[earlyretirement]

[quote=flu][quote=earlyretirement]Flu, not to hijack your thread but since it’s on the topic of Carmel Valley.

Do any of you Carmel Valley expert know where upgraded 2 bedroom 2.5 bathroom condos are generally renting at?

Yeah, I know there is Craigslist but I’d be interested in also hearing from Piggs that might own rental properties in that area.

Thanks in advance.[/quote]

condo or townhome?

Townhome, I think it’s somewhere around $21-2200/month for 6months (maybe that’s on the low side for a townhome…with garage…something like Palmero or Crest@Del Mar).

For a condo, probably around $1800-2000 6months (something like Carmel Pointe/The Heights).

There’s additional crap that’s lower (things like Del Mar Villas), which is probably lower….

I don’t own a condo/townhome in this area. But I know someone renting out a 3/3 crest @ del mar for about $2500/month[/quote]

Thanks Flu! OK..yeah, that’s what I was estimating and seeing but it’s good to hear it from someone with a pulse on the area like you do.

I was referring to a townhome. It’s pricey in that area but the demand seems to be really solid and there is almost NO inventory at all in the area.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=SD Realtor]The rates you quoted sounded on target early. You may want to also try aimloan.com. They are pretty competitive and I have used them for rentals in and out of state and they are located in San Diego.[/quote]

Thanks so much SD Realtor for that information.

That’s good to hear about the rates being on target.

One thing I forgot to mention in my post is the broker told me that if you put 25% vs. 20% or less the 0.75% premium for a condo goes away. So I thought that was interesting.

Something else I found interesting is he said that as long as you do a 15 year loan vs. a 30 year loan there is no real benefit to having a high FICO as long as it’s over the minimum 660 FICO score (Mine is 800).

SD Realtor, he also said that they will count 75% of the rental income towards the ratio. How do they come up with the actual potential rental prices?

I assume they just do a median estimate of rental prices based on the comps in the area? Is this the actual median prices based on what is currently on the market or does the inspector solely determine this?

I was just curious about that part.

Thanks again.

[earlyretirement]

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I’d “piggyback” (no pun intended) on this thread.

So I finally got back in the market and bought my primary house last year. Now I’m thinking of picking up an investment property.

I haven’t bought an investment property in the USA for a LONG time. Just reaching out to lenders today it seems like buying an investment property that is a condo with 25% down payment is 3.875% for 30 year fixed or 3.25% for 15 year fixed.

Also, he said if I wanted to refinance my house and pull equity out of it, it would be 3.5%.

Does that sound about right to you experts? The broker said condos are automatically around 0.75% higher. Which sounded high to me, but admittedly it’s been a long long time since I bought an investment property in the USA.

Has anyone bought an investment property recently in SD? What kind of rates were you quoted out of curiosity?

[earlyretirement]

Flu, not to hijack your thread but since it’s on the topic of Carmel Valley.

Do any of you Carmel Valley expert know where upgraded 2 bedroom 2.5 bathroom condos are generally renting at?

Yeah, I know there is Craigslist but I’d be interested in also hearing from Piggs that might own rental properties in that area.

Thanks in advance.

[earlyretirement]

OMG flu…I laughed when I was reading your response.

To the OP, i’m sorry to hear about you losing your keys but at first while reading your post I thought it was a joke.

You drove for 25 minutes all that way and you really expected to find the keys not knowing where they fell off??

I seriously doubt someone took them off your car. I’d chalk it up to them falling off somewhere along the 25 minutes that you were driving. It’s impossible to say where they fell off and I personally wouldn’t worry unless you had some kind of identification or address on the keychain (which would be fairly foolish to have on).

Hard to believe someone would call the police or put up flyers over missing keys. Unless you had some key to some safe deposit box that had some serious loot in it. And even then, banks can easily get you a new key.

Inquiring minds want to know after reading your post (and Flu’s response…). What exactly was on your key chain?

If you’re that nervous about it, just change your lock for whatever keys you had on it but personally I wouldn’t do that unless you had your name/address on it.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=flu]
Do you remember what community it was in?

I see that near torrey hills elementary, they are building yet another luxury apartment complex…So that’s why I’m wondering what investors are predicting for them to suddenly start this project.[/quote]

Absolutely flu. The name of the community was called Andalucia Townhomes. It was on Mykonos Lane right near the school there.

Nothing too special with a small pool and very small gym.

[earlyretirement]

Hey flu,

I’m not sure about SFH rentals in CV but last year while we were waiting to move into our house we did a 6 month rental in CV. It was a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom townhouse. It came with a covered garage. It was furnished so that made it more expensive. We paid $2,700 a month and paid for the entire rental once we got the keys.

