Thinking of moving here? You may want to reconsider (San Diego: section 8, condo)

[enlightenme]

Originally Posted by jlrobe

Wow. Congratulatoins. I am glad you were able to make the move to be better your situation. How are you liking your new home?

Thank you! I love it. I am in NC. We have a great house with a large yard near everything, but at the same time about 10 minutes in the country. My first week driving around I kicked myself for not letting go of CA sooner! A few years ago, I was one of those people who thought nothing could compare to CA. I still have friends like that and I can't wait for them to visit and see what I have for under $200, 000. Also, I was in a bit of shock hardly seeing any traffic, trash, graffit, crowds, etc. Another nice plus is the weather and bugs aren't as bad as everyone tried to make it seem. We are very happy. I hope this can help others reading this who are also getting frustrated and fed up with CA to know there are other wonderful places out there! It may seem scary to get up and move, but it is SOOOO worth it to get out of over priced CA!!!

[MoMark]

Originally Posted by enlightenme

Thank you! I love it. I am in NC. We have a great house with a large yard near everything, but at the same time about 10 minutes in the country. My first week driving around I kicked myself for not letting go of CA sooner! A few years ago, I was one of those people who thought nothing could compare to CA. I still have friends like that and I can't wait for them to visit and see what I have for under $200, 000. Also, I was in a bit of shock hardly seeing any traffic, trash, graffit, crowds, etc. Another nice plus is the weather and bugs aren't as bad as everyone tried to make it seem. We are very happy. I hope this can help others reading this who are also getting frustrated and fed up with CA to know there are other wonderful places out there! It may seem scary to get up and move, but it is SOOOO worth it to get out of over priced CA!!!

I wholeheartedly agree. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area until Sept. 2000, then in Las Vegas because of a job transfer through early June 05. I sold out there and moved to southwest Missouri last June, found a beautiful custom built brick 2300 sq. ft home on 4.3 parklike acres, and paid less than 230K cash earned from the sale in Nevada. This property I now have would be $900K to $1 million in California. There is no gang problem, no graffiti, no pollution per se, no litter, and it's gorgeous countryside, very friendly people, inexpensive homes, clean air and water, four seasons, and pleasant towns..I don't regret it either. My parents were here from California in June and were floored. They've decided to sell out in California and build a home here too

[Perdu]

what part of NC did you pick?

[enlightenme]

Originally Posted by Perdu

what part of NC did you pick?

We are right outside of Winston-Salem.

[CuteSubmissiveGuy]

Originally Posted by fastfilm

What do you want from life, CSGuy? Vegas is thriving economically, but there's that summer heat which is as bad a season as Minnesota blizzards. Los Angeles had the entertainment industry, but it is massively difficult for most to buy property here, and the gangs and illegals, who ignore most laws, make quality of life issues difficult for those who aren't rich enough to cocoon themselves from it.

Give us a little more info to help you out...

What do you mean, what do I want out of life? basic life, I was asking is LA really that bad and you cope that attitude about what I want out of life.

I was merely asking about moving to LA from Vegas. I personally don't like it here,Comprende? Vegas sucks as far as living here.

[Lehi]

Originally Posted by fastfilm

What do you want from life, CSGuy? Vegas is thriving economically, but there's that summer heat which is as bad a season as Minnesota blizzards. Los Angeles had the entertainment industry, but it is massively difficult for most to buy property here, and the gangs and illegals, who ignore most laws, make quality of life issues difficult for those who aren't rich enough to cocoon themselves from it.

Give us a little more info to help you out...

Originally Posted by CuteSubmissiveGuy

What do you mean, what do I want out of life? basic life, I was asking is LA really that bad and you cope that attitude about what I want out of life.

I was merely asking about moving to LA from Vegas. I personally don't like it here,Comprende? Vegas sucks as far as living here.

What we have here folks is a breakdown in communication.

[fastfilm]

Well, I'll try to break the impasse with the high road, because I know that anonymous online chats can be easily misunderstood without tone or inflection of personal conversation. I don't know what he wants in a city, that's all!

CSGuy, I don't know if you're thinking of moving from one exciting/crowded urban environment to another because you like it and want an even better one or are trying to find one less frenetic but with the same attributes. Do you want a less dangerous environment in life? Then, unless you're rich, L.A. is not the place. The gang problem is pervasive and intrusive in all but the most expensive areas. That means you will live with career criminals.

I know well-educated, mid-level income people, who grew up in L.A., who now live and work in Las Vegas and desire to return to L.A. to work in the entertainment business, but don't move because they know they can't afford L.A anymore. Perhaps that would tell you something as well.

