Looking in California for beautiful, affordable, liberal, small coastal town to raise family...w/ mountain views too?:) (San Francisco: apartment, townhome)

[boonbrifam]

Hi, Anyone have any suggestions on any small coastal towns/cities in California? Looking for beautiful mountain views with an affordable, safe, and liberal community. Wanting to escape the conservative midwest and move the family out west, just researching right now. Appreciate all feedback I can get! Thanks so much!!

[CA central coast]

Hmmm........that's going to be somewhere north of San Francisco.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by boonbrifam

Hi, Anyone have any suggestions on any small coastal towns/cities in California? Looking for beautiful mountain views with an affordable, safe, and liberal community. Wanting to escape the conservative midwest and move the family out west, just researching right now. Appreciate all feedback I can get! Thanks so much!!

What about a job? Where?

How many kids? Ages?

What is affordable? For what? (SFR? Townhome? Apartment? etc.)

[boonbrifam]

Originally Posted by Charles

What about a job? Where?

How many kids? Ages?

What is affordable? For what? (SFR? Townhome? Apartment? etc.)

My husband is in electronic engineering. We have young kids. Looking for a single family home. Thanx!

[bhcompy]

affordable and coastal generally arent together in CA

what price range?

affordable means you're most likely looking north of SF to fit what you want, but the EE jobs are in or south of SF and in southern california, where the cheapest coastal town i can think of is oceanside, which is full of marines and has a few hills nearby. marines arent the most liberal folk

[Jay100]

Affordable and Coastal views do not go hand in hand here in CA. Pick one.

Most views of the ocean are beautiful.

[TheDragonslayer]

Affordable and coastal describes McKinleyville to a tee. You can buy a new home for under $300,000, some as low as $245,000. McK is directly on the coast and the mountains are only 5 to 20 miles inland and are very accesable. I live less than a quarter mile from the beach. Now jobs are a different story here, our job market has been in the tanks for a while now, with fishing pretty much gone and the logging with it. Now that our Mervynns is closing and so has the pulp mill, the hit is even harder. I would suggest that your spouse could commute to Redding ( 100,000 plus-minus people) but it is 143 miles east ( 3 hour drive on mountain roads ). I have a few clients that came up to visit for a week or so and ended up getting a job here. It is very beautiful up here, the air is clean and so is the water. There are only 130,000 people in Humboldt county. The local mountains have snow from usually November to sometimes as late as May.

[grimstuff]

The most affordable coastal areas are, as one poster said, north of San Francisco, in fairly small, isolated rural towns. With that said, the entire CA coast is beautiful.

[boonbrifam]

Originally Posted by Jay100

Affordable and Coastal views do not go hand in hand here in CA. Pick one.

Most views of the ocean are beautiful.

Hi thanks for the reply...
I know, if we could be able to drive to the ocean that would work too...I guess the more mountains the better and of course electronic engineering career ops are important too.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by boonbrifam

Hi thanks for the reply...
I know, if we could be able to drive to the ocean that would work too...I guess the more mountains the better and of course electronic engineering career ops are important too.

It would help the forum if there was more basic information provided such as price range, type of house. We can post all day about how pretty the ocean is, what January weather is like, etc. and it won't do you much good.

Have you performed the basic analysis about what you can afford based on down payment, debt, and cash flow? You have kids; Are you budgeting in max 401(k) and Roth IRA and college savings accounts?

Vandenberg AFB and it's environs might work for employment. The surrounding area isn't cheap (I checked there myself.) Whether a place is liberal or conservative is almost irrelevant if you need a job; besides, I don't think it makes all that much difference anyway.