The owner was EASILY renting it out. Our house was ready ahead of schedule so I asked if there was the possibility of leaving the property early and getting some partial refund.

I was blown away when she allowed us to leave early and she refunded our unused portion of the rent saying she could easily rent it out again so she didn’t have any problems at all.

That was a true sign to me how strong the rental market was in CV. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

[earlyretirement]

Amazon.com is absolutely the BEST! Especially if you have the Amazon Prime. They always overnight or 2 day air all the stuff I buy.

It makes shopping so easy when you can literally get things delivered right to your front door. I’ve bought big bulky things like 8 foot ladders.

The returns process if you’re a Prime member is super simple. A few months ago I bought a Trailer hitch for my Audi Q7 SUV. It was heavy.

It turned out that U Haul wouldn’t install a hitch they didn’t sell so I decided to return it. The returns process couldn’t have been easier. They didn’t charge me a cent and UPS came the next day and just picked it up from my front door. I wasn’t even home.

I use Amazon for as much as possible. It’s amazing all what you can buy online. GREAT service and easy returns.

[earlyretirement]

I can’t offer any advice on contractors but my only advice would be to go as high end as possible and do as close a job to match the rest of the house.

When we were looking at houses, last year…we saw one we really loved but they just did a horrible job on the conversion. It didn’t look like the rest of the beautiful house.

To add, I don’t even think it was legal. It just looked really awful. They were advertising it as a true bedroom even though it was just horrible and they were probably better to just have left it off as a bedroom for marketing purposes. I can’t imagine anyone really considering it a bedroom with the horrible job they did.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=flu]Please dont nina… I mean, really there are better ways to gamble on the stock market than this….

Because in short… Most companies end up being more like Groupon/Zygna versus Google. Google was really the exception…

I’ve already covered this extensively…

Here’s the issue with IPO’s… You’re not an insider. You’re going to be buying shares at retail the day it opens. Share’s are going to be pumped up big time. Meanwhile, insiders are going to be trying to be selling like crazy. You’re facilitating making people on the inside rich at your expense.

I’ve been there and done that. I use to work at 3 pre-ipo companies pre-dot.com One company (B2B software company that partnered with Ariba/CommerceOne/etc/etc/etc), A lot of us that joind 1 months right before the quiet period/IPO month had pre-ipo shares at $30/shares… First day of opening was $315/share, and topped off within a month at $450 or so… Guess who was trying to unload while everyone else was trying to buy????? Yup, that’s right insiders. But it’s worse now.

See, back in .com 1.0 days, there was this thing called “lockup period”. Basically, insiders could not be selling shares for the first 180 days after the first day of trading. The purpose of this rule was to prevent massive insider selling, tanking the stock.. The purpose in part is to restrict supply of shares (and to keep prices high)…

Once lockup period expired, insiders tried to sell as much as they could (typically what the vested). And boy did we sell. Within 2 weeks of the lockup period expiration, shares dove from $450/share down to $198/share… Yes, it sucked that the shares fell so quickly,but none of the insiders like us got hurt. Because our shares were at $30/share. Guess who really got hurt? Yup, that’s right all the retail purchasers who paid $450+/share.

And it gets better. The company then tried to impose rules on when employees/insiders could sell.. Employee’s were only allowed to sell within a 10 day window per quarter. They said the reason for this was because the concern of insider information and that it was an SEC rule that made everyone have these trading windows (which was bullshit, because a lot of us had no inside information. We were roughly 500+ employees). A lot of us suspected the real reason was that they wanted to prevent everyone from selling like crazy……So employees came up with very creative solutions.

*Some of the employees that were already fully vested and were sitting on $4million+ options simply quit the company…Pooffff. Lockup restrictions were gone…

*Some of the other employees that were not fully vested, ended up purchasing out of the money put options to cover the unvested stock options, as insurance just in case the stock tanked… For example, if you had 10k options shares that were priced at $30/share but couldn’t exercise and sell for the next 4 years, and the current stock price was $200/share after the lockup period….To protect yourself, you would try to buy 10k worth of put options (100 puts) with a slightly lower strike price say $150/share that would expire months if not 1-2 years out. The put options would be dirt cheap and worthless. But the point was to use it as insurance in case the stock tanked while you were waiting for your options to vest…Well guess what? In less than 2 years, the stock fell from $200/share to $10. and the company subsequently acquired by another company….Again, it wasn’t the insiders that got hurt when this happened…Because while the employee’s stock options were now worthless, the put options they bought clearly wasn’t. Since then, companies actually have some internal policies that tell employees they can’t do that…

Fast forward to web 2.0.. It’s really the same thing…Pump and dump…Only worse…
See remember I was talking about the 180 day lockup window companies use to do to prevent the stock price from initially cratering?? Well, web 2.0 companies have figured out a way around it. It’s called doing a “secondary offering”, in which they reissue shares during the supposedly lockup window…. Guess where those shares for the secondary offering are coming from???? Yup, that’s right insiders….

