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Landlord will look at the savings in the bank and it must be documented.
San Diego is changing and North Park, Normal Heights as well as Hillcrest and Downtown are more walkable than most areas. I agree, the further east you go, the Wless expensive. Prepare for sticker shock though. We have a sun tax
I don’t know if you’ve already arrived or not, but just in case and for anyone else who comes along looking for info:
For multiple moves and researching a variety of communities in multiple states, I’ve found City-Data to be really helpful.
It is appalling how little affordable housing there is in San Diego (and every other popular city in the country). I think it is dismaying how house poor people have to be to own a home of any kind in southern CA, especially anywhere even near the coast. I read an article in a business journal that said only 28% of San Diego County residents can afford a median-priced home in San Diego County. That’s a shocking statistic. That reality also drives rental prices ever higher just because it has pushed more people into the rental market and property-owners invariably take advantage of the need, whether or not they have to in order to make a profit.
I agree with some of the other posters about property management companies. For the most part I hate them and dislike dealing with them. I’ve found most of them to be dismissive if one has too many questions about a place before signing one’s income away for a year, assuming a person isn’t serious so they ignore you and move on right away looking for who they believe will be a quicker source of income. I also feel like they subject potential renters to a really demeaning process. After decades of home ownership and responsible living, at my age, the process involved in renting from property management companies feels insulting and undeserved.
In Santa Barbara County I ran across a couple of property management companies that prey on the low-income and the young. They cheat them when they are looking for a place, and they cheat them when they move out, because those companies know they don’t know how to or they won’t stand up for their rights. In Oregon, I knew of some that routinely took up to $50.00 each from young people they were never going to rent to because they did not have credit histories extensive enough, so they illegally took their money and never even ran credit checks on them. Young people trying to survive were having their bank accounts drained just looking for a home to rent. Like in Santa Barbara County, they also cheated young people when they moved out of places.
Yes, I miss the good old days when one could rent with the requested rent and deposits instead of having to give up all privacy. The amount of private info demanded by property management companies to keep in one place makes us vulnerable to ID theft - they have Everything they need to steal identities and employees of companies that collect all that info are the number one seller of such info to theft rings. Only our banks and government should have that much info collected on us, so I hate giving it to mere property management companies. And some of them have such stringent requirements, running background checks on potential renters to look for any little "flag," that I feel really bad for people who are between jobs but can still pay rent, or young people who made some mistake before they matured or understood how things work. This sort of system is really stacked against anyone who hasn’t had a perfect record or hasn’t even established any kind of record yet. It makes life so much harder for so many people, which ultimately hurts all of us by hurting our communities in general, and it feels really discriminatory to me. Even though we don’t suffer from any of that, I still really dislike being treated as a potential deadbeat or criminal instead of the assumption being the other way around, especially given we can pony-up the money up front. People used to be allowed more dignity, yet society managed to thrive better than than it does now! Go figure.
I found my current home by driving around neighborhoods I was interested in and looking for signs put out by private owners. My current landlord never advertises. All he asked for was a copy of our credit-rating that we printed out ourselves, and we gave him a letter of recommendation from our previous landlord. We paid no background check fees and he ran no checks on us. He had a simple, straightforward rental agreement. He also never raises the rent on good tenants. He wants good tenants to stay in his house. Unfortunately, I’m back in City-Data because we’ve decided we no longer want to deal with or pay for watering a lawn (San Diego has some of if not the most expensive water rates in the country), a place with some insulation (our house is charming but almost 100-years-old with single pane windows and zero insulation, so utility costs are high, plus the spouse is in the energy biz and disapproves), and most importantly, we want to live closer to our children in La Jolla. I hate to give up my current landlord, as I hated to give up my previous one. Both treated us fairly and respectfully. They are both successful businessmen too, so it is possible to be decent to people and still do well.
