Biggest Mistakes People Make When Moving to San Diego California

What are the top mistakes people make when moving to San Diego and how to avoid them? 

1. Using Unreliable Sources

The first mistake is when you’re renting or buying a home is using unreliable sources like realtor.com or Zillow. They’re not always exactly up to date. Sometimes the information might be old. You might want to go look at a home, but after all, it’s actually not available anymore, or maybe the pricing’s off, things like that. Make sure you’re connecting with a local real estate agent that can connect you with our portal and give you real time, accurate information.

You can go into our portal and save the homes you like. You can favorite it and we can see what homes you like, and then we can help craft what types of homes you’re looking at in most interested in. We always want to make sure you have the most current, accurate information when you’re looking for a home. 

2. Using New Sources like Facebook or Craigslist

Secondly, if you are renting or buying pattern related to this is using new sources like Facebook or Craigslist to find a rental or even potentially a home. These are oftentimes not real, they’re scams. They’re going to try to get you to buy or rent the home sight unseen, give a security deposit, and then you’re out the money. Always work with a trusted agent and professional that will help navigate these problems before you.

3. Being Too Confident

And thirdly, being too confident about whether you’re going to rent or buy first. Sometimes there’s pros to renting first. It allows you to get to know a neighborhood, all the amenities around it. See if you really like it, and maybe you want to move somewhere else, maybe if you have some uncertainty in your job, not sure how long you’re going to be there, maybe renting as a way to get into the market and find out if we really are going to be staying in San Diego before you buy. 

4. Can I make Lowball offers?

The next one is asking, do I have to pay full price for a home? Sometimes there are instances where the home has sat from the market for a very long time, and maybe you can low ball, but that is very uncommon. Typically the homes that you’re probably going to be most interested in are moving very quickly off the market. Typically, what happens is a home is going to get listed during the week on a Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, and is probably going to be sold by that Monday or Tuesday.

Going in and trying to offer under ask price is usually not a winning strategy. Now you have lots of winning strategies that can help you win without necessarily over paying for the home, but trying to go in and low ball and offer right on the gate, there’s not going to be a winning strategy. 

5. Trying to Perfectly Time the Market

Another mistake is trying to perfectly time the market and whether that’s during certain seasons or just the overall housing economy. A lot of times I’ll hear, I’m just waiting till the market cools off. Well, those people that I’ve talked to years ago now, they’re still waiting and they’ve lost out on 30%+ appreciation in the market. Trying to overly time the market can be very detrimental to you actually ever getting into a home and starting to build wealth for yourself.

The other thing is to look at seasonality of buying a home. Sometimes it can make sense to wait for certain seasons to buy a home in. Typically during the holidays, it can kind of cool off a little bit. There can be little windows of time where you can get in, but also there aren’t going to be nearly as many homes available during that time as well.

In fact, when I’m creating this blog right now, there are only 1600 homes available in the whole county of San Diego and that’s extremely low inventory. A year ago, we were at 3000 homes, which was considered very low at the time and a year before that was 5,000 homes, which was also, it will come up as we head into the spring season. But sometimes binder the holidays, there can be fewer homes and because there’s less people shopping, you might get a deal.

6. Not Getting Pre-qualified or Pre-approved 

Another mistake people make is not getting pre-qualified or pre-approved before going to shop for homes. It’s one thing to go look at one home and say, “Hey, am I actually interested in buying a home right now?” But if you’re serious about buying a home, especially if you’re relocating out here, you really need to be pre-approved through a lender. You want to work with a reputable lender that can close the deal quickly and make sure you’re fully pre-approved before you start shopping for homes. Oftentimes you actually have to show a pre approval letter and proof of funds before even being able to go and look at a home.

A lot of homeowners don’t want lots of people coming through their home unless they’re highly qualified to purchase a home. The best thing to do is connect with a great local lender. I have connections for you that will fully pre-approve you and make sure you’re 100% ready to go. And they’ll guarantee that you will close on time and we can go shop for homes together. 

7. Shopping by Real Estate Signs

Another way that people shop for homes is shopping by real estate signs. Basically driving by and seeing real estate signs and saying, “Hey, I want to go look at that house and calling the listing agent and seeing if they can see the house.” Well, oftentimes the house isn’t available. Real estate agents leave their signs up during the entire transaction and oftentimes even afterwards because it’s great marketing for that agent. And sometimes the house isn’t even available. It’s often under escrow and you’re calling and just kind of wasting your time. 

Don’t just drive around neighborhoods, looking for real estate signs. Make sure you’re using a portal like what I can provide you to find homes for you that are actually fitting what you’re looking for. And then let’s make a list and go look at homes together. 

8. Not Fully Understanding the Type of Construction and Age of Homes

Another mistake sometimes people make is not fully understanding the type of construction and particularly age of homes in certain neighborhoods of San Diego. There are neighborhoods in San Diego that are significantly older than others. Homes in the uptown neighborhood, such as North Park, University Heights, Normal Heights, South Park, Kensington, those types of areas are going to be much older homes. And there can be issues that come along with those. 

 Search all homes in Uptown area of San Diego 

When you’re buying those homes, you really want to make sure that either of those issues have been taken care of. The number one issue for some of these older homes is foundations. If they’re 80 to a 100 years old, oftentimes the foundations they’re certainly unreinforced and there might be issues. And those can cause major damage and costs to repair oftentimes in the magnitude of $50,000 to a $100,000. You really want to make sure that either you’re okay with that, you’re ready to take on that project or that it’s already done. `

Another issue, sometimes it comes up in these older homes is cast iron pipes for the sewer. So again, you want to make sure that perhaps those have been replaced, especially from the house out to the main line, the city is responsible for that. Or at least relined, that’s also another option is to reline the cast iron pipes. Oftentimes tree roots, get into those pipes and break them. And they just corrode cause they get rusted and they break down and cause problems. Those can be very expensive to fix somewhere between $8,000 to $20,000, depending on what it is.