And if you don’t believe me… Look no further than Groupon and Zygna, who did just that…And why both companies are pretty much flatlined since the ipo…
At one point I actually bought shares of Zygna…But the moment they even mentioned about the secondary offering, I knew EXACTLY what they were trying to do… Because it’s the same sort of game that was played in web 1.0 only worse…Trying to get insiders to sell shares at grossly inflated prices over the retail market.

Now let’s talk about facebook. CEO is a total control freak.. He even said, he’s going to take care of the employees and insiders. Banks/institutions are going to be heavily trying to unload tooo… Who do you think they are trying to unload to?

Until a company can prove it’s earnings for 2-3 years, I’d say you’re really just making insiders rich…There are much better ways to gamble $20k and make money….
Buying $20k worth of facebook shares is a lot less likely to make you rich than it is to make you poorer. If you really think this is going to be a high flyer, you should instead try to get a job at facebook and get insider shares and let other people buy your shares over retail….[/quote]

Flu your post was so spot on target how it works! I just noticed this now but definitely you are so so true. Personally I don’t understand how Facebook is getting anywhere near these valuations. I truly believe they are at their peak right now or close to it.

I’m not on Facebook or even logged onto it and I’m a pretty tech savvy guy. I just have no interest in it and neither do many people I know. I think in the future it could be like MySpace where people just lose interest in it and it doesn’t become cool to do anymore.

It’s actually funny seeing the share price dip so much from the IPO. So many of the original investors trying to cash out.

Also, most people don’t realize this but Facebook took out an additional $3 BILLION bridge loan to help pay their employees taxes. Do a google search and you should be able to find an article on it.

People would have to be crazy to buy at these levels that give this company such a huge valuation…. Just crazy to me.

[earlyretirement]

Also, something that I forgot to mention is that probably a few years ago I would have said prices were too high in Santaluz and I wouldn’t have probably bought a few years ago. But from peak prices, you can see some houses down 35% to 40% in Santaluz from 2007 prices. I feel now is a great time to buy here. The cost to rebuild a house is going to be more than the asking price on many properties here now.

Also, the only negative thing I feel compelled to mention if you are considering Santaluz is having to buy into the country Club (Santaluz Club) to have access to use the pool, gym, tennis courts. Or even access the Cafe/restaurant.

My wife and I aren’t golfers but we do enjoy tennis and the pool. You can’t use these things unless you buy into the Country Club here which was $12,500 and then you have monthly fees of $205 a month. So you have to consider those additional fees if you want to use the pool and the tennis court and gym. (And the Golf package was a $45,000 buy in with $1,000 monthly membership dues).

They have a French Roast Cafe Restaurant here that is open daily and the food there is actually pretty good but it’s a non-cash facility so you only can charge it to your account with your Member #.

The gym is nothing to write home about and rather small. Although we are members, my wife still pays for a membership at 24 Hour Fitness. The reason is she takes spinning classes and some other classes where Santaluz charges you a fee for each class. That is something that I think is a negative. To spend $12,500 up front and $205 each month $2,460 per year) and then having to still use an outside gym seems like a waste.

We do enjoy the tennis courts and the pool we go to often with the kids and they really love it. We eat lunch at the Cafe there or when we go to the pool but keep in mind if you don’t you still must spend $450 a year on food at the cafe. If you don’t spend at least $450 a year, they will bill you for it. We have no problem spending that but you should still consider all of these things before buying here.

That is the only slightly negative thing I see. I don’t regret joining the Country Club here (it’s called the Hacienda Club) as we use the pool quite often. But honestly I would have much preferred if they included this free.

But that is the only thing I can find to complain about here at Santaluz.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=flyer]Although most points have been well covered, just thought I’d add my two cents.

Some friends of ours recently started looking for a home in San Diego with similar specs as the OP.

After considering Carmel Valley, locations East of I-15, Santa Fe Valley–near 4S, Del Sur, etc., etc., they decided on Santaluz.

As many here have mentioned, HOA and MR are high, but they wanted a larger lot, West of I-15, but East of the “Sun-Line,” (that’s why we love living in Rancho Santa Fe), so you might want to at least check out that option as well.

One resource you might consider to get a feel for what’s available and pricing in this general area, is sdlookup.com. Santaluz is in the 92127 zip code, and you can also check out other zip codes in which you might be interested.

