Webinar
- Hi everybody, Scott Fuller here with another edition of the Market Insider Series, where every week we travel the country looking at different destinations that are popular for Bay Area residents to move to. Today I'm super excited, we're talking with Dan Beer in one of my favorite places, San Diego, California. Dan how are you today?
- Good man it's good to be here and it is a beautiful place isn't it? But you're, the Bay Area's not so bad either. So I think, one of the most beautiful cities in the country for sure.
- Absolutely, it is yeah. Dan thanks for joining me today and again if this is your first time watching one of these webinars, again we try to cover everything that you would want to know about a city that you're considering moving to or maybe just taking a visit to. We're gonna the cover everything from housing retirement, activities, climate all that kind of great information and Dan's gonna be a great host for us today. So again Dan, thanks for joining with me today. Dan give me kind of your background. Are you originally from San Diego?
- So originally, I'm from Mexico City actually. So a lot of people don't realize that. But yeah I was born in Mexico City. I was only there for about three years. Actually the majority my extended family still there. But we moved to San Diego when I was just about three years old. Been here since other than my time in college away and a little stint after school where I was in LA. But that only lasted seven months and otherwise yeah I've had the grand majority of my life here in San Diego. I've also lived in different parts of San Diego. So everything from what we call here the South Bay, which is the area kind of closest to the border, and the nearest city up from there which is Chula Vista. Up through the downtown area and then into now what we call north county here in San Diego. They had a number to for neighborhoods and it's been awesome man. It's really a world-class place to live. It's an incredible lifestyle and there are cities our there that offer maybe a little more theater or a little more of this a little more of that but San Diego has such a wonderful balance of all of the amenities that you'd want in a big-time city but also just a great rhythm of life. A really great lifestyle place.
- It's very laid-back. I spent quite a few years in a Orange County. And I noticed quite a bit of a difference between Orange County and San Diego. It's just a very laid back atmosphere right?
- Yeah, it's interesting. We call it a big small town. Right? And it really is in it's essence a series of small towns that together make up this big three million person county. And it is, they all have their own distinct personalities. So whether you're looking for more of a foodie area, a metro kind of walkable space, where you gonna be walking to, everything from restaurants to theater to the Bay and attraction the kids, to getting into the suburbs, where it's more kind of family oriented and country clubs.
- Yeah, little bit of everything right?
- It has everything. It really does.
- So let's talk a little bit about obviously there's a lot of people moving into San Diego and your team, you guys sell a lot of real estate down there. Your team helps a lot of popple move into the area. Where do you see people generally coming from? And are they coming to San Diego for retirement? Or they coming for job opportunities? Or what does that look like?
- The majority are coming for work I would say. Few for retirement. I think a lot of our retirees actually we lose out to states such as Idaho and we're seeing a lot to Arizona. We're seeing a lot to Nevada. People avoiding California taxes. But we are seeing a lot of people moving in interestingly enough from the Bay Area. Particularly, from the San Jose area. We see a lot of San Jose moves to San Diego. And there's a lot of tech work that is moving into San Diego. At the same time we trade a lot of people to your to the Bay Area where we lose people from here to where you are or sometimes of Seattle. But definitely it's much more business driven. It is also the biotech industry. A lot of people are here for that. And it's great because we continue to see in the expansion of our tech industry here in San Diego.
- Yeah, and definitely we'll into a little bit more detail on kind of the diversification of industry. And what some of the hot jobs markets and industries are in San Diego, but let's get into a little bit more about housing. So let's say for example, if I'm getting a job transfer to San Diego I'm in tech, and what are some of the areas that I may want to consider? Talk to us about what those price points are and what maybe some areas for consider are. And what they have to offer.
- Yeah so people that are in tech that are moving to San Diego, we're gonna see them mainly moving to a couple of different areas also not by any coincidence located near where a lot of the tech companies are. So one of the prime areas we'll see them move to is Carmel Valley. Or another area called Forest Ranch, Del Sur. Kind of the whole 56 Corridor. And I can give you an idea for what real estate looks like they're about to be helpful.
- Yeah.
- But that would be an area where a lot of folks that are coming in for tech jobs, but they also might have young families. They might be interested in schools. These are the best school districts in the country. And so that drives a lot of kind of people that have some higher-paying jobs that are most interested in making sure the kids are taken care of, a lot of them going to gravitate toward all the neighborhoods across the 56 Corridor. And that's just Highway 56. We we refer to it as the 56 Corridor. Spans a few different neighborhoods. So do you want to take a look at what that might look like?
