raptorduck,
i have followed your story and totally agree with your approach–money and wealth facilitate life and life goes on…optimizing wealth is only one of many factors in optimizing life. in addition, the systematic way you went about looking for a home is near and dear to my heart.
i am actually looking at buying in rsf perhaps in 2009 and by 2010 at the latest. fairbanks ranch is high on my list as well–we are also very interested in rsf farms. i have two questions for you:
1. now that you have had time to settle in the area, given your former rankings of the rsf/near rsf communities, would you change anything in your analysis (e.g. traffic, convenience, community, etc.)?
2. for these various communities what absolute premiums/discounts in pricing versus one another did you find? e.g. does the covenant get the highest absolute dollar premium?
as an aside, i have lived in san diego, los angeles, bay area, new york. i would totally agree with your analysis that san diego is amazing in terms of value. if i ranked them by value i would rank san diego, bay area, new york, los angeles in that order (the last two might be the most surprising…).