And as you get into the older homes and the plumbing and the electrical, oftentimes you’re going to want to start looking for homes that have upgraded all that plumbing and electrical. Some of these old homes have old knob and tube wiring. You really want to try to stay away from that and get into more modern, actual electrical panels and breakers and modern wiring as well as modern plumbing, whether that’s copper plumbing or plastic piping with pecs, things like that that are much more modern, durable, and are not going to cause water leaks in your home.

Now again, if you’re okay with those things and you’re willing to take on those repairs, just be prepared to pay for those after the fact. 

9. Thinking You’re going to have a Basement for extra Living or Storage space.

Something to keep in mind in San Diego is that we really don’t have basements here. Every once in a while, if you have a home that’s built on a hill and we do have a lot of hills here in San Diego, it’s very rugged terrain here in San Diego, which is a really great unique feature of San Diego with the canyons and valleys we have. 

Sometimes if you’re having a house on a hill, you might have a walkout basement, but otherwise, generally speaking, a lot of these homes are built on mesas, no three flat areas of San Diego, and they’re not going to have a basement, they’re either slab on grade or a raised foundation, which might give you 18 inches to 24 inches of clearance to run plumbing underneath there and wiring that kind of thing. But there’s not going to be any basement. So if you’re expecting to have a lot of extra storage space or to be able to build out a whole living room area, you’re just really not going to have that in San Diego so keep that in mind when you’re looking to relocate out here from another area of the country.

10. Thinking You’re Going to Have to Buy Appliances

If you’re moving from another area where typically the appliances are not sold with the home, rest assured that’s actually fairly common practice here in San Diego. It still needs to be specifically asked for it negotiated, but that is normally what happens. Those appliances come with the sale of the home. Every once in a while the seller might say, “Hey, I want to take the refrigerator or the washer dryer.” Typically those are all included on the dishwasher, the range, the oven, all those things are typically included. So rest assured you can save yourself the money and pretty much counting the appliances being included.

I’ve heard of instances in other states where the agent didn’t ask for that and the buyer showed up and there were no appliances, no refrigerator, no stove. And it was moved across the country. Those are typically included and we’ll make sure that those were included for you.

11. Assuming That Cash Will Always Win

Another mistake people sometimes make is just assuming that cash will always win whether that’s you being a cash buyer or concerned about being beat out by a cash offer. What happens oftentimes with cash offers is that people assume cash is always king. And so they’ll come in and make low ball offers. Or if the market’s super hot and home prices are appreciating rapidly and its homes are selling for over-asked price, which is what’s happening right now, they’ll come in and say, I’m just going to offer the “ask price” and that’s it. And then the cash offer gets beat by $50,000 or $100,000. 

There’s a lot of ways to craft an offer to win if you’re a competing against a cash offer. And even if you are a cash offer, there’s still a lot of things you want to do to be very competitive, whether that’s offering shorter escrow terms or rent back to the seller, different things like that. The big thing is to have the agent pick up the phone, to find out what is important to the seller do we can craft a winning strategy and then offer and get your offer accepted. In fact we can turn you into a cash buyer through one of our programs 

12. Things To Consider in Rural Areas

When buying in rural areas, there can be a couple of things to consider that you may not be aware of.The number one thing is fire insurance. In certain rural areas of San Diego County, like Jamul, Alpine, Crest, Descanso, Santa Isabel, Julian; areas like these, there are going to be requirements for fire hazard insurance, because these are considered high fire hazard areas and it can be quite expensive. Oftentimes adding $3,000 to $4,000 a year to your insurance payment that you wouldn’t have through buying in the city. 

Search all rural homes in San Diego with 1 acre or more.

The second thing to keep in mind is if you’re buying in rural areas, you’re oftentimes going to be on septic instead of public sewer. And oftentimes you’re going to be on well water instead of public water, not all the time, but those are certain things to keep in mind. There’s pros and cons to both. And they’re not going to have an ongoing monthly bill with having public water and public sewer, but you are going to have occasional maintenance expenses with maintaining that septic system and perhaps that well. If you are looking to buy in a rural area and you’re looking to dig a well, just remember that costs are extremely expensive.

And so related to that, oftentimes people are saying, “Hey, I just want to buy vacant land and build!” Building’s very expensive right now here in California in particular. And you really need to look at the utilities that are on that land. If all the utilities are there, that’s going to really reduce your costs. But if you don’t have septic dug, you don’t have a well dug, you don’t have gas or electricity run, you’re going to have to plan for all those extra costs to develop that land.

13. Expecting to Get a Pool When Moving to San Diego

Another thing that people often expect is that they’re going to get a pool when they moved to San Diego, they think of beautiful, sunny San Diego weather all the time and “I have to have a pool. It’s going to be nice and warm and I get to use this all year round.” The fact of the matter is there are certainly are a fair amount of homes with pools, but actually the majority of homes in San Diego do not have pools. 

Search all homes with Pools in San Diego 

But if you’re looking for a home, just be prepared to pay a little bit more for that home, especially as you get coastal, you’re going to be paying quite a bit more. And if you’re in East county that does get really warm out there, you may really want to have a pool. And if it doesn’t, perhaps the lot size might be large enough where you can always add a pool in later. There is some cost of course for that, but don’t get overly hung up on making sure that you have to have a pool. There might be options for you to add one in later or just be prepared to pay a little bit more for it.

Those are the top mistakes and things to keep in mind when moving to San Diego. 

Curtis Chism, Realtor
858-281-2568 | Mobile
mailto:info@sandiegohomes.io
Chism Team | DRE #02105113
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