What's your strategy for long distance house hunting?

[Pedro2000]

Originally Posted by shmoov_groovzsd

mandasand, I remember your journey last year when you were posting. Is the quality of life that much different than what you get for the money up in Rocklin?

Are you feeling that the trade offs arent so great between the two because schools are important?

I think when you have kids there will always be trade offs. There just aren't that many good school systems in San diego and the ones that are good, are usually in expensive areas. Or you wind up living in a smaller place to be closer to those schools. When you have a little child or no kids, you probably don't care as much. But once those kids start to grow and need more space and you start to build your life, even if you are a minimalist, living in a smaller place that isn't exactly that cheap, will be a huge trade off.

it's one thing if you retire or decide to move from Iowa and downsize. You are doing it for the weather and you're doing it for various other reasons. But if you downsize and are still raising a family and still spending more money, the weather story gets old fast.

I think this is where a lot of people get into trouble. A lot of people do move to San Diego because of the weather and not much else. I love the scenery, but in all honesty, half of san diego is desert brown and not really that attractive to look at. You drive out past carmel valley and you see nothing but houses on desert like hills. I would never live in Santa Barbara, but that area is far more beautiful in various ways. Hell Seattle has far more beauty in many different ways.

San diego has a ton of beauty, but it also has a ton of run of the mill nothingness overcrowded with houses that have no beauty in them at all. They are that little boxes that look all alike and have no artistic value at all. Some areas like Julian, some parts of Mission Hills and Hillcrest have pretty cool architecture and homes. But for the most part, San diego is a boring place to look at homes. Hell some of the most expensive areas like Del Mar and La Jolla have junk houses that would cost $80K anywhere else in the US. But it's Del mar so they are million dollar ranches that haven't been updated since 1969.

The thing about value is you have to want to move here, have to love it here, have to realize there are many things not so great about San Diego. People who come with that "i love it it's the greatest place on earth" and then wind up living in a 800 square foot box with a roommate are the same ones who complain about the past few weeks because it's been a bit cold.

I love San diego, but I also think many people make it out to be something that it isn't and then have to defend it to the death because it destroys their paradise. Others who have to sacrifice a lot to move here and the only thing they really know is that San diego has great weather and some nice scenery are probably going to have an entirely different opinion. People don't realize that weather only goes so far. Especially during cold spells when the weather might not be snow, but it's not paradise either.

[earlyretirement]

Originally Posted by mandasand

Earlyretirement - I researched for 6 months to find a place in SD. On Craigslist, I rarely came across a scam listing. On Zillow, I would email to find out about a listing and the majority of times I would get the response back that the owner is living in a different country and they just wanted a nice family to live in their house while they were on their religious mission. I got the "out of country" response all the time. I ended up never looking at Zillow anymore. My mom had a client in NorCal that rented a house from a Zillow listing, paid the deposit, went to pick up the keys, and found someone already lived in the house. I know it sounds crazy, but many people do house hunting remotely.

Interesting. Thanks mandasand for taking the time to answer. I didn't realize there were so many rental scams on Zillow. I would have thought Craigslist would be more full of scams.

For example, last year I used TinEye to look at a photo of one of my rental properties I own and I saw that someone set up a fake sight in Europe with my apartment photos for some scam. I wouldn't have thought people would use Zillow so much for scams but interesting to hear. Thanks for sharing.

[mandasand]

Craigslist still has scams, like if you're trying to sell something. I'm trying to sell my Apple Cinema Display and I've had mostly scams. I was thinking about trying eBay but I worry that there are scams there too.

In regard to my experience moving here, I'm not sure exactly why I made the decision other than I love my job and the company I work for-career opportunities were important to me. But, I didn't realize the sacrifices I was making. I'm from a small town and when I went to college, it was less than 2 hours from my family. That's the farthest I had been from them. So I thought this would be something different for me and a way to make my own way in the world. Ive always been pretty independent but loved being near my family. This was a new experience. My husband is nearing the end of his 20+ career in the military, so we thought this would be a good time to transition to something that benefits my career. We are used to being apart, since he deploys often for 6 months at a time and when he's home, we work opposite schedules. Even though I question my choice a lot, I also think I'm just out of my comfort zone. In a few months, my husband will be here. Things will get better for me once he's here.

I believe since I lived in the OPs town, and now living here, Sac is pretty nice. I am curious why they made the choice to relocate.

[ColonelForbin]

Interesting thread. Thanks from a lurker.

Question: does anyone know whether Trulia is trustworthy, or is Trulia as prone to scams as Zillow?

Trulia and Zillow both have a reasonable number of listings for 4br rentals under $4k/month in University City. Is that plausible?

There are even a few 4br rentals under $4k in La Jolla. Is that plausible too, or is that just crazy?

To contribute to this thread:
Never been to SD, but I totally concur with mandasand.

I've lived East Coast and West Coast, including SF/SJ Bay Area and LA (and have family in Rockville). Basically, the grass is always greener.

People on the East Coast love the idea of California, and their expectations are unreasonably high. Heck, these are people who dream of retiring to Florida. Take that as you will.

The two biggest disappointments I've noticed about California: they don't realize San Francisco gets foggy and damn near freezing, and they don't realize how huge chunks of suburban California are just a repeating pattern of strip malls with variations only in quality and density.

Once people move here, they're are disappointed, less so if they don't mind strip malls. But their disappointment is magnified if they sacrificed a lot to get there. So a similar pattern to the Sac to SD move, writ large.

Incidentally, I am somewhat amused that the expectation and disappointment about weather holds true for an intra-California move. I totally find it valid (I'm not personally a fan of Central Valley weather), but if I told that story to the guy shoveling snow outside, he's snort in my face.