- Yeah pull it up so we kind of get a visual of where this area is located at in proximity to downtown.
- Well show you here. Let me just show my screen with you. Alright so here we have a map of San Diego County. And again you're going to have it start right here at the border. Okay this is the border of Mexico with the United States. This is Tijuana. This is San Diego. And it spans all the way up here north to Oceanside. After Oceanside you have this dead area, which is a military base and this is called Camp Pendelton. And Camp Pendelton divides or separates San Diego County from Orange County, which is here north of Camp Pendleton. Something really unique about San Diego that really does protect our real estate values and it's one of the things that makes us such a steady market, not that it doesn't have its ups and downs. And what we saw in 2008, 2009 but so quickly recovered and so strongly recovered is our limited real estate. So we're in this environment where, to the south we have Mexico. So we can't grow south. To the west we have the ocean. North we have the huge military base Camp Pendleton. And to the east it's harder to see on this map but if I get to the satellite view, let's see if we can see it there. Yeah see to the see you see these massive mountains. And so we have this gigantic mountain ranges. Excuse me there, I'm actually in Mexico there. 6But here we go this is San Diego. So to the east we have these mountains and then finally the dessert. And so San Diego really is right in this pocket here that I'm that I'm hovering with my mouse, which again limited supply in terms of land. Limited makes development.
- Cause you're either in San Diego or you're going east end of the desert right?
- Yeah so that's one of the biggest protections as a real estate market we have. And why we have one of the best-performing markets for decades is this way is how the geography itself protects San Diego. Now as far as Carmel Valley that I was just mentioning, just to give you, orient you here a little bit, this is the downtown area. And Carmel Valley, I mentioned the 56 Highway, it's right here. If I zoom out a little bit further right with the north the furthest northern part of San Diego being here, the border down here. You'll see at the 56 is right about in the middle. And this is Carmel Valley. And we just zoom in here. So Carmel Valley is this entire area. Five just to the west of it. 56 actually it covers both sides of the 56 so it's really this whole space. And just west of us is a town a lot of people have heard of, Del Mar. Or just southwest of us is La Jolla, which of course a lot of people have heard of.
- Sure.
- And in this area if you were to pull up real estate, this is what real estate here looks like. And I'm gonna show you the two extremes first. Okay, so yes there's mega mansions. 13 million, eight million, seven, five million. Now those aren't the most common. You'll see how fast these prices are dropping. And these are all the listings available from most expensive to least. So you'll see it goes quickly from 13 million here to 3.6. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the condos that exist and the townhouses that exist in Carmel Valley. So sometimes there's gonna be people just at earlier stage of career that wanna get into the school district. Or that are retiring and are looking for just a nice area to live in but need to decrease at price point. So see here you can see you can get into the $400,000 range. It will be attached housing. Now the bread and butter of Carmel Valley or people looking at this area, it is so well located, is really gonna be from about a million to a million five. So if I pull up everything a million a million five, now you're seeing what people for the most part think of when they think of Carmel Valley. These are just nice kind of regular family homes. They're anywhere from 2,500 square feet to maybe 3,500 squares feet, 4,000 on the high end. Most are gonna be at least four bedrooms and there will be five bedroom properties as well. And you get a sense for what those look like. And so if we just jump into really any of these, let's just grab this one on Heather for 1.268 million you get an idea the architecture style. Gladys stucco. Everything here is stucco for the most part and kind of just a very typical house at this price point in Carmel Valley.
- And so this is gonna be kind of the average price point in Carmel Valley?
- Well you're getting so the averages of course get stretched with those really high priced ones that I showed you and those condos. But if somebody came to us and said, "Hey we're looking for single-family home, "four bedrooms in Carmel Valley." That's gonna automatically put them pretty much into about a million two price rance. Now, I'd go for the least expensive of those. Okay that'll bring them maybe down to a million. They might want to make it a little bit nicer. Get more yard. They might want to step into something a little bit more high-end. That might stretch them into a million-five maybe even a million-six, million-seven but this is generally what the house is gonna to look like is actually very similar across all those price points. The only thing that's going to really fluctuate from say a million-two to a million-five house maybe a little bit of square footage, but for the most part you see these continue to look the same. The only that you're going to introduce is maybe a pool and maybe a little bit of a larger backyard. But for the most part exactly what you see on your screen if you were to drive through Carmel Valley, very consistent as you can see on the screen here.
