Cleveland to San Diego (working in La Jolla) (San Francisco, Kensington: apartments, neighborhoods)

[guanfacine]

Hi everyone (awesome forum by the way!)

I'll be relocating to your fair city from Cleveland, the north coast of the rust belt, come the mid of this month. I've had my eyes peeled for places to live, but I've had some difficulty. I'm torn on finding a place close to my new job (in La Jolla), but within an eclectic neighborhood catering to someone in their late 20's. I'm a big fan of diversity (I've lived in the Chinatown of my city before). I have lived in and worked in some fairly urban places, so I'm not terrified of the prospect of living somewhere like that again.

Any suggestions? Are there specific apartment search engines I should check out, or complexes that you might advise? I'm leaning towards not having a roommate, but if it will be prohibitively expensive I'm fine with the idea. My range is $800/mo max. As always, less than that is preferred.

Thanks!

[kettlepot]

With an $800/mo max, La Jolla is doable only with roommate(s). It may take 2 rather than just 1 roommate.

However, commuting into La Jolla can be a bear if you are working in downtown La Jolla. If you are working at the UCSD campus things are better. If you are working at the hospital by the UCSD campus things are better still. If you are working at the hospital you may be able to take the shuttle from Hillcrest to La Jolla. Then you could live in Hillcrest which is more along the lines of the type of neighborhood you want, (but still outside your price range).

Other neighborhoods you would like are North Park, South Park, Bankers Hill (aka Park West), University Heights, Normal Heights, Kensington, Golden Hill. However, it will be difficult to find a one bedroom apartment in these neighborhoods within your price range.

I really think you need to bump up your budget to $1000 to really have choices other than the dumpiest dumps in the urban neighborhoods, or ok apartments in the truly bad neighborhoods (none of which I have mentioned here). These neighborhoods may have a smattering of apartments in the $700s, but very, very few. And these apartments may lack amenities like A/C, dishwasher, parking, laundry room.

Most costs in San Diego are not too far from the national averages +/- 10%, except housing. Housing is expensive. Not quite New York City/San Francisco expensive, but certainly more than Cleveland.

[moved]

Not everyone needs a dishwasher or A/C. Parking is a necessity, and I don't consider a laundry room a necessity. The places that I've lived in with a laundry room never have enough machines, so I ended up going to the Laundromat anyway, and I've grown to prefer it.

[Pedro2000]

Originally Posted by moved

Not everyone needs a dishwasher or A/C. Parking is a necessity, and I don't consider a laundry room a necessity. The places that I've lived in with a laundry room never have enough machines, so I ended up going to the Laundromat anyway, and I've grown to prefer it.

I agree with that. It's nice to have your own washer/dryer, but a laundry room isn't all that impressive when you consider many of these places have 10-20 year old machines and half the time they wind up broken down and never get fixed.

I lived in one place in the East village that had 2 washers and 2 dryers for the entire complex. Albiet it was only a 3 story building and small, but still. And the 1 dryer was broke the entire 8 months I lived or visited there. There was another place up in Mission Hill that had 4 washers, 4 dryers, and the washers all were half broken and you'd have to bang on the top to get it to work or place some brick or heavy books to hold it down so it would run. Another time one of the back hoses busted and flooded out the room. And finally like 4 months in, the one washer broke for good and was never fixed in the 6+ months after that I lived there.

Most of the time, even if things aren't broken, you wind up finding a laundry mat close by anyway because there are limited machines, certain hours you can't wash, and other people always seem to never work or are using it when you need to use it. And that doesn't say anything about some places where thieves seem to live. I've never had that issue, but I know a few people who wound up with stolen items.

Now the thing you might want to look at is finding a laundry mat close by. If you aren't close to one, then it'll become a pain in the neck.