What do I have to do to afford California living? (Los Angeles: short sales, foreclosures)

[jeffrito]

You can live on 70k but you wont buy a house unless you come in with a ton of equity - rents for 2 br start around 1300 and that isnt in a good area - like anywhere else the more money the better quality of life -

Im 2nd gen calif/san diegan...and can't afford to live here - am looking for alternatives - suggestions?

[jeffrito]

300k? Where? Not anywhere within 3 hours of San Diego...homes start at $450,000...and they arent that great -

[NYSD1995]

Originally Posted by jeffrito

300k? Where? Not anywhere within 3 hours of San Diego...homes start at $450,000...and they arent that great -

You can buy 1 and 2BR condos throughout SD in the 300k range.

[Jenali]

You can buy a small condo 1-2bdr in south orange county in the 300K ,actually there are some in the upper 200's .the whole area here is safe ,and good area .With 70k/year plus no family to take care of ,sure u can do it here ,it's not impossible.

[RenaissanceGirl]

"Start small, save your money. It's a struggle at first, but it gets easier as you grow in your career."

Not!!!

Sorry to disagree, but salaries (anywhere in the US) have not kept pace with inflation for many, many years. Some things that will make a difference, but that you may not know the answers to at the moment, are:

Will you have roommates?

Are you/will you be married? Will your spouse have a comparable salary?

Will both of you continue to work if you have kids? Can you afford day care? Will you have a grandma or someone nearby who can take care of the kids?

Will you send the kids to private school? Or can you afford to live in one of the few counties with decent schools? (Marin has the best but is outlandishly expensive; Nevada Co has the 2nd best and is not nearly as expensive.)

Or will you home school? (Meaning that one parent has no salary.)

How much of a down payment do you have? If you have 50%, good. If you don't....

Perhaps most importantly, what part of CA are you talking about? There's a huge range. How important is quality of life? Or is it just the "image" of CA that you like? I'm 49 and am living outside of CA for the second time in my life. May go back, but not entirely willingly.

RenGirl

[Need_affordable_home]

You can get 1/1 condos in SD anywhere from $150k(tiny or studio) to $250k and 2/2 condos will set you back a quarter million or more. Few people can afford those condos and many dont even want a condo(nor rent), they want a detached house. Your looking at half million plus for one of those. Its a major challenge to afford CA, I have friends that will either be house poor(and at risk foreclosure) or just relocate

[rpaulson]

I lived in CA my whole life. After I met my husband, I moved to MN to live with him. He is a computer engineer designing supercomputers and he makes almost $200K a year. We bought a 4300 square foot executive home on a pond for $620K. I am a homemaker at 34 and we are living very well. A large computer company in northern CA offered him a job there making twice what he's making now, and we still cannot afford to buy a house there even near what we're living in now for less than several million. I thought with his salary we could live just about anywhere we wanted. Not true. When I moved out of CA 8 years ago, my parents sold their house for $169k... now, it is worth over $600k. I think that's terrible. So, if you like snow, I suggest moving out of California. There are things I miss, but overall, the quality of our life here is well worth it!

[jmiles80]

There is a community for every income level.
It depends on what your expectations are. No not everyone is a millionare

[deuterdu]

Originally Posted by mickey mouse is dead

Ok,
I'm an engineer with three years of experience, and since I was in 12 grade I always wanted to live in California. Ofcourse, one matures and find out that a salary of 70 K a year is not enough to afford it. So, is everyone a millionaire in California? Because I have been looking for jobs there in companies like Intel, Northtrop Grumman, Apple, etc., and the pay does not seem enough to afford a good quality of life. Even government jobs in SoCal don't pay enough. I still want to live there since I believe is the best state in the US, but how can I do it? What am I supposed to do? Is 100k a year enough to afford it? Would having an M.B.A help? Let me know, because I really want to move.

Drive a beater car and eat at home.

[gabry76]

Hi all,
My wife and I currently live in Chicago, but we are sick and tired of the weather!! We actually moved from South Florida when it started to become a third world country, but we are both missing the nice Florida's weather. But getting back to South Florida is out of question, that place is getting worse by the hour! I always dreamed of California, it's really my dream living there, and we took it into consideration when moved out of S.Florida. But of course the high cost of housing kept us away and led us to the cold midwest...Chicago is great..but we are defenitely warm weather people.
We have an household income of about 105K a year, and I wil be probably able to reach 70/80K a year in a couple of years with my accounting job, and my wife should be able to reach 55/60K in the same period of time. We could put down a down payment of about 50K...so I was wondering...with an household income of about 130K (no children for now, but not for long yet) and a downpayment of abiout 50K, could we afford a 3 bedroom single family home of about 1500/1600 sq.ft. in a nice and safe neighborhood, a house not too old or at least remodeled/rehabed in Southern California (LA or San Diego areas)? To mantain our quality of life we won't be able to spend more than 2500/month for mortage+taxes. Could we land this dream??