- And how far is this area, I know it's a large area we're talking about a valley here. How far is this from the beach?
- Yeah so if we come back to the map, to the beach depending on where you are in Carmel Valley, five to 10 minutes. So it has an extraordinary location and the beach it's closest to is Del Mar, which is in my opinion the most beautiful beach in San Diego. And then you'll see that if I just zoom out a tad bit more, you'll see Torrey Pines, which a lot of people recognize that name from golf.
- Golf right.
- It's one of the most prestigious golf coursers in the country. And of course La Jolla's right here. So Carmel Valley was the best performing community through the housing crisis that we saw in 2008, 2009. It had the least amount of fluctuation. And the reason why and the reason it will forever be one of the most sought-after neighborhoods is the location it has. You have asked the 56, which gets you across the county if you need to get to the more eastern part of the county up and down to 15 here. You're really close to the ocean but because you're east of the five and not west of the five the same house in Carmel Valley that's say five minutes over west of the 5 in Del Mar, you'd be paying an extra million dollars. So it has a really great price point relative to what it's near right? Because just south of it La Jolla, again much more expensive. Del Mar much more expensive. But you can access all of it so easily so that really the people that live in Carmel Valley they use those neighborhoods as almost part of their sub-neighborhood. They have dinner in Del Mar. They have dinner in La Jolla. They access those because without even thinking twice because it is so close. And there's just really never going to be a shortage of families and I'm just going to say moms that are interested in having their kids in grade school districts that want to get to the beach quickly. That can get to great shopping quickly. That can get to all of the different neighborhoods up and down San Diego easily. Because also, a playground for all of us regardless of age in San Diego is the downtown area. That's where we have art and we have theater. And we have incredible restaurants, the ballpark and we have concerts. And so much goes on there. This is really from exit to exit, it's only about 22 minutes. Now some people, if you look 30 minutes away or what have you, it's really just because of the drive from the freeway exit to your home. It's really not far at all. So you'll see Carmel Valley residents making pretty regular use of what's located downtown.
- So let's talk a little bit more about downtown. Cause I would imagine with a lot of the younger working individuals and that maybe aren't quite yet at that family venture in their life, right? So they're more focused on careers and maybe the downtown living cause it is so awesome right? You've got all of that in walking distance. So what's a typical housing option and price point if I wanted to live downtown?
- Well so let's just take a look at it here together. So if we get ride of Carmel Valley and we were to say 92101, that's the downtown zip code. It covers every single property in downtown it's 92101. Again let's just look at the extremes to start off. So we're going to start off at about the thousand-dollar range. Now most of these that are on your screen right now are these are, these are at the Hard Rock Hotel so it's actually shared property. It's like vacation. So just ignore that. But you're going to start off in the $300,000 range for a dedicated space. Now, notice the size 400 square feet. 462 squares feet right? So these are studios downtown you're gonna be the 300s. Now on the opposite end pricing high to low, of course you could go get some 2,600 3,200 square foot penthouses. Huge views of the bay. Luxury buildings with all the amenities. White glove service. They've been really making at introducing a Manhattan white glove experience in our downtown area. And so you see that right here and of course you can push into this three and four million dollar range. Now let's go again to the bread and butter. When someone says, "Hey, I'm looking for just a good "two bedroom, two bath downtown. "What is that going to look like?" So if we were to come in here and filter say from, 700,000 to a million you'll see that there are plenty of options. Plenty, plenty, plenty of options. And let's actually just start from low to high. So you're going to have about 1,200 let's call it square feet at that price range. You're going to be in a nice building. You're going to have options from say this high-rise here to low-rise living. And these buildings have amenities. Like this one here on 850 Beech Street. This has a pool. This has a gym. It's in phenomenal walking distance to everything that's located in our Little Italy District. So if you are visiting San Diego and you trying to get yourself familiar with the neighborhoods, and maybe you're gonna live in the suburbs. Maybe you're gong to live in Carmel Valley or in Scripps Ranch or some other place, but again we all make use of downtown. You want to see what San Diego offers from a lifestyle perspective, Little Italy is a place you absolutely would want to visit. It has the most bustling, growing and just creative restaurant scene that San Diego has seen for years. That's where all the chefs, that's where they're putting in their best concepts. It's awesome. And so this building for example on 850 Beech Street, you'd be walking to all of those restaurants. And it's a really great lifestyle. And you can see it's right here at 725,000. I think a little more affordable than The Bay? I'm not mistaken?
