Is Orange Country the Right Place for Us?

[bhcompy]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

You folks are lucky to live in a place where average salaries are so high and there are plentiful jobs that pay that well.

It's all relative. In my zip(90720, Los Alamitos/Rossmoor), the Median Household income in 85k. The median home price is about 675k. Homes are still overpriced. My family makes around the media amount, as do a lot of others around me. I'm forced to rent or move to a crappier area to afford a house. Not everyone makes 200k, and jobs certainly aren't plentiful. They're available, but there is a great disparity compared to what we had previously(wacky things like senior positions paying entry level wages, listed entry level jobs requiring senior level experience, previously permanent positions coming back as contractors without benefits, etc) and many big businesses are simply moving out of state.

[UrsusMinor]

The job market is pretty sketchy...

Food is higher quality and cheaper than in Boston, that's fer sure.

If you want to be reasonably close to the beach, then Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, and Costa Mesa are your best bets, as there are some large tract homes for rent in these areas for not-unreasonable prices.

San Diego does rank as cheaper these days--but not if you want to be close to the water!

Further north, Ventura and San Luis Obispo both have a lot to be said for them. And if you don't mind being farther form the ocean, Paso Robles is an up-and-coming wine town with reasonable prices.

The whole problems isn't about cost of living, though. It's about jobs. I have friends who have been laid off and took more than six months to find another job--ANY other job. The job market here is pretty grim at present.