Spanish/Tuscan style stucco boxes. San Diego would be great with better urban planning, more density and better public transport. I’d like to see a bi-national San Diego/Tijuana metropolitan area develop.

[CardiffBaseball]

I wouldn’t bother trying to defend the metroplex some are just inclined to hate everything Texas. As I have said in the past I’d consider going back, but I am not actively looking for jobs anywhere.

While we are stereotyping every single time I see someone in person who cracks on Texas like this, they are the spineless bespectacled metrosexual type. A guy who looks like he jogs but doesn’t deadlift. For once I want so see some roided up musclehead make fun of Texas culture, but it’s usually someone not terribly impressive — physically speaking.

I am just hoping TheBreeze is a woman because they are allowed to crack on the HS Football culture. In fact women are allowed to hate football as far as I am concerned. If it’s a man, then he is out of the club. Men are not allowed to crack on football at any level including Pop Warner.

I miss the football culture, I went to a local La Costa Canyon game, and couldn’t believe how lame the crowd was on the other side (RB). The RB crowd was so small it didn’t even seem all the parents made the trip. The halftime shows in Texas were great. I went to plenty of HS Football games in the H-E-B area, and when I lived in West Texas, traveled to Odessa Permian (conference rival) to watch the kids play under the “Friday Night Lights”. Great entertainment for me and my wife, but she is the type who wants to kick our boys in the butts to play a little football. I could see the urban brie types not enjoying it, but there are plenty of cultural things to do. We went to Phantom at a nice facility in Ft. Worth, where I was embarrased to find everyone where suits (didn’t believe my wife). I remember watching (I followed Abilene) this year’s super bowl champ (Dominic Rhodes) losing to Drew Brees, in the state finals at Texas Stadium.

Incidentally I think Football tailbacks are the greatest athletes in sport. Size, grace, hip mobility, strength, speed, vertical leap, agility, vision.

[BostonAndOC_RE_perspective]

I can speak with some context here. I moved my family to New England from OC a few years back due to a job promotion. While folks may think that Boston RE is as expensive as SD, it is much easier here to find great, upscale areas where you can buy at 3.5:1 salary/homeprice. Now the Boston job market pays substantially more than SD, OC, LA or Dallas. Check the recent BLS statistics on average weekly wages in 2006 by county, for every county in the nation. The avg wage-earener in Suffolk County MA earns $1228/week. That is the average, not the median. SD was something like $900/week. Dallas was lower. The only counties higher were NY and Santa Clara.

So affordability was my trigger. I did some research and discovered some amazing deals. So we made the move. 4 years later, how has it been? Summary:
1. We bought in a town that has a pop. of roughly 30K people. Median household income is $100K. We bought right around 3.5:1 price:median hh income. Our household income is higher than the median, so we bought for much less than 3.5:1. 50 percent of the adults age 25 or older have a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree (this was the most telling statistic for what sort of a community we were buying in). This is all per US Census data. The town is even nicer than we could have hoped for, and my total RE nut incl property taxes is $2K/month. Score 1 for the move.

2. The job has been a bonanza. Boston is the #2 tech and money center after SJC and NY, respectively. Lots of 6, and even 7 figure jobs here. Lots of educated people as well, so competition is fierce, but if you’re skilled and possess solid academic credentials, you’ll make on average way more here than SD. Score 1 more for the move.

3. New England is like Texas, with colder winters, better summers and closer proximity to the ocean. But compared to SoCal the people here are redneck. They’re just better educated and wealthier than the stereotype. Instead of youth football here it’s hockey. Every guy from New England is a frustrated hockey player. The Adam Sandler character in Happy Gilmore really does a great job caricaturizing this image. The only other guy I know here who surfs also moved here from OC. Score zero here – weather sucks related to SoCal but is much better than someplace like TX or MI.

So culturally we are fish out of water, but my financial situation is dramatically stronger than it would likely have been had we stayed in SoCal. Looking at current comps, we’re even up ~35 percent over the purchase price, and even then anyone making our town’s median could afford the house without stretching too badly.