- Way affordable than The Bay . That right there is gonna be at least a million and a half in San Francisco and prices in Oakland are going up quite a bit also for something like that downtown.
- Yep. And so you know you're not going to be on the highest floor at this price range here in the 700s, right? You're not gonna be on the highest floor. You're maybe not gonna have completely soaring views of the bay but . I'm sorry?
- It's location though right?
- You have awesome location. And there's different locations. There's say this building here, it's right on the ballpark. And it has this, it's called The Legend it has his amazing common space you overlook the ballpark. I was just at the ballpark for the Paul McCartney concert. People that live at The Legend were watching the concert for free their balconies. Right? So this is the the East Village or our Marina District, which is much more residential. Less noise. You don't have all the partying and all that. It's very adult let's call it. A lot of high-rise living there. To Little Italy that I just mentioned a moment ago. So we talked about how San Diego as a whole having different neighborhoods with different personalities. Downtown itself has a number of different neighborhoods with different personalities depending on what you're looking for. But yeah you've great stuff. Look this, wrap-around balcony right here at seven, eight hundred grand. You got some water views right there look at that. $800,000 with this view.
- And it's sunny most the time right? Except for the occasional fog that rolls in but I mean you can take advantage of those great views.
- Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. Right if it's not 72 degrees we complain. If it's 78 is too hot. And if it's 65 it's too cold. So definitely we have that going for us here. There's no question about it. And that's a lot of lifestyle right there, in a world class city. That if we were in whether was the Bay Area, or places just the cities I love. A place like New York. A place like The Bay. A place like LA, you can't get it at this price point.
- Yeah, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about, you mentioned San Marcos, which is going to be kind of a lower price point than Carmel Valley. So maybe more of a starter area? For younger families? Is that right?
- Well you know, it's really growing quickly. In fact I just told my team that I really would like to find an investment property myself in San Marcos. It's growing quickly. So again if we focus in on what San Diego is, it's this that's right here in front of you. But North right up, here you have this area. And this area for the most part was kind of detached from the rest of the county. It was it was sort of you know like north, North County. North, north, north San Diego. And San Marcos for whatever reason is where a lot of the investment's come in. So these people up here, they didn't have a great restaurants. They didn't have culinary experiences. They didn't have bars and nightlife with more than just simply some pitchers and drafts on tap. But rather something fun and new and good concepts. And what happened is, they invested really well into their schools. So San Marcos has some of the better schools also in San Diego county. It is not nearly as expensive as a Carmel Valley. Or a lot of the other neighborhoods along the 56 Corridor like Del Sur, Forest Ranch, Santa Luz, Crosley. These are all great really neighborhoods. Scripps Ranch. When you go up here to this kind of north, north part of San Diego, you do have Carlsbad right here along the water. Now remember anytime you get to the water, it's gonna be very expensive. And then right here you have San Marcos, where all of a sudden you have a lot of great investment in terms of, mixed use living, a lot of great development in an awesome retail and restaurants and so on.
- So a lot of business growth and then the housing that accompanies that.
- Absolutely. So you can see right here if I get rid of downtown, so San Marcos, and by the way this is SanDiegoHomeFinder.com if you want to browse anything in San Diego. It's San Diego Home Finder. So let's go to San Marcos. You have everything from literally way entry-level housing okay these manufactured homes at $128,000, on one extreme. To the other extreme you're going to actually have, ignore this 7.5 million, just don't even look at it. But on the other extreme you're going to have homes that are pushing right about a million dollars. You see how quickly we went from seven-five to two-five to one-five to one. For the most part, sorry?
- You're down below a million just like that right?
- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. For the most part San Marcos is gonna top out right about now 900,000. And you get, you recognize these homes are very much like the homes I just showed you in Carmel Valley. Same style. Same type of living very suburban, family oriented. It looks a lot like it but you'll notice that you have about four maybe 500,000, maybe 600,000 even off the price. So San Marcos has become a place that a lot of families that feeling just priced out or pressured by just not wanting to do those higher price points. Saying, "Hey you know what? "There's a good life for us in San Diego "under million bucks." Which of course there should be there has to be. Well here it is. So you're seeing lot of investment in San Marcos. And you see you get, really there's a ton of just this is what kind of a bread-and-butter pricing right here and there's just a lot of it. And there's really again, I could be showing in Carmel Valley it just has a different sticker on it right? About a million bucks less.
