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I have been using the free rebid method on priceline for 15 years now.

My best scores were 4 star rooms in NYC, Paris, and Amsterdam for under $100 a night and the huge Hilton in DT LA for $50 (where they filmed the famous scene in True Lies involving a horse and helicopter. Great movie.)

Those deals are long gone however, and the past year priceline instant deals have been better than bidding, but still not that great.

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Flyer do the city homeshare regs worry you?

There are so many vocal people against them here in OB. AirBNB could lose 80% of its SD revenue if they do not start pushing back. They are technically illegal but most of Mission Beach has been rented that way for decades. Previous city atty said the regs were too vague to enforce, the current one says otherwise.

Ending these rentals would send hotel tax and sales tax rev way down and hurt rents and property values. Meanwhile tourism jobs would get killed since even with short term rentals hotels are 95%+ full.

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Markets are generally efficient, so probably a wash.

Older homes will probably have somewhat bigger lots and better locations. Newer homes will probably have more younger couples with kids in the immediate neighborhood.

10-25 years ago the new home trend was big great rooms and master beds and high ceilings. Now it is splitting the big master bed into two smaller rooms and a “modular” setup to accommodate adult children or elderly parents with greater privacy.

Personally I like older big room trend more. I love the open space inside and don’t have a TV requiring a formal living and TV centered family room setup. I also feel cramped in big house on small lot areas like Carmel Valley and most newer NCC developments. I also feel like they seem smaller than their interior square footage because there is less open space around them to see out the windows.

My view on timing is buy now because next summer prices will likely be 10% higher. A high income couple will get huge tax deductions. I easily got a low rate 5% down mortgage for my first purchase, locked in my low price, then did a refi once I saved up enough to do 20% down a year later.

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The 640sf does not look right. The living room/kitchen looks like about 400, leaving 240 for two bedrooms and two bathrooms.

That place looks like it would easily rent for the mortgage payment, meanwhile you get tax benefits and pay down the balance each month.

Nice renovation too. The granny flat law and big yard means an extra unit can be built too.

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Framers can do other work than brand new construction. Renovation is very hot. In a way that feeds demand for housing.

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Esco, I appreciate you sharing the rent figures. Rent growth like this really must make investors reluctant to sell.

I ran the numbers for my places with a 2% rent growth assumption and the purchases made sense.

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I checked again. It is still hot outside but summer renting season is mostly over. Large share of listings are for Sept move in.

Prices are even higher. Most 1 bedrooms are 1700+. Plenty of 2 bedrooms are flirting with 3k. Like for sale listings, rent listings are low.

I was worried that the 180 unit Dylan complex opening on the old Bernard school site could soften the market, but obviously not. 1 bedrooms there go for 2400 and two bedrooms for 3000. And it isn’t even a reasonable walk to the beach, though the drive is less than 6 minutes without traffic.

Some of this I think is catch-up growth, as beach rents seemed to lag other parts of the market for a while. Even now the premium for OB/PB/Point Loma really isn’t that high.

In Jan 2017 I predicted 2017 would be hot for RE prices but 2018 would be softer. With this rent growth 2018 looks like it could be a 10% price growth year too.

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Flu said it right, you have to see the credit report. Plenty of people have cash to rent a place, but credit reports full of late payments and charge-offs.

I am less concerned with work history, lots of people in San Diego have income from trust funds, dog walking, ebay power selling, etc. If they have first + last + deposit up front and a clean credit history, that is enough for me.

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Flyer all that good stuff about the USA is true. But we don’t get rich Germans buying here for those reasons. China has plenty of cheap condos in its secondary cities with 1 to 4 million people.

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A lot of San Diegans who can afford private schools are sending their kids to charter schools. This is a trend elsewhere in the USA too.

I know a parent very happy with this one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein_Academy_Charter_School

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Instability and pollution in China will keep the desire of wealthy Chinese to store their wealth in clean and stable USA and Canada.

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Lifeiz,

New construction in San Diego seems to be very weighted toward luxury 2 bedrooms for $2400+.

That could slow rent growth just in that submarket. But overall construction is simply the lowest in modern San Diego records while the economy and population keep growing.

Even in that submarket, such places are popular with people moving here, students, retirees, and asian investment buyers.

If you think there is a lot of construction downtown now you don’t remember 2004-2008.

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4.25 is pretty high. I’d pay it down with all that extra cash.

I’ve sold a lot of stocks and the ones left mostly have 150%+ gains I don’t want to pay tax on.

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Another reason for pessimism is there are a lot of people who flipped foreclosures when it was common. They are still out there looking for deals but with more experience. If you end up outbidding all of them, might be a case of the winner’s curse.

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Few properties actually get foreclosed in a rapidly rising market, and even fewer are sold at a good price.

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