Why is San Diego so cheap? Seems like the perfect place. (Huntington Beach: condo, how much)

[earlyretirement]

Originally Posted by sfosyd

San Diego companies are tough. I had an offer for $60k in SD but a NYC based company offered me triple that so I relocated. I kept my condo and still use it on occasion. You do have to watch out for crazy situations like micro managers and that sort of thing, more so than other places, in my experience.

Pedro, from what I have seen, the Bay Area, even Fremont and Alameda, are just out of control lately. In the past few years, the real estate has just shot up and is no longer comparable with SD. For a family, I'd rather have 100k in San Diego than 225k in the Bay Area unless you can do something like work three days a week at home and commute in from SAC. I know people who do that but it's 2.5 hours each way and your living in the Central Valley. The amount of wealth in the bay is staggering.

Originally Posted by Sassberto

arguing that SD salaries are somehow not low is about as silly as arguing that SF housing is somehow reasonable.

BINGO, BINGO BINGO. We have a winner.

All totally true and I totally agree with and spot on target. I have many many many friends living in the Bay area but they are making a ton of money. Even for them, they complain about the extremely high cost of living and especially the real estate. San Diego is absolutely cheap compared to San Francisco. Some of those prices are getting crazy.

I always laugh at people that try to act like salaries in San Diego aren't low relative to the cost of living and especially real estate here.

[docmcstuffin]

Originally Posted by earlyretirement

BINGO, BINGO BINGO. We have a winner.

All totally true and I totally agree with and spot on target. I have many many many friends living in the Bay area but they are making a ton of money. Even for them, they complain about the extremely high cost of living and especially the real estate. San Diego is absolutely cheap compared to San Francisco. Some of those prices are getting crazy.

I always laugh at people that try to act like salaries in San Diego aren't low relative to the cost of living and especially real estate here.

It's all relative. I know many people working up there as well and they're getting MUCH less after adjusting for cost of living than me down here in SD and we're in the same level/profession. We both can cite anecdotal evidences. But we can also use salary.com & glassdoor.com if you like.

Tell me, if you work at Google or Apple, how much do you have to pay for a house that's w/in 5-15 minutes from work that have good schools? I just did this exercise a few weeks ago.

[ThomasMatthews]

I was in San Diego in July and I didn't find it cheap.
Maybe cheaper than LA and definitely than SF, but overall San Diego it's more expensive than most parts of the US.

[docmcstuffin]

Originally Posted by Fozamo

I was in San Diego in July and I didn't find it cheap.
Maybe cheaper than LA and definitely than SF, but overall San Diego it's more expensive than most parts of the US.

that's very true. But the OP is from the bay. So its all relative.

[BayAreaDave]

Originally Posted by TR95

This post is not even worth commenting. The OP lost all credibility using SD and Modesto in the same sentence.

Well I lived in Ripon, CA for a while, 5 minutues away from Modesto. And it was expensive, I just assumed that Modesto wasn't too different in price. I was wrong.

[RMP500]

There's not a lot of homes on the market right now which has raised prices back up.

I'm trying to move out of Modesto, it's a real dump.

[jwblue]

Grass isn't always greener.

[Pedro2000]

Originally Posted by docmcstuffin

It's all relative. I know many people working up there as well and they're getting MUCH less after adjusting for cost of living than me down here in SD and we're in the same level/profession. We both can cite anecdotal evidences. But we can also use salary.com & glassdoor.com if you like.

Tell me, if you work at Google or Apple, how much do you have to pay for a house that's w/in 5-15 minutes from work that have good schools? I just did this exercise a few weeks ago.

This is kind of a funny and sad question. Take a look at the avg age of the employees at many of the SV companies. Facebook is building condos/apartments right on their new campus. So you could potentially just walk to work. But those places are really for your 25 year olds. That's the thing many people don't realize about SV and the bay area and the tech industry. It's a predominately young white male from upper class industry. Or it's become a visa worker from India industry.

The truth is many of the employees at those companies don't have families and aren't even close to having families. Hell, for a long time, Facebook had an avg employee age of about 26. If you make a few bucks and start a family and are 35 and you're not a multi-millionaire, you probably left the bay area. Or you live 2+ hours away from work. Or you work remotely half the week.

When I worked up there, most of the people who did have kids didn't live close to work. Many lived out on the East Bay and drove into San Mateo or Redwood Shores. And they didn't come into work till like 10 or 11am so they'd miss the traffic and take their kids to school in the morning. But they also stayed till 10-11pm.

And therein lies the money issue. Many people are young or they sacrifice to work up there for the money. Especially in the tech industry. When I worked up there I stayed at some house that was a 10 mile bike ride from work. The retired woman bought that house in like the 60s and then started renting out rooms to random tech employees like me. I paid her like 30 bucks per day and had my own room, own bathroom, could use the kitchen anytime I liked and she was rarely around anyway. And she was not renting any of the other rooms out when I stayed there. So really, if I only stuck around for 4 days a week, I paid 120 bucks for a room and bathroom. I didn't need much more and saved a hell of a lot of money that way.

I knew a lot of other people who stayed close to work and had a few roommates. People do the same thing in San diego. So if you have a 3K apartment close to work but its split 3-4 ways, and you're gettiing paid 2-3X more than you would in San diego, you are going to have a lot more money to spend.

I use my example because I wasn't the only one doing those kinds of things. At most I'd spend 900 bucks a month on a room in a house, I bought a 150 buck bike and rode that back/forth to work (10 miles each way) every day and at the end of the day, there was nothing close to that in San diego. It's all about what you do and what you don't do. I could never come close to any of that in San diego, even if I was paying 300 bucks a month sharing a condo.

Yeah the bay area is ridiculous in how much it costs to live, but San Diego isn't exactly one of the more affordable places to live either, and San diego pays far less.

[cheeto360]

San Diego cheap?!!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Where the fu## are you from? Manhattan ? SF city? There are soooo many places in the US with deeper culture and better quality of life that cost half as much as SD!! OP needs to get out more!!

[RMP500]

Originally Posted by jwblue

Grass isn't always greener.

Sure it is. There is always better.