Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
mrquoi
ParticipantThe ones that have been around for a couple decades and were smart enough to cash out will probably secretly be sitting on their pile of cash giggling. The ones who know how to handle short sales and are used by the banks to dump property will be very busy. And the ones who handle rental listings will also be working hard.
The rest will go back to retail/service industries from whence they came and when that slows, I guess there’ll always be demand for fast food, school crossing guards, and grocery stockers. The vast multitudes of housewife-realtors will go back to being housewives and the surfer-dude-realtors will go back to living outta a VW van and smoking the cheap stuff from south of the border instead of the fancy kind from up north.
ParticipantWe did all our insuring (house, car) through State Farm, but recently switched to the maximum deductable to lower the costs. It made a significant difference. I’ll probably use them for Renter’s Ins. if they offer it.
ParticipantWe sometimes park up at the LDS church near the corner of Black Mtn. Road/Hwy 56 and go cycling from there on the nice paved path along the 56. You can easily cruise to Del Mar for a dinner, though you have to ride back up some hills on your way home. The same path goes the other way to Poway and Scripps Ranch, but I am waiting for the weather to cool off to try it.
Once the summer tourist season is over, riding around Mission Bay is very fun — you have to battle your way to UTC (Cmino Ruiz/Miramar/Eastgate/Gilman), then pick up the Gilman bike path. So is going up and down the coast (mornings are better, less windy. When it is windy, it ususally goes North to South.) We usually park on a residential street in Del Mar and go north from there. If you are in good shape, there are a lot of quiet, lovely roads in Rancho Santa Fe for longer rides.
We’ve been too busy with a baby (who rides in a trailer) to hang out with them but there are all levels of riders at the SDBC http://www.sdbc.org/
ParticipantAdvice: You can negotiate just about everything related to real estate. Try it with your lender.
We had a 5/1 ARM on our place in LA and only had a prepayment penalty if we refinanced, though our lender was willing to forgive the penalty if we refinanced through them. However, we sold, or at least we are now in escrow 😉
We used an ARM so that we could live comfortably on one middle-class salary while my husband was in school, plus we knew we would be moving in less than 5 years. We bought because the PITI (mortgage, taxes, etc) was about 1/2 the cost of renting a similar home — a post-war 3br in an area with very good schools and colleges, so we felt confident about being able to sell or rent it out. However, we bought in the old days (2003) when you could hunt down a place for under $250K, so it made sense. Lucky for us, we moved to that part of LA before the boom did.
August 8, 2006 at 9:32 AM in reply to: lowest price drop vol. 3 — at last, the rollercoaster is headed doooowowwwnnnnn #31242ParticipantMy totally unsubstantiated theory on why the lowest-priced dump in some areas have edged up a little is also that there is still a healthy supply of GFs driven by bossy spouses trying to get in before school starts. Not as many people have a loved one clamoring to commit their life savings to an IB or Mira Mesa fixer.
But I know there are probably FSBOs out there that are less. We picked up a flyer from a FSBO in Encinitas in May that was $620K. Just recently I ran across it on Zip and it was priced at $670K — as if raising the price to cover the Realtor fees would sell it. Duh.
August 7, 2006 at 10:08 PM in reply to: U-T: “Caught in the Middle” – making ends meet on $50K/year #31194ParticipantIf you bought your house at the right time, it is entirely possible to live comfortably in San Diego on less than $50K. For example if your mortgage was around $600/$700 because you bought your (not fancy, but in an OK part of town) home in 1999 for like $150K.
ParticipantIt’s about time I smacked down this BS about San Diego’s economy being weak or dying.
San Diego has #’s 1-5. If you are breathing in this town, you can get a tech job. Heck, even In-N-Out pays over $9/hr.
1-2) Biotech is very strong and pays well. Try researching companies like Illumnia, Amylin – there are hundreds of companies from 2-person startups on up. Those big new buildings off the 56? Being eyeballed by biotech priced out of Sorrento Valley. What about the port of San Diego — the only major shipbuilding yard on the West Coast. Is it at all plausible that being a border town generates commerce? K2 and Calloway? General Lock? PetCo? Enough diversity yet?
3) Does Genentech starting a gigantic manufacturing plant in Oceanside count as a worthy company moving here? Expanding? Profitline, AMEC, SonTek (ok, these are small companies). How about General Atomics expanding in Poway?
4) UCSD which has a tech transfer office set to assist with licensing and startups. There is the Scripps Research Institute, Salk Insitute, and the Burnham Insitute. These are some of the most prestigious biomedical researchers west of Cambridge, bar none. The San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Jacobs School have generated numerous companies.