In my opinion, Hillcrest is overpriced. If one lives on the right street, it’s nice and quiet with good street parking, and maybe off-street parking too. It is also close to the zoo and Balboa Park, and it is an inexpensive Uber ride to downtown. If one doesn’t live on the right street, though, it is somewhat grungy and one has to fight for parking. I think the main drag through Hillcrest, on University, is looking rundown and dingy. The roads are bad like they are all over San Diego. The street lights were out at a busy intersection, so at night pedestrians were crossing in the dark, for several months before they were fixed! There are also a lot of mentally-ill homeless people in Hillcrest because when they are picked up by the police, they are taken to the hospital in Hillcrest, where they end up released into the neighborhood. Other homeless people have left Hillcrest to get away from the mentally-ill homeless citizens. I wouldn’t live right next to a park, canyon, or greenbelt for that reason. I wouldn’t even want my yard or home to be against an alley. As always when the economy is bad for a lot of people, property crime is high, so homes locked, keeping cars empty of desirable items and locked, and possessions like nice bicycles hidden is important (bike theft rings steal bikes locked up, right in front of passers-by, so it is risky to ride them and lock them up to go inside a business or friend’s home. It is rare to see anyone’s personal bicycle locked to a rack in Hillcrest). Police don’t even respond to property theft anymore.
Frankly, I think La Jolla is overpriced, too, for what one gets to be there. I guess I’m not as impressed by the wealthy residents living there (nor with their sense of entitlement) or the downsides of "beach life" (small, old, not-up-to-energy-and-electrical codes rentals in buildings battered by sea air for decades), the lack of parking for residents paying $2500.00-$3000.00+ a month for their abodes, and most rentals don’t even provide in-unit laundry hook-ups, let alone in-unit laundry machines; but it is apparently worth it to people who want to be right by the beach. Right now, La Jolla is in the throes of dealing with how to control the downsides of short-term rentals to tourists. Pacific Beach is also going through a big fight over the same issue, because residential neighborhoods are hurt by too many short-term tourist rentals. Also, La Jolla is in a little valley with congested roads going in and out. Our kids basically plan their lives around the traffic in and out of La Jolla, wanting to be home already by 3:00 PM or after 7:00 PM to avoid sitting in lines of traffic.
I wouldn’t live in Little Italy, because even if a person doesn’t mind living surrounded by almost nothing but concrete and brick, one pays a premium price to live with cars, buses, planes, and trains on the move constantly. When I was home hunting, I was downtown and at the exact same moment, a plane was flying in very low as cars, buses, and a train were criss-crossing under it. It was loud and felt frenetic; for me, that is not worth those high rental prices. Also, while there are a lot of restaurants, cafes, and bars to frequent, they are expensive, even by San Diego standards, I guess because of the cool-factor. It’s not just because of my age that I didn’t like all the vehicle and plane noise either. I have a young friend in her early 30s who told me she and her boyfriend moved there when they first came to San Diego. They thought it would be fun. Instead, she hated it. She said between the vehicle pollution and the noise from the cars, buses, planes, and trains, she couldn’t even open her windows to let fresh air in. They were so glad they’d rented first instead of buying right away. As soon as their lease was up, they moved to another part of the city and bought a home there.
I like North Park better than Hillcrest. While Hillcrest seems to have peaked in its quality of life (priced itself out of a lot of good residents and gained other problems) and is now back on the comparative downhill slide, North Park is still improving. Even the business strip on University through North Park looks nicer than it does in Hillcrest now. A year ago, rental prices were better in North Park than in Hillcrest; I don’t know if that’s changed.
University Heights is improving, but some people are being priced-out there now, too. That’s what happens with gentrification. Long-term residents are displaced by rising prices, often forced out when property-owners start making improvements and then jack the rates too high for those people to stay or move back in. The prices were better than in Hillcrest, but I don’t know if that is still the case.
I don’t know anything about Mission Hills, other than it is right next to Hillcrest.
Bankers Hill is okay, and considered nice, but it, too, is more expensive for what one receives.
If I were going to stay in that part of San Diego, I’d look into living in South Park. It has a cute little neighborhood vibe to it and it is improving (gentrification), so the rental prices are still better at this point, yet it is being fixed up and drawing a positive citizenry.
North Pacific Beach is nice, but more expensive, with few rentals. The other parts of Pacific Beach are more affordable but somewhat trashier and has tourist and youthful partying issues. How attractive or unattractive the tourists and partying are to a person is dependent on individual needs and personality.
