About the finest city's forum (Chula Vista, Vista: apartment, rent, condos)

[Sampaguita]

Originally Posted by yankeefan83

It's comical to hear all of you SDers complain about cost of living. Move to the NY metro area and talk to me about expensive living...

There is quite a disparity between salaries in NY and salaries in SD. Not so comical to us.

If our salaries met those of our counterparts in NY, there'd probably be less anxiety over what we have to pay in order to buy a house.

[SanDiego423]

Originally Posted by Sampaguita

There is quite a disparity between salaries in NY and salaries in SD. Not so comical to us.

If our salaries met those of our counterparts in NY, there'd probably be less anxiety over what we have to pay in order to buy a house.

People grossly overestimate NY salaries...

[NYSD1995]

NYC is so brutal. Before I bought my house in SD we looked into moving to NYC (my whole family is on LI). Identified neighborhoods we could afford and rented a car and spent a week trolling neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Northern Manhattan, Jersey City, Queens and LI. For the same price as my small single family home in SD I was looking at a 900sf co-op on Ocean Parkway, 4th floor walkup in a massive building with insane co-op fees. Long Island meant long commutes and insane property taxes.

We saw some great neighborhoods but the lifestyle difference was dramatic. I would need to make quite a bit more in NYC to make up the difference, and realistically I wasn't going to be making 30% more in NYC.

700k in SD puts you in a great house in a great area in SD, it won't even get you a brownstone in Bed-Stuy anymore.

[FL2CA]

hey sassberto...how's the tech startup culture out in SD? from what I gathered from posts about the industry is that there are IT jobs out there, but mainly for the .NET crowd and hardware vendors...

[NYSD1995]

Originally Posted by FL2CA

hey sassberto...how's the tech startup culture out in SD? from what I gathered from posts about the industry is that there are IT jobs out there, but mainly for the .NET crowd and hardware vendors...

You've pretty much got it... a lot of hardware (Qualcomm, Nokia), a lot of biotech, bio-med and Pharma (Cardinal, Amylin), some systems stuff too (Storix, Bakbone), quite a bit of defense contracting which is mostly .NET/Java.

I actually work for a VC-funded startup, we do a hosted web-based app for the insurance industry. There are some others, most are Web 2.0-type places (Eventful, Veoh). Yahoo Music (aka MusicMatch) is also here.. Rancho Bernardo.

Overall there is a lot less shrinkwrap / product dev here and a lot more corporate / internal stuff, but the jobs are out there if you can find them. There is a good mix but it's not really comparable to Silicon Valley or even Boston.

What type of stuff do you do?

[FL2CA]

3D animation/Graphics
.Net (c#) - only 2 yrs then abandoned the platform in favor of Ruby on Rails

I've gotten back into web dev. this year because of that...

[NYSD1995]

Originally Posted by FL2CA

3D animation/Graphics
.Net (c#) - only 2 yrs then abandoned the platform in favor of Ruby on Rails

I've gotten back into web dev. this year because of that...

There is some games presence here - 989 Studios I believe got absorbed into Sony Online Entertainment, that is located in Rancho Bernardo.

Tons of web dev, especially C# - job market is on fire for .NET right now.

Not much ROR stuff out there. A buddy of mine has a startup that does ROR but I think it's basically a one-man show. I know that Mingle.com is an ROR shop, they are in downtown SD.

[Sampaguita]

Originally Posted by yankeefan83

People grossly overestimate NY salaries...

Our next-door-neighbors who are like our family here are moving out of state because they can't afford to buy a larger home for their growing family (mom/dad/teen/toddler/infant). Today is their first open house and with all the great feedback, their house will sell faster than most around here. You got my ire up when you said our complaints were comical. None of our neighbors find it funny when a treasured family in the neighborhood has to move because it's too expensive to live here.

A friend of ours is in the same field as my brother whose job is based out of NYC. Our SD friend makes 50k less than my brother. I know of several other situations like that so I was going on what I know. I do know that even if you're making 6 figures in NYC your money still doesn't get you very much. My brother moved to Houston 2 yrs ago because he couldn't justify paying over 500k for a closet. Lucky for him, his company didn't want to lose him so he still works for them, draws his NY salary & benies & flies to NY every other month on the company's dime. He's got his new house, the car he's always wanted & lots of friends moving to Houston from NYC under similar agreements.