We’ve lived many places in the world, but San Diego has always been “home.” I know you and your family will enjoy living here–Welcome![/quote]

Like Flyer’s friends, we were also looking in the same price range when we bought last year. We looked at houses in Carmel Valley, Rancho Santa Fe, 4S Ranch, Santaluz and the surrounding area and we also decided to buy in Santaluz and absolutely love it!

I posted some past posts so you can do a search if you’re interested. I’ll just give my 2 cents on some of these areas.

First of all, Rancho Santa Fe is really great but it’s sad to say but you can’t buy anything of quality there for $1 million there. You will spend much more than that. We looked at a few houses there but we just didn’t like them as much as other homes we saw in Santaluz.

Also, even getting past the more expensive prices, parts of Rancho Santa Fe just feels too rural for my tastes. I guess unless you had horses or something and wanted that kind of environment. In fact, in several parts of RSF you will see horses.

Carmel Valley we saw the most homes here. All of them were over $1 million and to be honest we were just not impressed with most of them as there was a real lack of privacy, on super tiny lots. They did have some beautiful homes but most of them had a lack of privacy.

Our friends own in Poway and they enjoy the no HOA but they bought an older home as many of the homes there are older and we don’t like the style and feel of most of the homes we see when we drive around. Plus the main reason is it’s much warmer there. Some days we can leave our house and go drive over to visit our friends and it can be a full 8 degrees warmer there.

Paying Mello Roos is not fun but I agreed with one of the posts above that spoke of looking at it almost as an investment in the area to send your kids to quality schools. It’s worth it to me to pay Mello Roos. At first it was a harder pill to swallow but honestly it is so worth it to me.

Santaluz is really amazing and they have a real sense of community here. The location is really great as you avoid the Marine layer of Del Mar. You are far enough inland where you still get the cooler weather yet you avoid the marine layer. And especially nice that you avoid the warmer temperatures once you cross I-15.

We are literally adjacent to Fairbanks Ranch and also Carmel Valley. We can take Carmel Valley road and there is almost no traffic at all and can make it to the Del Mar Heights shopping area in 5-7 minutes. When we want to go to the beach we usually just go to Del Mar and we can take the same road and be at the beach in 15 minutes.

Yes, the HOA are higher at $440/month (they actually lowered it $10 this year from last year). But you have to figure it includes 10 MB high speed internet, digital cable and garbage pick up. 24/7 Security and the grounds are impeccably maintained.

This is actually one of the few times in my life that I feel the HOA fee is good value for the money. I own many properties and most of the time I feel like I’m being ripped off with HOA but this is far from the case at Santaluz.

The security here is also really great and very secure neighborhood. Several CEO’s live here as well as sports stars like SD Charger’s QB Philip Rivers.

There are TONS of families with young kids here in Santaluz. They have several events throughout the year where you can really get a good sense of just how many kids there are. The last one, the Easter Celebration was packed with kids.

We saw several homes here before decided and liked the homes and they were much higher quality then houses we saw in other areas. And again the entire development (3,900 acres) is so well looked after.

I agree with the others that the “Keeping up with the Jones” isn’t too bad in San Diego vs. other areas. It’s NOTHING compared to Orange County.

They will never build anything like Santaluz again probably anywhere in California so close to the Coast. I really feel it’s a special place and we love living here. It’s part of the Poway Unified School District which is really amazing.

Also, it’s so convenient for us. We have easy access to I-56, I-15 and I-5 so nothing is too far. If you’re working from home you will find it very convenient. Like some others, I’m not too big of a fan of Poway just due to the style of houses and the warmer temperatures. Yes it’s more affordable but I find it’s well worth it to spend more money, especially considering that you can find some good houses in your budget if you have $1 million or a bit more to spend.

I totally agree with Flyer that you will LOVE San Diego. I’ve lived in several cities and a few different countries and moving to San Diego was the best decision of my life. It’s an amazing city! You will love it here.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=ocrenter]ER, plus you can just pay off the MR. After that, you figure $100 for cable is already counted. So $300 plus HOA for guard gated community. I don’t think I’ve seen any gated communities with HOA less than $250 around here.

Did you ever find out what the pay off is for the MR in santaluz?[/quote]

Exactly Ocrenter! We do plan to pay off our MR this year. I’ve been so busy traveling around that I didn’t have time to check this yet. We’re gearing up to travel to Europe for the summer (3 months) but I plan to do it when I get back.

We plan to be in the house for the long haul until the kids are out of high school so it definitely makes sense to pay off the Mello Roos for us.