- Those are beautiful looking homes. They look like they're newer. Some of the square footage is a little bit higher than what we looked at at Carmel Valley and obviously we're talking about five, $600,000 less. So I guess the trade-off is, if somebody was commuting downtown from San Marcos what would they expect to have?
- Yep and that's exactly it. If you're going to go from San Marcos to downtown, you're gonna have to give yourself an hour. And it's not that it's an hour with no traffic, on a straight shot but even San Diego has traffic now. And our traffic, the nice thing about ours is that is far more predictable than LA for example, where you could have traffic at midnight right? On a Sunday.
- Oh yeah.
- I don't know how. I don't know why I just don't get it.
- I've hit traffic at three in the morning in LA before.
- It's the craziest thing in the world. 6In San Diego we know when it's gonna occur. But it is of course that morning rush hour. So yeah you're gonna have to give yourself at least an hour. Most people San Diego work 56th North. They're gonna work in Carlsbad where there's a lot of industry. Tons of industry here in Carlsbad. And then there's a lot of industry here in this Poway, Rancho Bernardo area. As as well as the Carmel Valley area. And really that's about where you're going to be if for the most part unless you love being the car, if you're living south of the 56; excuse me if you're gonna be working south of the 56, then San Marcos you might find a challenge.
- And it's interesting cause it's all a matter of perspective right Dan? Because Bay Area here coming from the East Bay and working in the South Bay you're looking at an hour and a half to two hours each way. So somebody coming to San Diego and saying, heck that's maybe an hour at the most?
- So right.
- Very doable if the price means that much more.
- Well, you remind me of something that I don't know if we have to planned to talk about this but I just think it's really important. Everything is so relative. And so when you coming out here to San Diego for a purchase I think of times when we have a a listing of a home 6maybe on a busy road. And we get someone that comes in from New York and looks at it and goes, "This is wonderful!" And we're just thinking, "Oh my God. "Thank God you're here." Keep in mind this is when we're representing the seller. Think "Thank God you're here." Because to us this is just awful. No one's gonna buy this home at this price point. This a freeway behind us, we think it's loud. So San Diego buying tips. Avoid power lines. Avoid busy roads. If you have a busy road behind your house, maybe you think it's totally just maybe you think it's okay. Maybe you think it's actually quieter than where you're coming from or what you're used because there's no question that the Bay Area's much more. It's louder. It's bigger. In San Diego that is a killer. Now it's all about how you get into the deal. So if you're buying, if it's the right house and you love it and you're buying it for 10% less than the one across that's not on the road, great. But you cannot buy for the same price. Because if you do you're gonna be punished on the way out.
- Okay, so you're saying on the resale side of it even if you can put up with it for the time that you're there, if you don't buy it at a discount, you're going to get hit on the retail side of it.
- Without question. Now if you buy it right, then you're okay. But some people do buy and sell these houses. But eventually what normally happens is somebody comes in from out of the area, they don't realize how sensitive San Diegans are to a busy road. They buy it they love it, they don't even notice it. They enjoy life and then it comes time to sell for whatever reason. They're moving on. And just can't, they go through a very frustrating period of a very long sales cycle because they can't they just cannot accept that it's that big of a deal to have a busy road behind your house. Until they finally are just put into submission by the market, they reduce their price enough and they create deal for somebody. So if you're buying the deal, meaning about 10% off of the neighbors that don't have the busy road, you're fine. If you're buying at the same price, you will be punished on the way out.
- It's all about knowing the facts up front right? And saying, "Okay we're good with it. "We understand the results might look like."
- Yeah and as they say in real estate, you make your money or loose your money on the way into the deal. So if you buy it right you're fine, just make sure that you understand that we are a lot more sensitive than San Diego than a lot of other bigger markets would be.
- Good to know. Dan take us a little bit more south. So let's say for example, you kind of talked about more of affordable housing up north the San Marco area. Take us down South I think you mentioned Chula Vista.
