[smfj]

If I had time I’d do this myself but – San Diego Business Journal (www.sdbj.com) might be a good place to look for information on businesses in/out of San Diego, performance of local companies. Summary info is free, I believe. Yu may be able to use it as a springboard to dig for further info.

I’m in finance at the corporate headquarters of a global public company based in SD. We’re here because our head honchos want to be here – not because it makes financial sense. It’s expensive to do business here and it IS difficult to attract talent. I make substantially less here than I could in other markets where the cost of living is lower. Yes, the weather is great, but I’m reaching the end of my tenure here. I’ve been here three years, and my friend “turnover” has been quite high. Every year, I meet people moving in, but I have more people move away. Even if housing prices come down substantially, this will still be a difficult place to live from a cost and job opportunity perspective, and it gets harder and harder to justify.

[smfj]

But there’s a reason that people in LA don’t live here, and just visit on summer weekends (ok, a couple of them).

1. Earning Power
2. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to go to a museum or eat out after 9pm
3. Some people are just city people… but city people do like to get away for the weekend

And I don’t see any of these reasons changing anytime soon.

[smfj]

All of this confusion proves (to me) why it is best for casual investors (like myself) to stay away from derivative products. There’s just too much involved in understanding and evaluating them (and this comes from someone with some significant knowledge of security valuation).

It is my belief that the tech bubble, and now the housing bubble, has been fueled by people getting into stuff they just don’t understand.

[smfj]

I must put a word in for Cardiff. I moved here after looking in every North County Coastal area, and found it to be the most reasonably priced by far. I have a 2/2 that is MUCH cheaper than 1 BRs I looked at elsewhere. I’ve lived in lots of different situations (SFH, duplex, small and large complexes…) and several SD communities and this is my favorite rental home. In fact, I just signed on for another year, the first place I’ve stayed for more than a year since moving to SD. My boyfriend’s commute to La Jolla is 15 minutes to at 7am and 20-30 minutes home at 4.

I guess I could see the “unfriendly” comment applying in certain situations, but I remember that when I first moved here I thought people were EXTREMELY nice (maybe this is because I moved here from Carmel Valley…).

Good luck looking for your new home! Finding rentals can be brutal (a friend recently compared it to dating).

[smfj]

This is antecdotal, but- San Diego is by far the worst place of which I have first-hand knowledge from an income -to-housing price perspective. New York? Inflated, yes, but with high incomes to match. Chicago? Pretty reasonable when you consider housing prices are less than they are here and incomes are much higher- even though there has been considerable run-up there in the past few years. Last week, while visiting my parents in North Carolina, I read that the average income of the area was over $65k- I didn’t believe it until I looked it up on the Census website. That’s quite a bit higher than San Diego- and a 2 bedroom townhouse in a nice neighborhood is a mere $150k- despite the run-up they’ve had recently. My personal experience is that my earning potential and that of my peers is lower in San Diego than in any of the aforementioned areas… so, relative, yes, but San Diego’s just ridiculous.

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