For those leaving CA (San Diego, Crescent City: apartment, house, neighborhoods)

[DMenscha]

I'm curious why so many people choose this forum to announce they're leaving CA, Then bad-mouth the state from San Diego to Crescent City. What's up with that?

Are you trying to justify your decision to leave? Do you feel better when you slam the place where the rest of us want to stay? Do you expect that trading one city for another in another state will make a difference?

I'm really just curious as to motivation, I don't care where you live so long as where you end up you have a happy life.

I moved away from CA for 9 years and I missed my part of it (In the Sierras) almost all the time. I'm glad I came back and I wouldn't consider moving anywhere else. Including most of the rest of CA LOL

[Charles]

It may just simply be numbers. There are a lot of people in California. A certain percent want to leave, are leaving, or have left. A certain amount of those people are going to view SoCal negatively, or at least not positively. I do in some ways. Also, people like me still hang out on the forums of the cities that are familiar with. City-Data posting is a lot of fun too (in fact it is borderline addicting...)

Originally Posted by DMenscha

Do you expect that trading one city for another in another state will make a difference?

Yes it does for me (average joe). For others maybe not, some folks are moving back to LA after moving out of LA. I guess it depends. People moved when the bad outweighed the good. My gut feeling is most people don't move back - I don't have any data. The economic arguments to leave continue to exist. It still is expensive for housing in decent neighborhoods. The school situation is very challenging. The traffic gets worse. Weather isn't everything.

Bad mouthing isn't cool (and I admit I've done it too.) Speaking negatively but truthfully is different.

[EscapeCalifornia]

Originally Posted by Charles

My gut feeling is most people don't move back - I don't have any data.

I'd agree with this. Anecdotally, I know many people (family, friends, co-workers) who've left and not come back. They're not going to just one place either. The destination list includes Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. The only ones I can think of that came back only left in the first place to get an advanced degree out of state. Many, many people hold on in California because of their jobs and kids. Once they retire, they're gone.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia

Many, many people hold on in California because of their jobs and kids. Once they retire, they're gone.

And the older ones who owned homes in the 1990s and earlier aren't as financially pressured to leave compared to some young couple in their 20s or early 30s just starting out and wanting to have kids.

I wonder how employers have any luck enticing people to move to California. I don't think they are paying that much more than other places in the country, certainly not proportional to housing.

[EscapeCalifornia]

Originally Posted by Charles

And the older ones who owned homes in the 1990s and earlier aren't as financially pressured to leave compared to some young couple in their 20s or early 30s just starting out and wanting to have kids.

I wonder how employers have any luck enticing people to move to California. I don't think they are paying that much more than other places in the country, certainly not proportional to housing.

Its true that older people typically don't have to deal with the high housing prices that younger people face. In my experience, they're leaving because they remember what California was when they came here in the 1960s and are just tired of what its become. So even though they could stay financially, they leave to escape the crowds, traffic, illegals, high income taxes, etc.

At the other end of the scale, people in their 20's who don't have many responsibilities and don't mind apartment living will still come here thinking they can hit it big and be one of the few who can truly afford that $1M tract house.

[music7lover]

But then of course alot of people leave at retirement age in order to cash in on their equity. I know that if I owned a house that could be sold at such a huge profit, I would sell and move away too.

While on vacation, I was talking to a former aerospace worker. He said that his house was worth about $700,000 + now. He planned on selling too, however he didn't give any indication that he necessarily disliked LA.