- So let's go. Yeah basically San Marcos is the Chula Vista of the north. And so let's go to Chula Vista which is just right here. And you'll notice it's actually fairly close to the downtown area. Has great proximity to everything that's going on up here. And so that's a nice thing about Chula Vista. Also, we do have a lot of just good hospitals in really good food actually and restaurants. There's a lot going on in Chula Vista and by the way this is where I grew up. I grew up in Chula Vista. I lived there for about the first 18 years or not the first 15 years of my life. And I went to high school there. So this is Chula Vista. You'll notice that the border of Tijuana's right there. For the most part when you're thinking of Chula Vista you're you're up in this area right here and particularly what makes Chula Vista interesting is normally for the majority of San Diego for the majority country, west is more expensive meaning that you're getting to the ocean. Or on the east coast right, is more expensive cause you're on the ocean. Chula Vista's the opposite. Chula Vista developed the west side of the city much earlier than was out here in the east. And so this west side's a lot older, a lot smaller. A lot tighter. A little more run down. This east side is almost like a Carmel Valley. It's like a Carmel Valley of what we call the South Bay. So in Chula Vista the east side is actually more expensive than the west side. Which is counter to what we see.
- Yeah that's opposite right? To what we normally see.
- Absolutely. And so giving you an idea of what you might find here in Chula Vista from housing perspective. So Chula Vista you're going to have again you actually have three million, two million, one four million dollar property. Holy smokes! Ha! I sold this property year ago.
- Did they make some money on it?
- They're selling it for less than what they bought it for. By the way I did not represent that buyer, I represented the seller. So interesting. So anyway, right about exactly what they bought it for. Anyhow, so you'll see that you have actually some really awesome high-end property. You have a lot of high-end people here. Sometimes those high end people actually are from right here. So this is where their business are this is where they work. And this is where they live.
- And so the Americans with business and Tijuana area?
- Mostly it's all Mexican. Well no mostly Mexican. Mostly Mexican businessman who don't want to live in Tijuana and live up here. And live in San Diego.
- Interesting.
- And so you see that's not the most common that you're gonna find in Chula Vista as a whole, but when it comes to these very high end properties, the wealthiest in Chula Vista tends to be case. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have manufactured homes. You have right here if we just pop in here, you have condos right? So you can get into the Chula Vista market again in that 300 even high $200,000 range. It's gonna be small. It's gonna be tight. Here you have an example of what I was talking about on the west side of the of the county. Or of Chula Vista excuse me the city. So west side Chula Vista remember, I told you was older, it needs work. It needs renovation and so that's a good example of it right there on G street. While the new side of Chula Vista, the East Side would look something more like something more like this right here.
- Yeah. That's a big difference.
- Yeah and you'll notice these price points are very similar to San Marcos price points once you're starting to get houses that are just good kind of family homes like this. So really it comes down to do you envision your life say from Del Mar on south? Or do you envision your life from about Delmar on north? That might push you to San Marcos versus Chula Vista if you're not gonna to position yourself right in the middle which would be again Carmel Valley but at much higher price point.
- Got it.
- That's a little bit of an orientation of what we have going.
- That's great. I mean that's a really good overview of some of the markets and some of the price points. And I know you mentioned earlier Dan, that you guys don't see a lot of retires coming in. I mean obviously retires are looking to take the money that they've made from their house and looking to take it elsewhere which usually means they're going way somewhere right? They're going into the dessert or maybe out of state. But for people who are closer to their kids, grandkids that type of thing? Are there areas that are more open to retirement communities per say? That seem to be a little bit more popular if somebody's considering a retirement option.
- Yeah, La Costa. I mean so do get me wrong, we have a ton of retired people in San Diego. The typical retiree out there is sometimes trying to make their money go as far as I could possibly go on fixed income. So the people are in that position, San Diego is not going to be, and it's not going to San Diego. California is not going to be their typical, where they're gonna gravitate toward. I would imagine most of them are not going to retire in The Bay. It's just an affordability factor with fixed-income. Having said that we have some huge, sprawling very high end, really just big-time retirement communities. Assisted living communities that are just the concept that these people keep pushing to gets better and better and better. To the point where I want to go live there. It looks like summer camp for adults. There's a lot of it. So La Costa which is the south part of Carlsbad. So you'll see, La Costa when I get it to pop up. Well it's not popping up in terms of the name. But La Costa is right here. So there you'll see La Costa Ave. La Costa, which is officially in the city of Carlsbad a lot of retirees. A lot and there's tons of condos, attached properties, official retirement properties like The Glen, that's a huge retirement community. It's called The Glen if you want to that you want to look into that. Or just people that live in their own little condo, two bedroom, one bath. Little kind of small cottage-y type places. La Costa has a lot of it. Along the side with, The Glen is opening their new facility in the neighborhood called Scripps Ranch. Scripps Ranch is right here. And Scripps Ranch is going to have the new Glen it's over a thousand living quarters right? So a thousand homes or rooms. And again this is a high end facility, with total complete pampering of everything you can think of It's gonna be over a thousand rooms in the new Glen. That's going to be right here off the 15. Very well located. Very ventral to just getting across and through the county everywhere you'd want to be. And then you see a lot of them also in Rancho Bernardo. Rancho Bernardo, Poway tends to have a lot of retirees. La Jolla has one of the most well-known and most expensive of course retirement houses. Retirement facilities in San Diego. But again you're talking about over 10k a month expense to be a part of that facility. So for the most part outside of kind of the wealthier retirees, you're going to see La Costa, Rancho Bernardo, Scripps Ranch.