I now might have a chance to repeat this same model again. I’m in discussions that could enable me to take a new position that would double my salary while depositing me in an area of CA that has housing prices that would enable a less than 3:1 homeprice to salary ratio (within 2.5 hours of SF). While I miss the heck out of OC and SD, I will NEVER indebt myself to the level I would need to in order to buy a nice home in a decent area there. I have come to fully subscribe to the notion of putting family financial health over personal indulgence – which is what a move back to SoCal would be for me given the current price environment and where the high paying jobs are. I like to fully fund my 401K, stock purchase plan, and have some left over for 529s, money market savings and taxable investements.

Does anyone else on this board share similar views?

[Steve Beebo]

Why would anyone want to live in Dallas, Arlington, or San Antonio when they could live in beautiful El Paso?

[PerryChase]

While we’re on stereotypes, I would agree the the cultural snobs generally don’t look too impressive.

However, the “don’t-mess-with-Texas” types don’t look too hot either past age 28. The rich ones have pretty wives but poor ones end up with fat-ass wives.

Personally, I aim to be like Paul Newman or Robert Redford; and collecting social security at age 80, rather than long dead from clogged arteries. And I think that soccer-football players are by far more athletic than American-football players.

Southern Californians are overall the most attractive in the country. Thanks to the weather we aren’t able to cover all the flaws so we have to work hard to correct them.

People like to deride the California body beautiful culture because they are jealous. But there’s a reason people look they way they do on the screen and in magazines.

‘nough of SoCal shallow self-absorption.

[CardiffBaseball]

Totally off-topic, but soccer players are definitely more “aerobically” conditioned than most football players but aerobic conditioning is but one small and fairly insignificant measure of an athlete. I don’t think you can absolutely claim the best soccer players here in America have the same total package as say LaDanian Tomlinson. LT will have probably the same or better cut-back or change of direction ability, better stop-start ability, better acceleration and deceleration, and is completely stronger top to bottom.

Now if you want to compare Soccer players to Nose Tackles, then yes, they are more athletic overall, though some of those 300 lb. guys have 35+ inch vertical leaps. Also there aren’t many freaks of nature like Terrell Owens playing soccer.

Actually I’d take the typical Lebron James type NBA player as also being a more complete athlete. 6’8″ 240 with that kind of breakaway speed? All-state WR before giving up football his Sr. Year. Michael Jordan was an all-state QB as was Allen Iverson.

[Anonymous]

It looks like the darn Californians are messing things up in Austin by bidding up prices: “…The tremendous amount of money from real estate gains coming out of California helps explain why this relatively small group is often blamed or credited for rising housing prices in Central Texas, even though the majority of California transplants have median incomes no higher than those in the areas into which they are moving…”

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/02/10/10migration.html (sourced from Housing Bubble Blog)

Oh my gosh, near the bottom, there’s a couple who relocated from San FranSicko who actually have nice things to say about Texas. Stop drinking that Texas Kool-Aid!

Stereotyping is fun; here’s one. In regard to conditioning, I agree that soccer players, on average, have superior conditioning than football players. But, that’s primarily because many soccer players are ex- or current terrorists, who need(ed) to run from bombs they just planted.

[BuyerWillEPB]

Check this out:

The guy didn’t see this house in the last 3 months. So what clever strategy does he try? He RAISED the price from $498K to $550K! Yeah, that should help it sell faster. Hahahaha! 🙂

What the hell is he thinking? Check it out on Zillow and Zip Realty.

4744 MOUNT SAINT HELENS CT. Zip code: 92117

[(former)FormerSanDiegan]

OK, I’ll take the bait… I guess you could say that the price for Mt. Saint Helens is erupting !

[(former)FormerSanDiegan]

Texas Leads California …

By a score of 14,602 to 6,732.
That’s a ratio of more than 2:1.

Anyone want to guess what the category is ?

[Anonymous]

Foreclusures?

[(former)FormerSanDiegan]

Nope. Not foreclosures.

[bigtrouble]

People from flyover country speak so damn slow. Arggh. Do you understand the words that I am saying? Listen faster.

And I happen to love the layed-back flaky style of SD. You can flake on drinks with someone, not talk to them for a year, but when you run into them, you have a great time like nothing has happened. People naturally assume you have many different social circles, and don’t take things so personally. I think that kind of behavior makes you a social pariah elsewhere.

[Author]

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