I don’t know about Mission Beach other than it is really a beach neighborhood, at flat sea-level, with a lot of tourists and the usual downsides to rental buildings next to the beach. It doesn’t look gentrified when I drive through it on the main drag, but it does have a lot of little retail and cafe businesses, and kind of a cool, funky feel to it. What it would be like to actually live there, though, I don’t know.
UTC has oceans of condo/apartment complexes. They all look much the same and are run by the big property-management companies. For convenience and price, I’ve tried to make myself like the area, but I don’t. Every time I’ve home hunted in that area, it has depressed me. There are a lot of students there though, and when I was in my 20s, I wouldn’t have cared about the things I care about now, like living on heavily traveled multi-lane streets, whether I can hear my neighbors, or how generically boring an apartment is. One can get more space for the dollar renting in the UTC area.
Kensington is a neighborhood of gorgeous old homes, far fewer rentals, and is pretty expensive because folks with money live there. It sure is beautiful though. I drool over those properties I’ll never have a prayer of living in!
In the suburbs (like toward and at Scripps Ranch and Carmel Valley, for example) one will find more oceans of generic condo and apartment complexes. Again, more space for the money. For me, though, it is boring in the burbs, with nothing nearby but a fancy strip mall. Unless one lives in a place next to the strip mall with the grocery store, maybe a restaurant or two, and perhaps a salon one likes, it isn’t walkable, but requires transportation. To go anywhere besides the closest strip mall requires transportation and is a real outing, not just running to the store real quick. I’ve chosen to get less for my money to live in the urban environment.
There are nice, small towns north of La Jolla (such as Del Mar, Solano Beach, and Encinitas) but they are relatively expensive since they are popular with the monied young families, and if a person works in San Diego, the commute can be a real negative. Anywhere near Del Mar, one will have to deal with traffic from the racetrack, too.
Those are all the neighborhoods I know at least a little about. There are quite a few more I know nothing about.
San Diego is a spread out city of hills and canyons, requiring a car to travel all the interconnecting highways. That, too, is a consideration when deciding where to live and what it is worth to live close to a job.
Good luck to you, and I hope you enjoy your new home wherever it may be!
I was unemployed and I have horrible credit but had cash. There was much competition for apartments and I didn’t meet the criteria for Property Management companies. So to avoid competition and PM companies, I only searched craigslist posts with no photos. I found the most amazing place, nice old widow owner. Uptown but private and such a deal and it’s beautiful. I couldn’t have found a better place. There were only 3 viewers and owner liked me more. The reason it didn’t have pictures is because the handyman wasn’t computer savvy.
I own a property that I rent out in San Diego county, and also worked in property management for years. Just be prepared most if not all places will not rent to people without jobs already lined up, or at least significant assets in place. I would not rent my property out as a private owner to anyone that didn't have stable income or proof of those assets. And when I say assets, I mean you should have 3x's the amount of rent per month saved up for the duration of your lease term(so for something in the $1600 range-and a 6 month lease, you are going to need about $30000 in savings. You may be able to find someone out there to be more lenient, though. Best of luck!
Yep, Good advice. Owners will be more careful than some managers. Managers who live on site will also be very diligent in checking your background.
That's virtually impossible to do here, because landlords want to see proof of income. Also, you're replying to a four year old post, and the OP last posted in 04/2017.
I'm actually looking for a new place myself, and have everything that a landlord wants $$ wise, and won't have a problem with that, but I'm not looking for an apartment, I'm looking for a one bedroom detached cottage.
That's virtually impossible to do here, because landlords want to see proof of income. Also, you're replying to a four year old post, and the OP last posted in 04/2017.
I'm actually looking for a new place myself, and have everything that a landlord wants $$ wise, and won't have a problem with that, but I'm not looking for an apartment, I'm looking for a one bedroom detached cottage.
Dangit, my buddy just rented his granny flat for 1000 a month and it had everything including a view of the bay.
Dangit, my buddy just rented his granny flat for 1000 a month and it had everything including a view of the bay.
If it has a view of the bay, I wouldn't have been interested in it anyway. I have specifics that I want, and being close to to the water isn't one of them.
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San Diego renting