You are so right about the cable/internet/garbage pick up. By my calculations it’s really only around $270 a month when you back out all the other things that are included. An added bonus is the internet is supposed to only be 10 MB service but I get 20+ MB download speed throughout the house (I’m not sure if this is like this with all the houses but in my house it’s always super fast). I have the entire house wired and we have Netflix in almost every room and never any problems. We also use our Ipads quite a bit all throughout the house.

Yes, most of the places we looked the HOA in nice areas was at least $250 and they provided almost nothing. At least here we have long walking trails, I go biking around the development, everything is so immaculate, there is an 11 acre park where our kids play quite a bit. The security is amazing and they even have roving security patrols that are always driving by. So it’s not just guard gated but they actually have people constantly driving around all the neighborhoods patrolling.

Plus everyone here is so friendly and I actually like the strict HOA rules because we are always assured of peaceful living, no noise, everyone taking great care of their lots,no one painting their house an offensive color, etc.

The quality of life out here is truly amazing. I mentioned it before in another post but I will here as well. At Christmas, all our immediate neighbors all brought Christmas gifts for one another. I’ve not experienced something like that in communities that I’ve lived before.

They also have a block party every year as well and they have several events as I mentioned throughout the year.

Easter party, July 4th celebration including fireworks, Movies on the green where they play a movie on a big screen in the park, Fall Festival (they brought some Clydesdale horses last year and gave kids hay rides) and at Christmas they hire a Santa Clause for all the kids to give wish lists to. (Of course you aren’t going to buy a house just for these types of extras but they certainly are something great if you have kids).

Like I said..there is a real sense of community here. I can’t imagine a better lifestyle community in San Diego.

[earlyretirement]

[quote=NeetaT]I plan on living abroad in the near future. If I find it more beneficial to renounce my U.S. citizenship, I will. I have no conviction to any one country. Those who think that the U.S. is the best place in the world to live have not traveled much thus they have a myopic view of the world.[/quote]

Even if you live abroad many years you might want to really think twice about renouncing your US citizenship. I lived abroad for almost a decade and I never even thought of giving up my US citizenship.

I’ve lived in several different countries and travel extensively (over 100+ days a year). We have residences in several countries as well. We also have permanent residency status in several countries besides the USA. Our kids hold 3 passports.

Although I side with this guy in this case, I personally wouldn’t give up US Citizenship unless I was in some situation like this guy and I happened to really like Singapore or Hong Kong or wherever I was living.

Although I have enjoyed living in other countries I will agree that the US is the best place in the world to live in when you look at the total overall quality of life issues, efficiency, safety, efficiency, ease and affordability of buying goods, etc.

The USA is one of the greatest countries in the world. Both of my children were born abroad but they instantly got USA citizenship because I’m American.

Definitely take advantage of the legal tax structures to minimize your legal taxes. For example, if you are living the entire year (or in the USA less than 30 days a year) in the foreign country you can take the first $92,900 you make in that country and it is tax free in the USA. Also, if you are married, your spouse can also take the $92,900 per year tax free credit. Potentially $185,800 per year tax free. (Check out IRS Form 2555 or Form 2555-EZ). And with inflation, those amounts have been steadily increasing each year.

Of course you will most likely pay taxes in the country you are living in. And in the case you make quite a bit of money, you will be paying taxes in both that country and the USA on any income above those amounts. It can really suck if there is no tax treaty between countries.

But the point is you should NOT pay anymore taxes than you are legally obligated to pay. I don’t fault this guy at all. And he still will be paying plenty of taxes to the USA government on the departure tax.

It’s just silly and ignorant to pay more taxes than you are legally obligated to pay when living abroad.

And for the arguments that the USA gave this guy the means to build his company, etc. Sure, and you can also argue that because of this guy, an entity like Facebook came into fruition. You could argue without him, that Facebook might not have never happened. It could have ended up being Harvard Connection and then just failing.

Certainly the USA will make unimaginable amounts of money because he came to the USA. Thousands of jobs in the USA will be created (which these people will pay taxes on), the company will pay incredible amounts of taxes on. And all of these people will pay capital gains taxes on their instant wealth as well as buy properties that they will pay property taxes on.

So try to look at it from the standpoint that the USA has benefited more from Saverin entering the USA. Tremendous amounts of tax revenue will enter the federal government as well as the state of California because they allowed this guy to come to the USA and get citizenship. Look at it objectively.

[earlyretirement]

Just an update. I ended up installing a new specialized shower head and it totally solved the problem. It was a VERY expensive Hans Grohe model but it’s hands down the best shower I’ve ever had. I’d highly recommend Plumbing Plus out of Poway. They did a great job!

[Author]

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