San Diego Area Information

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San Diego named after Saint Didacus (Spanish: Diego de Alcalá), is the eigth largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California, after Los Angeles, with a population of 1,359,132 (Jan 2010) within its administrative limits on a land area of 372.1 square miles (963.7 km2). The urban area of San Diego extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 2,880,000. Also, this is part of megalopolis (San Diego and Los Angeles metropolitan areas) with a population of about 22 million. It is located on the Pacific Ocean at the southernmost end of the west coast of the continental United States.

The city is also the county seat of San Diego County as well as the economic center of the San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos Metropolitan Area considered congruent with the county. The city was rated the fifth best place to live in 2006 by Money Magazine.   According to Forbes magazine, San Diego is the fifth-wealthiest city in the United States.  San Diego's top four industries are manufacturing, defense, tourism, and agriculture.  San Diego's economy is largely composed of agriculture, biotechnology/biosciences, computer sciences, electronics manufacturing, defense-related manufacturing, financial and business services, ship repair, ship construction, software development, telecommunications, wireless research, and tourism. The presence of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) with the affiliated UCSD Medical Center promotes research in biotechnology.  San Diego is also designated as an iHub Innovation Center by Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Office of Economic Development.

The city of San Diego lies on deep canyons and hills separating its mesas, creating small pockets of natural parkland scattered throughout the city and giving it a hilly geography. Traditionally San Diegans have built their homes and businesses on the mesas, while leaving the canyons relatively wild. Thus, the canyons give parts of the city a segmented feel, creating gaps between otherwise proximate neighborhoods and contributing to a low-density, car-centered built environment. The San Diego River runs through the middle of San Diego from east to west, creating a river valley which serves to divide the city into northern and southern segments. Several reservoirs and Mission Trails Regional Park also lie between and separate developed areas of the city.

Downtown San Diego is located on San Diego Bay. Balboa Park lies on a mesa to the northeast, surrounded by dense urban communities including Hillcrest to the north. The Coronado and Point Loma peninsulas separate San Diego Bay from the ocean. Ocean Beach is on the northwest side of Point Loma. Mission Beach and Pacific Beach lie between the ocean and Mission Bay, a man-made aquatic park. La Jolla lies north of Pacific Beach and west of Mira Mesa. The city contains more than 100 identified neighborhoods.

San Diego's climate is characterized by warm, dry summers and mild winters with most of the annual precipitation falling between November and March. The city has mild, mostly dry weather, with an average of 201 days above 70 °F (21 °C) and low rainfall (9-13" annually). Summer temperatures are generally warm, with average highs of 70–78 °F (21–26 °C) and lows of 55–66 °F (13–19 °C). Temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) only four days a year. Winter temperatures are mild, with average high temperatures of 66–70 °F (19–21 °C) and lows of 50–56 °F (10–13 °C). Average annual temperature of sea is 65 °F (18 °C), from 59 °F (15 °C) in January to 72 °F (22 °C) in August. 

Prior to 2006, San Diego experienced a dramatic growth of real estate prices, to the extent that the situation was sometimes described as a "housing affordability crisis". Median house prices more than tripled between 1998 and 2007. According to the California Association of Realtors, in May 2007, a median house in San Diego cost $612,370.  Growth of real estate prices has not been accompanied by comparable growth of household incomes: Housing Affordability Index (percentage of households that can afford to buy a median-priced house) fell below 20% in early 2000s. San Diego metropolitan area had the second worst median multiple (ratio of median house price to median household income) of all metropolitan areas in the United States. As a consequence, San Diego had experienced negative net migration since 2004, with significant numbers of people moving to Baja California and Riverside county, with many residents commuting daily from Tijuana, Temecula, and Murrieta, to their jobs in San Diego. Others are leaving the state altogether and moving to more affordable regions.

From 2005 to 2007, San Diego experienced more than a 15% decline in real estate prices, which continued to accelerate into 2008. The two-year drop already experienced is worse than the four-year period between June, 1992, and November, 1996, when the region experienced an 11.8% decline in housing prices.  Much of the decrease is blamed on the speculative attitude of investors in the early 2000s, who bought much of the available real estate, hoping to "flip" it for a large profit shortly thereafter, and the availability of "stated income" and other "exotic" loans available. When the decline hit, and adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) adjusted, many investors simply abandoned their properties, and areas that recently experienced double-digit annual increases in property value, such as San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas were hit the hardest.  In the first quarter of 2008, the number of foreclosures repossessed by banks exceeded the number of home sales.