- And like you said Dan, some of those places, the master plan communities 55 plus active adult that they're building are unbelievable. I mean the activities.
- There's a lot of 55 and up.
- Amenities.
- There is. And let's not ignore the other retirees right? Because not all retirees are in a state of life where they where they're needing a retirement home. A lot of retirees are very young and healthy 50, 60, 70 and there they're having fun. You take my grandparents for example, they've moved here. They've retired and they live right here on 6th Avenue. The park right in front of them. Beautiful condo building. And their life is theater and museums, and walking through the park and going to restaurants. And walking to the coffee shop and it's like their only mini Manhattan-style life that they've developed for themselves here. And you have a lot of that. So it's interesting where the downtown area's the biggest mix of everything. Downtown you're gonna have just as many people there are 25 years old, out of school, havin' fun going crazy and partying. To people that have then left that lifestyle. Gone to Carmel Valley. Gone to San Marcos. Raised a family. Gotten older. The kids are out of the house and now they're back to downtown. To have fun again. They're having fun as adults it's a different type of fun a much more responsible fun. But they are nevertheless wanting to stay young and wanting to get into a more cultured environment. So downtown is absolutely offering that for retirees. And there are quiet neighborhoods in downtown where you don't hear the bars, you don't hear the noise. It's really just a wonderful living experience. So that's my wife and I that what we talk about, where we would want to be when we're retired.
- Talk to us a little bitabout some of the growth and industry in employment. Who are some of the major players now? That are hiring or maybe moving, increasing their operations within the San Diego area? What do you see on that front?
- Yeah well the biotech industry is still extremely active here. The tech industry you have Sony. You have Hewlett-Packard. You have the Aerospace industry with BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm. Qualcomm is of course a huge employer in San Diego. And an extremely important employer in San Diego. The military. The military keeps, I mean there's something like 250,000 military households in San Diego County. And so the military, there're always movie people in and people out and that creates a huge amount of activity in our real estate market. So those are the biggest industries for us. It's going to be biotech, tech, aerospace and the military.
- Awesome. And there's a lot of growth right? So tech certainly has had a lot of growth and like you said, we see people coming back and forth from San Diego even it's not necessarily permanent. Maybe it's kind of a project type of a situation. But we're seeing San Diego pop up quite a bit more.
- Yeah and even in the human genome space, a company called Illumina, publicly traded. They now have their second building has just gone up in a very prominent location. And so you have an educated marketplace here. You have a number of universities. Including one of the you know we have our own UCSD just like you guys have Berkeley, one of the better UC schools. It's very it's very focused on the sciences UCSD is.
- Great school.
- So there's just a lot of that. And the professional services of course are the other major industries. So everything from CPA's to atternies to real estate agents of course. To just everything that falls under professional services industry. But the exciting thing I think is the expansion in tech that we're seeing in San Diego. Where you have some of these larger companies that are starting to build campuses here. And the recruiting wars are just crazy. I'm tellin' ya on a weekly basis we're loosing people to San Jose, we're getting people from San Jose. And it's just like this, it looks like this huge mix up.
- Well there's a shortage everywhere. Especially I think in California. And as you're seeing down there with science being such a heavy influence. It's kind of the science meets tech right? See a lot of that as well. Give me the top, now you've got kids. Give me the top five things that you guys like to do in San Diego. Somebody's comin' into down and said, "Dan give me the top five." What are they?
- Well so what do the kids love? The kids love the beach. They love LEGOLAND. God and LEGOLAND's not my favorite but the kids for whatever reason...
- LEGOLAND you gotta do once and then you're pretty much done with it .
