Are there any "reasonable" cost of living cities in California?

[ringmastery]

where average 3br houses that are nothing to write home about cost maybe $150k or $200k and not half a million?

I just don't see how anyone on a typical salary can afford to buy a home in LA or San Francisco.

[yorgatron]

1. no

there aren't.

[Shanty Oilish]

2. Tax sale properties

Tried that? It takes some legwork and patience but you can buy a nice home just about anywhere for a painless price, at a tax sale.
Are you really set on LA or SF?

[ringmastery]

3. There's a good possibility

I may have to move out to SF or LA because of my job and I just don't see how I can afford it.

[Shanty Oilish]

5. Must be some job

to come before the house! Still---check your inbox, I sent a pm.

[Newsjock]

4. Fresno

and everything that entails.

[ET Awful]

10. Visalia, Tulare, Bakersfield. . . .

Well, they aren't exactly "cities" but they're low cost of living :)

[pfitz59]

28. Home of Free Republic.......

Scorching heat and tule fog! take apass

[REP]

6. Bungalows in My Neighborhood are

between 750,000 and 1M. And I'm the 'burbs!

[carolinayellowdog]

7. Stockton

A friend of mine moved there and bought a house for under 200k that would cost 4-5 times that in larger CA cities, about the same as housing prices in Memphis where she lived before. That was in 1999 though, don't know how the market has changed since.

[SerpentX]

9. Not Stockton.

That place has serious violence problems. Come down to Turlock. Nice college town within striking distance of the Bay Area.

[Xithras]

22. GACK NOOOO!

Like we need more BAT's around here!

Salida sucks.
Modesto sucks.
Ceres sucks.
Turlock sucks.
Keyes sucks.
Riverbank sucks.
Oakdale sucks.

Too many people here...move somewhere else!

[SerpentX]

8. If you're willing to live in Calabama.

There are places in the Central Valley where you can get a fairly nice 3br tract home for $200k. You spend 4-5 hours commuting every day, you live among conservative whackos, your kids' schools suck, but by golly, you've got a house.

[SoCalDem]

11. Where I live..

You can get a HUD home for under 100,000 but you will have to fix it up.. My son and his roommate did this a few years ago.. They paid 67,000...put 20,000 into it, and sold it for 135,000..

You can actually get some new ones for 150K, but we have smog, TRAFFIC, and repubes galore..

The weather is HOT in the summer..we get very little rain.

The schools (some of them) are good..and there is a lot of shopping.. Jobs are far away (commute-wise)

PM me for more info :)

[orwell]

12. Home

Lake County.

O

[radwriter0555]

13. sacramento, points north and east are lovely and gorgeous...

do NOT move to LANCASTER or PALMDALE or anywhere in riverside.

[Jack_Dawson]

14. El Centro

But it's hot. Oh so hot.

[Gringo]

33. You DO NOT want to live in El Centro.

It's a long drive to civilization. It's on the desert side opposite the mountains from San Diego. It's flat, surrounded by farmes, and is often quite dusty/smoggy. There are no attractions nearby save the repulsive Salton "Sea" and the Anza-Borrego desert flowers in spring. There is not culture, no job market. I'd rather have the worst studio in SF than have a mansion in El Centro.

[Melsky]

15. I just sold a house for 69K in California

http://catclipart.homestead.com/deserthome.html

But the only jobs here are at the Marine base or supermarket. It was great for me as an artist though, and I sold to a friend who wants to retire here in 5 years.

[Jack_Dawson]

19. Where's the pool?

Throw in a pool and I'll take it.

[windansea]

25. wow!!

5 acres and a well...what a great deal!!

[Blue_State_Elitist]

16. haha

sorry but hahaha


3 bedroom? That's tough.

The only people that live here with typical salaries have been here for over 15 years.

[MissMillie]

17. Probably

but you'll have to commute an hour or more to work to get paid a reasonable wage.

[Snow]

18. I moved here, bought a nice house in Altadena for 3x what I had

sold my similar house in Omaha. But my take-home pay is double what it was in Omaha. And other than housing, cost of living here is not that bad. You don't have to pay couple hundred a month in winter to keep warm, in the LA basin you don't have to run the air conditioning 24/7 four or five months a year to keep from growing mold, food costs are cheap and there's tons of really good produce. I frankly love the area, but will probably draw some contradictions.

Really high housing prices tend to be closer to the coasts/beaches and/or near 'good' schools - whatever those are (low proportion of blacks/illegal immigrants, I suspect). I would hope your company, if you're being transferred, isn't silly enough to pay you the same salary or even similar level salary - something you can live happily with here just won't work in LA.