5) Does the Navy count as recession-proof? Or the Marines? Coast Guard? Or how about all the local defense research, ie civilian jobs? SAIC? Lockheed Martin? L-3? SPAWAR?
However, none of this means that people, not evey highly paid professionals and researchers, can afford a house. You can earn over $100K a year in SD and it’ll buy you a trash heap at current prices.
ParticipantI think there are faster ways using MLS, but I use the interactive map feature on ziprealty.com and look for clusters of stuff for sale in a given community.
Then I look at the photos and it’s usually really obvious which ones are flips gone bad – overpriced, on the market forever, words in the listing like “upgraded” “granite” “ready-to-move-in”.
Then if I’ve got some time I’ll check those on zillow.com. For apartment complexes/condos, you can put in the street address without the apartment number and it will give you a list of all the properties there and when they last sold. From there you can dig into the sales prices, assessed value, etc.
ParticipantMy totally unscientific measure is that houses will still return to a level affordable by two average wage earners in any given area. Say, an elementary school teacher married to a policeman doing about the same — so somewhere in the neighborhood of $300K, which is still more expensive that most areas of the country.
Another unscientific measure is that the mortgage for a given area will be slightly more than rent. So, a house that now rents for $1600 in Mira Mesa would cost about $300K. Granted the houses I’ve seen rented for $1600 in Mira Mesa are not places you would want to raise kids.
ParticipantI think that when there are too many to track will be about the time I should start concentrating on looking for a place for me to buy.
I do wonder if the people that bought some of those even bothered to visit the places first. The location is awesome, but some of those buildings are really ugly buildings surrounded by more ugly apartment buildings. At least for an overpriced $800K you can get into a really nice new building downtown.
ParticipantThere are some very nice newer rental condos/apts at the very northeast edge of Mira Mesa, Compass Pointe/Westview Village. The commute to Sorrento Valley is very easy from here. Usually if you can document that your paycheck is big enough, the BK won’t matter.
ParticipantThey look nice. I’d make an offer for $350K if I thought they’d take it 😉
ParticipantRealtors do rentals, too? I had no idea. I guess the changing market will really weed out the ones who only know how to list and put offers on houses or maybe they’ll have to mention the service on their bus stop benches.
American Heritage seems to have some nice properties, thanks!
Since we have two 50lb huskies, we are open to pretty much everything north of the 52, west of 15, south of the 78, and east of the Pacific ocean. 92126, 92121, 92122, 92037, 92014, 92019, 92130, 92129, 92007, 92024, 92075. There are some I missed. (I cannot believe I know all these zip codes from memory 😉 !!!
We (and the dogs) are fine in an apt/townhome/condo, though it would be nice to have a patio or outdoor area so we can enjoy the overpriced weather here.
* We’re searching for a minumum 2 bedroom place.
* We can pay up to $1600/month.
* We need to move in by the 15th of August.
* We’d like a 6-month or so lease or maybe a month-to-month That’d work well for someone who wants to try renting their place until the next spring selling season and gives us time to decide if we really want to stay here.
* Sure we’d do a purchase option on a house, but these days there is not a single house in San Diego we can afford using a traditional loan.
* We have good credit and good jobs.You can email me at [email protected]
ParticipantI appreciated all your advice and thought I’d provide an update. I decided to keep the spouse, who, apart from bubble beliefs, is a great guy.
Our discussion went well though he is still not convinced that prices will come down much. From his point of view, the bubble ‘pop’ has not really manifested in a visible way – he has colleagues who are looking to buy houses. The place we used to live in LA is still selling well. It’s hard to believe there is a bubble when most of the people around you don’t think there’s a bubble either.
The most convicing data for him was the cost to own vs renting. We would be able to squirrel away a significant amount of $ by renting for a while. And we can rent in a much nicer area than we could afford to buy.
Also, hugely in my favor is that we are enjoying being renters now. (Plus, looking at the houses we can afford is depressing.) We spend our weekends playing with our baby rather than hanging at Home Depot! Unfortunately we have to move mid-August. If I find a nice place it will significantly reduce the pressure to jump into a house. I’m glued to craigslit, but if anyone can recommend property manager/realtor/rental finder – we have dogs and the baby, which makes it tough – that’d be really wonderful.
So our discussion is ongoing. I did, however, go buy and show off the Wall Street Journal when it had the “for sale” article on the same day the SD Trib had a related story. Seeing it in print made a big impression, particularly coming from the WSJ.
kiki — I think you can deduct $2500/person if you earn less than $130K as a couple. But I’m not 100% sure.
unsolicited advice for other people in the same boat – it helps to set aside a time once a month or so to talk about housing/finance rather than letting it come up at emotional moment. It sounds dumb to have to make an appointment with pen, paper, calculator and spouse, but it works for us.
-
AuthorPosts