What do you consider sucky or bad? I consider dangerous people with whom communication is impossible to be a less than desirable urban environment. There are so many other cities in the U.S. where you can converse in English with people, and be- gasp!- neighborly and nice to one another. I have neighbors who've shot through the fence at our confined dogs, and chopped down trees 12 feet into our property with chainsaws, who do not speak English nor have any desire to learn American laws. This might be representative of the new Los Angeles.
I am only here until the nanosecond my husband retires to earn his pension. Then we're outta here like rockets!

[RCL]

Originally Posted by ITChick

This has to be one of the best posts yet. Seriously. It explains what has happened to LA and many other places as well.

I finally left the bay area. I'm in my mid-40's and was born and raised there, fourth generation (my great grandfather was a friend of Jack London).

Almost my whole family has left. We want to remember it the way it was. And then the whole dot.com thing actually made things worse. The bay area used to have a large variety of industry to support it, such as agriculture, education, manufacturing, several military bases. Now, it's pretty much a one industry town--Technology, and the service jobs that support them. OK so they are going to get Biotech, but how long will that last? You still have all the same quality of life issues there to deal with.

Like my neighbor said (he was from Oklahoma), after a couple of years of putting up with traffic, smog, noise, crime, violence, high cost of living, yuppies who say they are environmentalists yet park their Hummer prominently outside where everyone can see it, and waiting in the express lane 20 minutes at the grocery store...the list goes on....anyway my neighbor said, "The only thing convenient about this place is the weather." And he is right. Aside from friends, there is nothing I, nor my family, miss about California.

I would not tell anyone to move to the bay area unless it was to attend Cal, Stanford or UCSF either as an undergrad or graduate studies. But to live there and raise a family, forget it. As far as starting a career...fortunately, technology is decentralizing now, away from places like the Bay Area and Boston...so I'd tell new graduates to go away from the Bay Area.

Everyone says the economy in the Bay Area will ALWAYS be strong and housing prices will ALWAYS continue to go up, yeah well I have seen it go south now THREE times, in the 70's, 80's and 90's. All I hope is that there is not some horrible natural disaster that drives out all the underclass like what happened in New Orleans. Look how much the crime rate shot up in Houston and Dallas after Katrina when they moved those people in.

[RCL]

Originally Posted by MoMark

I wholeheartedly agree. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area until Sept. 2000, then in Las Vegas because of a job transfer through early June 05. I sold out there and moved to southwest Missouri last June, found a beautiful custom built brick 2300 sq. ft home on 4.3 parklike acres, and paid less than 230K cash earned from the sale in Nevada. This property I now have would be $900K to $1 million in California. There is no gang problem, no graffiti, no pollution per se, no litter, and it's gorgeous countryside, very friendly people, inexpensive homes, clean air and water, four seasons, and pleasant towns..I don't regret it either. My parents were here from California in June and were floored. They've decided to sell out in California and build a home here too

MoMark in the Bay Area you'd be on 2.5-3million easy for a plot that size in a rundown ghetto infested area like Hayward, Oakland or San Leandro (where I used to live--and if I never see it again it will be too soon).

Most areas are all easily over a million per acre for raw land....if you can still find it...probably double that in areas like Palo Alto, Alamo, Danville, Livermore.

Even in Tracy or Gilroy, you can't get an acre of land for under a few hundred K and that's with nothing on it except weeds...double that if it's got a decades old rundown tiny house on it.

[OCCASparky]

Actually, housing prices if they aren't going down, have at best remained flat. The reason? Partly the media overblowing rising interest rates. People think they can't afford homes anymore because rates, according to the media, have "climbed out of sight".

Really??? I remember when I first started looking at houses here in 2000, we were looking at interest rates between 8.5 and 9.5 percent (and over 10 percent on second mortgages, or "piggy-backs" to avoid PMI).

We ended up buying a house for 5 percent down, doing 80 percent at 8.25, 15 percent (piggyback) at 9.75. Needless to say we refinanced as soon as we could (now twice) and are on a 30-year fixed at 5.5 percent.

However, consider this--does anyone really know the difference between 5.5 and 6.5 percent on a 30-year fixed at 500K financed? I'll do the math for you...

$2875 a month versus $3160 a month, plus insurance and property taxes. In other words, if you're not able to afford one, you're probably not in a real good position to afford the other either. However, on the other hand, if you can afford either, you might be able to swing it. Throw in the tax deduction for interest and that $300 a month difference becomes even less (like under $200 a month).

People are looking to mommy and daddy to give them a down payment on a house, but what they don't understand is that even a "modest" down payment is over 100K here. THAT'S where the real problem lies. And people want NEW houses. SURPRISE!!! New houses cost in the 850K-1.2M range where I live--like the ones just off the 5 Freeway in Santa Ana by the Orange Crush (literally next to the freeway, separated only by a wall).

So until people stop being scared of "out of sight" (BS) interest rates and realize that it's NOT getting any better, housing prices might actually decline a bit and correct for the explosion they've had for the past 5 years.