People have mentioned the far-flung areas, and some of those tend to be right-wingy. I've heard Apple Valley isn't so bad, and priced reasonably. In the eastern San Gabriel Valley, Claremont is very nice. But LA itself has huge variety. There're funky little neighborhoods all over, some of which become fashionable and boom. That happened recently with Silver Lake and Echo Park. The next area where that'll maybe happen is Eagle Rock, IMHO. Don't be afraid to live in neighborhoods where you're a minority....they can really be surprisingly friendly welcoming communities.

And this site:
http://www.at-la.com/
is a really good resource.

Keep in touch.

[Snow]

20. Kick for the evening crowd

:kick:
give the man/woman a hand, folks.

[absyntheNsugar]

21. Sacramento

Granted, prices are going up, but if you move into a suburb like Elk Grove you can still get a brand new home for 200-300.

And...you're 2 hours away from SF, and 2 hours away from Tahoe.

[pfitz59]

31. Proximity to nutcase militia types.......

the entire foothills region. Bring your guns!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. Hemet and San Jiacinto

[Gringo]

34. Hemet's not so bad - if you can find a job there

It's within fairly reasonable distance to LA & San Diego, and quite close to the pretty Mountain village of Idyllwild.

Faced with a choice of those inland valley cities (except maybe Sacramento) I'd go for Hemet.

[opiate69]

24. 29 Palms maybe?

Not sure.. I used to work with a truck driver who lived there..

[pfitz59]

30. Boo, hiss, desert sands!

"I'm melting, melting....Oh it burns!"

[Hammie]

26. San Francisco and LA are not California

California is a huge state. In most of it the houses are affordable. If you want to live in the major metropolitan areas, it will cost you. Lots of people work in the Bay Area and live out in the valley. Heck one guy I worked with lived in the Sierra and rented a room during the week so he would only have to commute on Monday and Friday.

[Snow]

27. My statistical side just gave me a kick. Averages will fool you here,

because there's some really expensive houses that raise the average. My area, Altadena, is a middle-class to working poor area - but there's an area on the east side of Altadena with some major mansions. One was used in an old TV show, 90210, as being a posh Beverly Hills mansion. The values of those averaged in with the rest of Altadena make it seem a lot more expensive than it really is. It's like how the US has the highest average standard of living - because we use 'average', instead of say, median (50th percentile) - the ridiculously rich pull the average up above, say Sweden. Drop out the top 1% & Sweden looks considerably better than the US, as do a number of other places.

[pfitz59]

29. Redding, Bakersfield, Kettleman City...........

Oildale, Winters, Willows, Red Bluff, Crescent City, Eureka, Arcata, Yreka, Cedarville...... Lots of affordable "cities" in CA! :evilgrin:

[Mz Pip]

32. Chico

isn't too bad. It's about 3 hours from the SF Bay Area. It's a college town so there is stuff going on. It gets pretty hot in the summer, though. My in-laws live there and seem to like it.

MzPip
:dem:

[Gringo]

35. If you live in SF, who cares about the house?

Why Americans are so obsessed with having a spacious house is beyond me. I just rented a 2 br in SF with a garage - $1300, utilities included. Sure, I could be buying a house elsewhere for that money, but in SF, I won't have to waste time & money on a grueling commute, my kids can go to a Japanese/English bilingual school for FREE (very important to the wife), and there are TONS of things to do for free with your free time. I'd much rather have my family packed into a small soace in a city with some culture, than have a bix roomy box out in some dead suburb or podunk town.

[ringmastery]

37. does SF have rent control?

One of the reasons I dislike renting is the insane yearly rent increases that are possible in cities with poor housing laws. Also, getting evicted after living in a place for years because the owner wants to upgrade the unit and sell it for condos is no fun.

At least with owning, I would have the peace of mind knowing that can't happen to me.

Also, there are many financial wealth accumulating benefits to owning, namely after a few years, you start to become the beneficiary of some of the crazy real estate prices if you decide to sell.

Property taxes are also low in California because of Prop 13.

[Gringo]

38. I believe it does, but I don't know the details

I'm aware of the benefits of owning - at this point the only places where I can afford a house are cities I'm totally uninterested in living in. There are plces I could get a condo, but they are not as good an investment, and there are all the fees that really jack up the costs.

I thought that prop 13 just kept prop taxes low for people who've been there a while. Aren't the prop. taxes pretty high when you've just bought?

[AlFrankenFan]

36. I don't believe there's such a thing as a reasonably priced house...

...in California. My family's home has three bedrooms and a master bedroom, and it cost us about $650,000. Maybe some older homes, which I find a lot nicer because of their variances in architecture (nowadays homes they build here are like box after box...), would cost less. I live in Southern California, Orange County, specifically Laguna Niguel. There are two neighborhoods I suggest you look in - San Joaquin Hills, and Kite Hill. I live in SJH, and recently they've just begun to build different variances of some of the houses here, which I'd like to check out. Let me see if there are any links where you could search.

Edit:
http://homes-in-lagunaniguel.com/