Zup! Okay..as some of you know..I'm from Cali (Palm Springs) but I came out to NY for college, landed a sweet job and I'm only going to be here in the East for one more year. I just moved into a new place, and once my lease is up....back home to surfing, the ocean, and Palm tree's again.

When I come back...no more renting for me. I'm gonna buy a house. The area's that I'm looking at are southern San Diego, OceanSide, Long Beach, and Malibu. My questions are this:
Does anyone know how home prices are doing in those areas? What about mortgage interest rates? I have a very large sum of money saved up in my savings account and I plan on using it for my down payment on the house. I'm coming back home probably at the end of January to see my sisters and friends. They're checking into a few things for me as well, but I figured I would ask everyone here also. Anyway, any home buyer tips you guys can give would be great. Damn..I sound like an old person....I'm only 24. Think that's too young to buy a house or should I get one and never look back at renting?

 

If you are going to buy a house, Oceanside is definately the way to go. Its the cheapest without being cheap, if you know what I mean. As you know, Oceanside is a surfers haven, and you can get some good places in the Oceanside/Vista area for high 200's. (Brand new). Its perfect weather out here, 60s the coldest in winter, 80s the highest in summer.

If you want to rent a condo or apartment instead, prices here are pretty cheap (compared to the other places you mentioned) as well. I pay 850 for a 2 bedroom 2 bath with 2 parking spaces. You can get a condo for around 1200 with garage.

I dont know what youre going to college for, but here the jobless rate is crazy low. Carlsbad is like silicon valley...companies as far as the eye can see.

The final advantage of living in Oceanside is that you will be at the North American home of Shark Racing, and most likely get to test all kinds of cool stuff before theyre made public wink.gif

 

Dang, Why couldn't Shark Racing come out of Dallas? We're the big D! I might take a road trip next summer, so I might have to stop by in Cali... smile.gif too bad I can't drive to Korea

 

Give MHP in Denton a shout. See if they have anything in the works you could help with, or offer product suggestions to them. They were first on the market in the USA with a Tiburon CAI.

Ask for Craig, he's the owner, he'll treat you good and tell you the truth.

 

Malibu is out unless you want to live closer to Oxnard that Malibu. The mudslides have faded from everyone's memory, and everyone is moving out there again.

Long Beach has sorta gone down hill, it still has it's nice portions, but a lot of it is really seedy. Anyplace near the ocean starts at about $1000 for a 1 bedroom (rent) and about $1500 for a 2 bedroom in the marginal neighborhoods and goes up from there. Housing prices, are through the roof.

Yamaneko is probably right with the Oceanside/vista idea. I'd love to have you closer to LA...but housing prices being what they are...I wouldn't be supprised to find you liveing out halfway between LA and Palm Springs in the middle of nowhere desert! *laugh*

One last though...the area between Laguna Beach and south of Dana point is still sorta underdeveloped because it is just damn hard to get to...so prices there are still sorta low.

Cali lottery is up to 100 million. Wish me luck boys...I wanna house too!

 

Thanx for all the help guys. It looks like OceanSide will be the way to go then. I definitly don't want to be back in the desert. The bad thing growing up in Palm Springs, was that when my sisters and I wanted to surf, we had to travel the nice 140 miles down to San Diego from Palm Springs. Sucked the big one! But at least we were able to surf in a good spot.

What about Long Beach? How is housing development doing there? Yam....you said some houses are around mid to high 200's. That's not bad at all. I can definitly afford a mortgage if I can get a house around that price. I just don't want to be renting anymore. I figure if I'm gonna give someone 1000-1500 bux a month to live in a place....I better be owning it after awhile. I also plan on opening up my club/recording studio as soon as I get back home too. So..basically...I just have to find a bank that will not only give me a mortgage, but will also give me a business loan. *lol* Shouldn't be too hard. Thank god for Class A credit. rolleyes.gif And on the weekends, volunteering my time to help out Shark Racing would be a way excellent idea.!

Anyway....Yam...did you get my email? My cable ISP isn't connected. I'm running on regular Net Zero dial up now (it sucks big time!) I get reconnected to my high speed ISP next Thursday so if you wrote back, I won't get your message until then. Otherwise write back to surfboy@ihateclowns.com

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