San Diego has no large corporate headquarters, save Sempra Energy and Qualcomm. There’s no Starbucks or Nordstrom or Amazon or Microsoft or Boeing (oops, but you know what I mean). There are lots of smaller companies, particularly in the wireless, medical device, and biotech fields.

It’s much easier to get around town–the freeways don’t have nearly the congestion, and there aren’t nasty chokepoints like 520 or I-5 north. The trolley is occasionally useful.

There is a lot of government spending, but it’s not as central to the economy as it was.

Property taxes are a bit lower than they what I paid here, but not by much. Sales tax is slightly lower. There is state income tax, though, at some 9% of your federal taxes.

Electricity is definitely more expensive. Gas is too. Food is somewhat cheaper, both eating out and at the store, but not enough to make a difference. You don’t need to run heat or AC most of the time… it’s not really hot if you’re within 10 miles of the ocean, then it gets a lot warmer. There’s a breeze most afternoons that comes off the ocean which is nice.

San Diego has a lot of hidden corners. For some reason, it’s not an easy city to get to know.

Oh, and immigrants don’t live in the far eastern exurbs (Alpine, Lakeside) which are very conservative, and the southern suburbs of Chula Vista have some shiny new million dollar homes on their eastern side.

Link?

thanks again for the rental info. I am going to be living in Redmond to be close to work. I prefer North Seattle where my Mom and sisters live, but for my first year of work I want to rent a place close to work. I am so freaking tired of commuting.

Yeah, I was just trying to get some discussion rolling.

“A total of 15,615 new and resale houses and condos sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties in April. That was up 21.9 percent from 12,808 the previous month but down 19 percent from 19,269 in April last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems. ”

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/05/dataquick-on-socal-sales-surge-in-march.html

Maybe they can finally sell and move to Seattle now!

Now, though? Well, now the tables have turned! Poor San Diego doesn’t have a friend in Seattle. It’s a bit sad, really.

Anyway…since it seems you’re all in the mood to see the (very real) differences between Seattle and California cities, whaddya say we revisit some of those rose-colored comparisons with San Francisco that everyone around here loves to make?

Basicly they are not a member of any of the MLS services and their listing data is scraped or received from feeds provided by agents / real estate companies selectively.

As a result they show median price increases on everything other than 1 br properties over the last year in seattle.

http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Seattle-Washington/

I have played with the api some, and the data is useless as far as I can tell, it may improve if they figure out a legal way to get the data.

SD County Heatmap: http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/San_Diego_County-heat_map/

King County Heatmap: http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Washington/King_County-heat_map/

I work for the UW Technologies department and guess what they’re doing today? Laying off roughly 20% of our workforce (100 people). Hello?! Knock, knock!! Government jobs being cut back here already people. Some of these people have been here 20+ years.

Well, heres to hoping I don’t get a surprise “meeting” today.

Those fires last year have probably left a lasting image in peoples’ minds who were considering moving there at the time, as I once was.

That said, I think prices are over-reacting in CA, and will recover once the oversupply is absorbed. CA has always been very cyclical.

Although I agree that the cities are comparable (except for weather of course), the county boundaries and makeup are significantly different.

So while I agree that it’s fun/interesting, I think a more accurate picture might be obtained by looking at Pierce/King/Snohomish. To me, having lived in both areas, this would seem more “fair” in terms of the makeup of rich, nice, crappy, city, exurb.

I think that Case Shiller does exactly this. For San Diego, it uses San Diego County. For “Seattle” it uses King/Snohomish/Pierce as I suggest above.

Do you think it’s possible to combine the medians of K/S/P counties to get an overall median? Without having every sale, I’m not sure how you would do this, although I’m sure you could do a weighted average and kinda come close?

“California here I come, right back where I started from…” LOL

That, and as Tim points out, it’s kind of fun to make the comparison.

The post doesn’t even begin to speak to the huge influx of population to the east of San Diego that occurred in the past few years, of which a large portion was immigrant based, etc.

The economies are much different because the exurbs and suburbs encompass a much larger part of the population (huge recent increase) than King county.
Two completely different places, IMO.

Note my tone of skepticism when I say “…based on the following two supposedly realistic assumptions.”

Also note the paragraph I didn’t bother repeating from the March post:

Now, if you listen to the so-called real estate “experts” around here, they will tell you that prices here in Seattle are just going to “plateau” and stay flat for a while, before continuing their ever-upward journey to the stars. On the other hand, no one in their right mind believes that San Diego’s price drops are over yet, given the continued severity of the foreclosure problem down there.

I suspect you already knew that I don’t believe prices will stay flat, but I thought I’d respond for the benefit of anyone who may have been genuinely confused.

Well, I found that rentals for home in Eastside (ie, nice places to get a house with yard, which we’re used to having) were running way less expensively than comparably-sized nice homes in Encinitas/Carlsbad (areas I was looking at in San Diego, at the advice of a friend on who lives there).

However, I also noticed home prices dropping in San Diego, moreso than Seattle area. And I wondered what would happen to rents. Hmmm.

In any case, though the QualComm offer was mighty tasty, we decided on a less generous offer locally, since the South Florida housing market is in a crazy freefall and selling our place would be a nightmare right now.

Had we been renters, we could be making some nice moolah in the San Diego area or getting mizzled on in Seattle.

There’s another plus for renting–you aren’t captive to weird market situations after a lay-off.

Ah, well. I like being close to family more than I like wads of cash. :)

Because housing prices in San Diego Co have traditionally been significantly higher than King Co, incorporating the premium for nice weather. Either people have stopped being willing to pay more for living in a Mediterranean climate, or San Diego prices are going to shoot up, or KIng County prices will drop.

I’d know which way I’d bet…

King County
area: 2307 sq mi
pop: 1.8 mil
pop density: 782 people/sq mi

so, San Diego County is about twice as big and King is about 15% more densely populated. both encompass a fair bit of sprawl in the east. both have less desirable areas to the south and plenty of room to put more houses nearby. both are coastal and home to high tech companies. weather is a matter of preference of too hot versus too rainy.

it sounds like more similarities than difference to me.

it’d be interesting to see how the rates of mortgage fraud compared. that’d be a good indicator for future market movement.

I kinda agree and disagree with that. Having lived there, I would have to estimate that San Diego county is more in line with King+Snohomish+Pierce. So it might be more “fair” to compare San Diego to those counties combined. I actually think the Case Shiller index does exactly that, and perhaps that would be a better way to look at it.

On the other hand, even the nice areas down there are experiencing declines. I have a friend currently selling a place that’s in Encinitas (west of I5). It’s 2-3 miles from the beach and he estimates it’s down 15% from the peak. Given the scale of the decline down there, I don’t think the comparison is meaningless.

I also have friends that moved up to Seattle from San Diego recently. Winter is really getting to them, and I’m guessing that if prices don’t drop here at much as down there (which is quite likely IMO) then they’ll possibly move back in a few years. We shall have to see how that pans out. Ultimately, I think the relative price difference between CA and WA is what feeds a lot of the migration towards WA. If WA is more expensive than many areas in CA, less people will move here. How *many* less is the big question.