- Yeah the adults get over it quick. For whatever reason the kids get obsessed with it. They love it. We love doing the Balboa Park, which is right here look. It's just it's one of gems that San Diego has. It's like our Central Park. It's filled with museums and restaurants and just really awesome, awesome fun stuff there. The the Children's Museum something that the kids up to do. They love going downtown to Children's Museum and it's fun too being a suburb family, raising our kids in the suburb, we go downtown and we go to the Children's Museum but as we're walking there. Just the things my kids will say, they'll see different people and smells and sounds and ambulances. They get so stimulated by it all, it's really lot of fun. But that, farmers markets. The kids are going to the golf course. Normal stuff. Kids stuff. At the end of the day they just love simple things too right? They like the movie theater.
- Yeah. Well and one of the things that I love most about San Diego is the tacos. Because the Mexican food is just unbelievable. That's worth the trip in itself in my opinion.
- We do. We do have good, really great Mexican good and it's a baffling thing man. Cause you could even go to place like New York City or San Francisco. I don't want to mention, I don't want to say San Francisco because I don't know well enough. Because I've only I've been there on a limited basis. But New York City you go to this culinary mecca of the world they nail every cuisine. I mean they could do Indian amazingly well. Thai, boom.
- French, Italian all of it.
- Italian they got it. No one can do Mexican. It's simple! But no one seems to be able to do it. San Diego does it. But for whatever reason Mexican food's a challenge to find any good Mexican food anywhere outside of Mexico and maybe San Diego. LA sort of. They've kind of got it too.
- It all depends on where you go. We got some hit or miss places up here, there is some good stuff but it's definitely not the influence that you have down where you guys are at.
- Interesting though right? I mean, all these different cuisines. You guys have incoercible food in San Francisco of all kinds of.
- Oh yeah.
- For whatever reason good Mexican's just hard to come by.
- Yeah. Dan anything else that you want to talk about that so people should know about about San Diego if they're considering making a move in that direction?
- What you really need to do is just come out here and explore. Have a really authentic conversation with somebody. If we are privileged enough to build a relationship with you that would be wonderful, and just a really candid conversation on what you're looking for, what you're not, what you like what you don't. What's important. And then go. Let's get out there and look at real estate but let's also get out there and look at the city. What will the living experience be like? What will it be like when you wake up in the morning on a Sunday and you're looking for your coffee? Or for the brunch spot? Or or what does lifestyle decisions are going to be. I think are just as important as the real estate itself. And make sure that you're with somebody that's going to have the patience and not just the patience that they're to get through it but actually enjoy going through it with you because the loved to showcase the city. Be wary if you ever fee like, their trying to get you into certain neighborhood. Why? The great neighborhood for everybody it just depends on who you are, matching your personality with the of the personality of the different neighborhoods we have.
- Yeah. It's all about what you looking for in a quality life. Activities.
- It's a series of really unique little towns. Just find the right one that makes sense for you. That might be also located right? We're not all one-dimensional. So I like doing things in various parts of San Diego. So I positioned myself where I can easily access all those. And so you just need the same thing and have fun with it!
- And it usually starts with a phone call with your team and then at that point kind of doing a needs analysis. What they're looking for, what's important to them. And then I assume you guys are open to kind of hosting for an afternoon or that sort of thing if somebody want to make a trip down right?
- Of course. And again it's actually enjoying the process of doing that. But yes, we'd love to be able to do it. There's a reason that we've been recognized by the INC. 5000 now three years in a row among the top best scoring companies in the country. The award and there's all kinds of awards right? The Wall Street Journal, top hundred teams in the country all that. But the one I'm proud of, the most proud of is San Diego Business Journal naming us one of the top places to work. Because there's a difference between just selling houses and putting up numbers versus the experience that people get when they're working with people that like what they do. And that just resonates when you love what you do and that's why so much fun for us to come into work and then when you're loving work, when you love what you do, when work doesn't feel like work, that translates.
- It shows right?
- Oh yeah. The people that we work with, we get to have a relationship with here in business and help him find homes or sell homes, they see it. They feel it. because that just translates into everything. So we'll be honored to be able to build a relationship with you if we can. If we can just simply answer a question, we'd be happy to do that too. You just let us know how we can help.
- Dan I appreciate it. So, again Dan Beer, with a Beer Home Team with eXp Realty in sunny San Diego. Dan appreciates your time today. This has been great information and we will catch up soon and maybe do another event in six months or so. Kind of recap where we're at with the market.
- Alright my man, thank you.
- Alright take care.
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