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Vinyl will also last forever while wood will be lucky to last 20 years.

You can have it “look funny” now and just do the other side later. But I don’t think it would look unusual to not have fences on each side match, especially if there is already different landscaping on each side.

My bigger problem with vinyl is cheap vinyl fences are still a somewhat expensive and look cheap and ugly, while wood-look vinyl is extremely expensive.

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I agree if you can afford a house in SD, your time is probably more valuable than DIY labor.

That is the case for me, but I found fencing to be kind of relaxing and idiot proof work that was fun to do with family.

The plumbing work you all were talking about earlier seemed more stressful. But the main work of a fence is hauling lumber, painting, and driving screws. So good exercise where you can turn your brain 75% off after a day sitting behind a desk.

I only replaced my non-shared fences actually. My neighbors are too cheap to pay for half of a fence replacement even though they are termite damaged and partly rotted. I also do not want to argue with them about design. A few parts that were very bad I just paid for myself, but I won’t do it all at my expense.

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KristopherSD:

“So somehow they are managing $4000 or more payments for these places.”

Remember that $4000 monthly payment includes maybe $1000 going to equity and another $1000 off your income taxes. So are they getting something better than they could rent for $2000? Because that is the effective price they are paying, not $4000.

I made my first purchase in SD at the bottom of the market when I was 30. Did not get family help, had to save the 5% down payment myself. Best financial decision of my life, between rent and tax savings and appreciation, I might be up half a million dollars on it. And I like living there too. I refinanced into “no cost” 20% down loan about 10 months after the purchase. This was easy to do, and would be my suggestion given the difficulty of saving from working 20% of the typical San Diego home.

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Mostly agree with bewildering, but not here:

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5. High-end sales seem to be flat everywhere – I see loads of places for sale in La Jolla. I am never sure who is buying 1.5 million+ houses?

…

7. IMO inflation is not low, we just do not count inflation properly. Wage growth is also high for high-income people, we also do not count wage growth properly, an average is pointless.
[/quote]

In the 92107 zip that I track closely, the 1.2m+ range was slow 2012-2015 even as the mid to low end of that market was very hot. In mid-2016, the high end joined the rest of the market and you started seeing lots of sales in that range, and average time to sell $1.2m houses go pretty suddenly from ~6 months to 1.5-2 months.

June 30 saw two different $2.5m sales in one day, one a tear-down and new construction, the other one a 1912 7,000 sf mansion that had been on and off the market for years.

As for inflation, I disagree that it is higher than what the government reports. People have a cognitive bias where they remember prices that are going up better than prices going down. A number of private efforts to measure US inflation all come very close to the official US Gov number, which itself is one of several measures that are all pretty close to each other (CPI-U, GDP deflater, etc).

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A fence is about the simplist thing to do yourself.

I enjoyed picking through the pickets at home depot to find the reddest redwood.

I put two side stacked rows of standard bricks partly underground below the wood to make it harder for weeds and animals to burrow under the fence, and also so the bottom of the pickets had less soil contact.

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Flu your first pic already looks very basic. Anything Trex will be expensive and very solid, it is a name brand.

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It takes years to deport a non-felon illegal immigrant who has a lawyer. Nothing Trump can do about that. The only way he could significantly increase deportations is trying to find the estimated 950,000 people who already have removal orders but are hiding out. But that is 0.3% of the US population.

Any large reduction in immigration would have to pass the Senate, which will never happen because most senators supported Rubio’s bill to increase immigration.

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Level and compact a medium size home site: $30,000-40,000.

Preserving and working around an existing house is where the big costs are.

Why not buy, rent it out 5 years without a lick of maintenance, then you can knock it all down and start from scratch.

A ground compactor will shake your neighbor’s houses like earthquakes.

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I took the bus when I worked in Europe. It was much cheaper than cars, which cost about 75% more due to taxes and regs than the USA, with gas about twice the price.

My boss let me use his older car, but commuting with a boat sized E Class wagon in a old Euro city was dangerous, so I kept it for intercity travel.

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If someone buys a condo accross the street from the trolley, they probably intend to ride it. It might be mostly UCSD people since the area is cheaper than campus and will be a quick ride away. There should be 10 storey apartments outside of every trolley stop.

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There is now a pro-granny-flat state law, a green building density bonus, a low income density bonus, and plans by the city council to reduce regs that will take 3-5 years if it ever passes.

None of these will even come close to making up for the fact that there is no longer any large tracts of developable land unless you go way up to Vista/Valley Center or down to Otay.

The number of single family houses in San Diego and inner suburbs will only decline even as our population and economy grows.

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Flyer, not a friend, but someone I bought some high end furniture from. He did have utilities and was living there.

We are not talking about a normal driveway paving, but more like 60 feet and a steep grade, plus some additional front yard areas that would be paved or regraded.

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Have you tried to estimate what the return to your time invested into the project is by the hour?

Like Rich I have thought about development too as an amateur, and I already own the developable property, a medium size single family in OB in lot zoned for 4500sf of multifamily. So CCC issues.

I met someone last year who went this route after retiring. A contractor ripped him off and broke him just as it was nearing completion. It slow walked the work with excuses and demands for more payments then simply stopped and disappeared. The house itself was occupable and very nice, an open concept on a hilltop canyon lot in fact. But the final task was grading and paving the long route from street to driveway to garage and the areas on each side. They left it a mess of deep holes rocks and dirt piles. Without this done, the city would not issue a cert for occupancy, which also prevented him from getting a conventional loan. I told him I saw no options other than a hard money loan at awful rates and paying another contactor. Between the stolen money, delay, and high cost loan it was a financial disaster. Hopefully the rising market made up for it.

Seeing this first hand helped scare me off!

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What is that? Unpermitted garage conversations?

Looks like the biggest new construction development is Otay Ranch, which is a great location for commuting to Tecate, Mexico.

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Irish econ stats are distorted because it is a tax haven. A lot of the economic activity reported for Ireland happened elsewhere.

Dublin seems nice and it will soon be the only major English native speaking city in the EU.

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