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Don’t forget to factor in your mortgage interest and property tax deductions, which on those loans will be huge. However, even if the value of those deductions made your monthly outlay the same as renting, it is unlikely that the condo’s value is going to increase much, if at all. And it may very well decrease (I believe it probably will) as more of those towers get finished downtown and all the new units get dumped on the market. Add to this the fact that you could be earning interest on your down payment, and that as a renter, you’re much more flexible. If it were me, I’d rent…

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I quit my job and now work out of my home. I put about 5K miles on my car last year, down from 15K the year before.

And of course everyone can work out of their home if they become a real-estate investor! Ba-dum-pum. Tip your waitresses, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week…

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Paying more for the best schools can sometimes be a bad idea. My parents stretched themselves back in the 70s to buy a home in the best school district they could afford, and the financial pressure (their mortgage payments doubled) drove my dad to the bottle. Soon after moving into the new house, my dad started spending more and more time at the bars and my mom finally filed for divorce. I had been a gifted kid, but my mom worked all the time so she didn’t notice when my grades began slipping and got kicked out of all of my honors classes. When it came time to apply for college, I didn’t even bother. Neither of my parents noticed, being too wrapped up in their careers and new relationships. I eventually ended up getting a degree from a state school and I have done well, however all of my teachers had predicted that I’d get an Ivy League education and become a famous doctor or scientist based on my early schoolwork and test scores. To make a long story short, being an active and involved parent and loving partner to your spouse are more important than what school district you choose to purchase a home in.

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I was talking to a friend that works in INS. He told me that INS has collected a huge list of SSNs that are being used illegally, and that the INS has presented this list to both the SSA and IRS with a request that these numbers be closed and no longer used for collection of revenue or payroll taxes. Now here’s the kicker — the IRS and SSA KNOW that these numbers are illegal but they refuse to close them because the money contributed into these accounts is essentially providing a huge free revenue stream for the US government! Meaning they know they’ll never pay out on it, so why not just accept it? Apparently the INS is pretty angry about this. Ain’t government wonderful!

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Well, if the city hadn’t squandered its nest egg in the pension fund scam, we might have a chance. As it stands, we’re pretty much screwed and I doubt we’ll get any of those things.

The question wasn’t how to pay for it, it was “what would make the city better.”

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OK, I’ll start:

* Some sort of program to get the crackheads, alcoholics, and schizophrenics off of the streets downtown. They’re a nuisance and a public health hazard because so many of them are infected with TB.

* Decent public schools.

* Better storm sewers and sewage treatment for both SD and TJ so that our beaches are clean.

* Job growth in areas other than mortgage lending and home construction.

In spite of all of this (and I’m sure there are many other things), this is still a pretty good place to live.

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What is interesting about this is that the illegals getting $20/hr are actually probably coming close to or exceeding the median personal income in this area if they are able to work year-round. $20*2000hrs/yr = $40K/yr. If they are avoiding paying taxes (not sure if they do or not) they’re probably doing better than a lot of duh-mericans. This anecdote again proves that the problem isn’t really illegal immigration taking jobs, the problem is employers BREAKING THE FREAKING LAW. Granted, sometimes it’s hard to tell if someone is legal or illegal, so that’s easier said than done…

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Don’t know, I stole the link off of the casualty of debt site. The trend is more important than the actual number, IMO.

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This isn’t bashing, just statement of fact. I enjoy living down here, but it’s not for everybody. And everyone needs to be aware of the TB risk. I wasn’t and I paid for it.

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East Village, but there are big problems also in Little Italy, at least with the homeless. A buddy of mine lives in the Treo building and there are several large homeless camps within a couple of hundred yards of that building. I don’t know about the other neighborhoods.

I don’t worry about the crime as much as the public health issues like TB. People from the suburbs come down to watch a ballgame and end up taking the germs back with them to Rancho Penasquitos or wherever. Bacteria don’t care about how much money you make.

I stay here because I rent a nice, large place for $1.20/sf. Also I’m single and it’s good to be downtown for entertainment purposes. Being single in the suburbs is a drag.

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I have lived in downtown San Diego for 5 years now, and I can categorically say that things have deteriorated down here with respect to crime and homelessness during that time. I sold my place in 92103 last year and now rent a very nice place in 92101 for a reasonable price. There are drug dealers within 100 feet of my front door that the police won’t do anything about. Schizophrenics, addicts, and thugs roam the streets unchecked. I have found 9mm cartridges outside my office door. At some point in the last 5 years, I became infected with tuberculosis and had to undergo a 9 month regimen of nasty antibiotics. I recommend a TB test for anyone living or spending time down here, because the infection rate among these transients is very high and you can get it simply by breathing the same air. Unless we get a new economic model down here that provides solid middle class jobs, I don’t anticipate good things for downtown SD.

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This has been going on longer than you think. I sold my condo in Hillcrest last year; with my realtor’s advice (this guy has been in the business and the neighborhood a long time), we listed it at $450K. It sold about two months later with the recorded sale price at $430K. What the recorded price didn’t show, however, was that I paid the seller $10K in “buyer loan costs”. In effect I sold the unit for $420K, a 6.6% decrease in the original listed price. To anyone just looking at the official numbers, however, this was only a 4.4% decrease. AND THAT WAS A YEAR AGO! Lord only knows what sort of monkey business is going on now…

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Notice that all of the sectors you mentioned (with the arguable exception of entertainment) are non-tradable across national boundaries, meaning they’re not going to help the US trade deficit one bit. And our entertainment is probably going to lose its lustre overseas over the coming years as India and China develop and produce their own. If we lose our ability to produce REAL products for export (things like aircraft, electronics, and heavy equipment), those high-paid attorneys and financial professionals you mention will eventually be joining their laid-off engineer neighbors in the soup lines. The only hope for the US is to regain our position as a world leader in technology. If I were in charge, I’d start pouring R&D money into alternative sources of energy and new engine technologies. That’s unlikely to happen, though, so in the meantime you might learn Mandarin Chinese and pursue a career as a liason to help Chinese companies get their products to American markets. Or learn Portugese and start a software contracting business in Brazil that can work even cheaper than the Indians. Think internationally.

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If you are very very skilled in certain areas of software or electrical engineering, this outsourcing can work to your benefit, believe it or not. Many companies have laid off so many workers and moved so much overseas that they now have only a skeleton crew here in the states. I quit my day gig recently and am now operating as a contractor at a very high rate helping some of these companies out. They are rapidly learning that the quality they get from some of the Indian shops is not quite up to par and that communications and time differences really do make a difference, especially on projects with tight schedules. And, as someone pointed out earlier, US companies are already paying $50-60/hr for Indian contract workers here in the US, so the cost savings aren’t what they were 7 or 8 years ago. Also, most of these Indian kids are only a couple of years out of school but are filling positions that require more experience; this means more projects in trouble, more bugs, which means more $$$ for yours truly. While guys like me are probably okay for the next few years, the people that are really screwed are the American kids graduating with engineering degrees now. They’ve got no choice but to go to Lockheed or Raytheon and polish bombs. Death is pretty much the last growth industry left here in the US.

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A more likely scenario is that this property will go for something like $800K, with the buyer convinced (for a while, at least) that they’ve just gotten the deal of the century. Meanwhile, the seller still realizes a big profit. A few months later the buyer realizes that his fingers just got cut off by a falling knife…

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