It's funny. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and had you told me 10 years ago I would be a resident of Southern California I probably would have asked you what you were smoking. The twists and turns life takes us on is an interesting process, to say the least.
To condense a long story, my wife and I went to Mexico for a long weekend in the year 2000. She's a jazz singer and wound up singing at a local night club. Three months later she returned to put on a concert at the same place and that weekend, we wound up buying a home in Mexico! We flew home, put our San Francisco house on the market, and moved to Mexico.
This will down the road lead to stories of how I got into real estate, my adventures south of the border, etc., but for now I'll tell you we decided to move back to California after two years. Someone told us we should check out a place called Canyon Lake. We did, we moved there, I got my R.E. license, got elected to the Board of Directors of our local Association of REALTORS and now serve as its Chairman.
We wound up falling in love with the Inland Empire. The summers are warm (okay, hot sometimes), but generally the evenings are cool and the rest of the year is very temperate. We've made a million friends here. We now live about 10 miles down the road in Murrieta, just north of Temecula. Our neighbors are delightful, San Diego is an hour to the south, Los Angeles is just over an hour west, Palm Springs is about an hour east and Las Vegas is about four hours away. As my former sales manager was fond of saying, "if you're bored here, it's your own fault".
This is a great community, and I'm proud to call it home. I'd love to show you around sometime. I hope you take me up on it.
EDIT: Bill makes a good point.
Murrieta Real Estate Expert – Tom Plant, REALTOR® - Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage (951) 907-9701
Tom -Great post. You might want to add this post to the Localism Group.
I too love Murrieta. I moved to CA from NY. My husband moved to CA from OK. We bought our first home in Murrieta in 1989. Talk about seeing a lot of growth! We always thought we would move back to San Diego where we first met BUT we started a family and decided that Murrieta was a great place to raise a family!
Tom,
I'm glad you like where you live. I have been up to Temecula many times. My daughter just cheered at two Pop Warner Football games up there this year. One in October - 115 degrees and one about 3 weeks ago quite mild I remember - very nice folks too! I used to have a place in Big Bear for seven years and we would pass through Temecula on our way up and back - Oh and also to Vegas and back. Can't forget about those Vegas trips!!!
Mike Lewis