I want my parents to retire to SD. No dice with Dad. He can't justify the half million dollar prices for 1000sf in SD. If they ever move, they're headed to TX as well.

Bottom line is that no matter where you go in the US, people are complaining about the cost of buying a house. People in San Antonio (where we were most recently thinking of relocating to) are complaining that all the out-of-state transplants are causing prices there to rise.

We think it's nuts that you can buy a brand new 3500 sf house on 1/3 acre in a luxury community in SA for 400k. That would be more than a million here.

FWIW - with the exception of one stray (a METS fan! ), my family is all about the Bronx Bombers.

Sassberto - I took my visiting Mets fan cousin & her friends to Bronx Pizza a couple of years ago. When they saw all the Yankees memorabilia, I thought they were going to walk out. They thought the pizza was great but it was a big thumbs down having to eat & look at the Yankees logo.

[FL2CA]

Thanks Sassberto, I'll look into those...

I don't think I would even consider buying a house in SD until around Fall 2008-2009. A lot of buyers out here in Florida are on the sidelines and the developers and flippers are desperate. It's a mess out here. However, I want to see what the effect of all the ARM resets are going to have in SD later this year.

Apart from the independently wealthy, my research tells me that a lot of home owners in SD are straight up in debt up to their eyeballs. They've tapped out their HELOCs and basically live paycheck to paycheck. The tax structure in CA is what I'm afraid of...what are you citizens of California doing about this? I read an article last year mentioning that the city of San Diego was basically broke.

[NYSD1995]

Originally Posted by FL2CA

I don't think I would even consider buying a house in SD until around Fall 2008-2009. A lot of buyers out here in Florida are on the sidelines and the developers and flippers are desperate. It's a mess out here. However, I want to see what the effect of all the ARM resets are going to have in SD later this year.

A lot of the same stuff here, it really depends on what/where you are looking at. The new construction, especially condos and the 800k+ stuff, is being hit very hard. Overall though resale SFH really have not budged. I really only pay attention to houses in my neighborhood (few flippers) and as far as I can tell, while slow, the houses are still selling, fixers are still getting fixed up, and there's no real crisis. My area is actually holding up well because it is cheap. Condos in particular, after being reduced maybe 10% overall, are selling at rates above last year.

I think the market will basically continue as it has for the past 2 years in SD - slow sales with flat to declining prices, but I don't see a disaster on hand.

Originally Posted by FL2CA

Apart from the independently wealthy, my research tells me that a lot of home owners in SD are straight up in debt up to their eyeballs. They've tapped out their HELOCs and basically live paycheck to paycheck. The tax structure in CA is what I'm afraid of...what are you citizens of California doing about this? I read an article last year mentioning that the city of San Diego was basically broke.

I think that on the flipside of this, a lot of homeowners, especially in the prime neighborhoods are longtime owners who bought long ago. Everyone I know who is over 40 in SD right now is in this position. Nice houses in great areas and none of them have ever made huge salaries.

I live in a neighborhood full of retired people who either paid off their house or have a nominal mortgage. My neighbor to the left has a 500 dollar mortgage, he paid 135k for the house in the early 90's. My half-brother paid 118k for a craftsman fixer in Normal Heights in the mid-nineties. His mom owns a prime house in a prime neighborhood, worth at least 900k. I believe she paid 500k for it.

The overleveraged people who are going to get wacked in this market are concentrated in a few areas more than others:
- new construction on the 56/15 corridor
- new construction in Otay Mesa / San Ysidro area
- new construction in Murietta / Temecula / Winchester / Hemet
- downtown SD condos (esp on the entry-level)
- ultra-high-end condos throughout the city
- fixer starter homes in non-prime areas
- entry-level condo conversions in non-prime areas on the mesa (i.e. City Heights)

Anywhere you have a big 'investment buyer' population, you will find the deals. Personally, if I was single / younger I would be starting to look at downtown condos right about now.

The City of SD is not actually broke, they can pay salaries and service their debt. But they haven't filed their financials for 03' so their bond rating is ****e. They can't sell bonds, they can't raise money for capital improvements. The main problem looming is that SD has a huge unfunded pension obligation (1-2B) that it must refinance, restructure, or otherwise deal with, but that will likely be a problem for a lot of cities for a long time.