I'm 100% serious about this, need to know a few things.  Currently thinking of the San Diego area.

I don't care about anything gun related right now, it's a hobby to me, strictly recreational, so guns and gun laws are not a part of this decision.


Where can I find out what neighborhoods/cities are really like?  I don't want to trust a realtor or some fluffed up facebook page or website promoting a town.  If I narrow it down to a few towns would it be more helpful?

What are rules about vehicles?  I know my two cars are not "California Emissions", does this mean I'd have to get rid of them upon arrival?  2012 Ford Edge & 2015 Tacoma.  Also, 2005 Honda Superhawk.  

Job Related - My wife is in the medical field, Hospital Management type stuff.  What's the job market like?  I'm a car guy, parts/sales, etc.  I'm sure I could find something fairly easily.  


What am I missing?  If I go for the San Diego area, does that put me far enough away not to deal with L.A. traffic?

Are you going to rent or buy?

Your going to get raped by the DMV.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/

Commuting....Traffic is everywhere. exactly like LA.

Do you even have jobs lined up?

DMV might not be all that bad, vehicles over 2 years old have to pass smog checks.  Whether officially or not, most vehicles are built to pass the CA standards.  It's easier that way, especially when there is more than a possibility a car might get sent to CA.

Probably best to rent for a while in the general area of where you want to go, then you can figure pout what locations fit your desires.

San Diego traffic is somewhat better than LA, but there are exceptions.

San Diego has been known as America's Finest City for a long time.  Housing is NOT cheap because it is a great place to live.  Plus lots of people are willing to take pay hits to live there.  I have no real reason to think it has significantly changed but when I was in Aerospace Defense Staffing, I worked with the local Employment Development Board.  At that time more people with advanced degrees worked for minimum or near minimum wage in the San Diego job market   We used to live there, family on both sides lived there.  Wish we could have stayed.

Can't address the hospital field directly, but you probably have better chances looking a little further out toward the Inland Empire.  Jobs in the coastal areas are not readily available.

San Diego traffic although bad, is not even close to LA of SF, just stay away from the 15 and you should be ok for the most part. Also their are lots of great medical field related jobs down there, but there are a lot of people trying to get in.

San Diego is beautiful, so it is expensive.  the weather is perfect.  I am not familiar enough with the neighborhoods to know which ones to avoid, but if it is reasonably-prices, be suspicious.  unless you drive at bit.

my 2015 4Runner was bought in AZ.  it is 50-state emissions compliant.  your taco likely is.  check the emissions sticker under the hood - it will say if it is 50-state compliant or not.  if not, all may not be lost: "If you are moving to California from another state, you may register a new 49-state vehicle if it was first registered by you in your home state, or for military personnel, in the last state of your military service. When applying for vehicle registration in California, you must provide evidence that the vehicle was registered."

find work first, before you come.

CA gun laws do suck, but not all is lost.  not yet, at least.

good luck, and welcome!!!

The 2015 Toyota Tacoma will trigger Use Tax liability if you try to register it.

Not really

 

What does that mean?

I made the same move last summer. Nashua to San Bernardino County.

San Diego traffic isn't as bad as Boston. LA County traffic sucks in its entirety. I live 40 miles east of LA and can make it to San Diego quicker than downtown LA. Palos Verdes Estates (just south of LA) is 53 miles away but take 3 1/2 hours to get there. Trust me, avoid LA County. You'll be close enough that getting up here for any event or park or Disney or whatever isn't a big ordeal but won't have to deal with the 10 million people of LA County who are always in the way. I travel all over southern California for work (and drive up to San Fran every month or so) but I try to avoid LA County as much as possible. I live right on the county line so not easy to do, kinda like trying to avoid crossing into Massachusetts when I lived in a NH border town.

You can register cars here without a CA emissions sticker but you only get one shot. They do a short inspection at DMV and if you fail the car is banned for life. Not joking. And you better have at least 7,500 miles on it or you're screwed (7,500 mile rule only applies to non-CA emissions cars). It's not like a NH safety inspection - they mainly check miles, emissions sticker, and VIN. The lady who checked out my truck had just failed a wheel-chair van from Nevada because it didn't have 7,500 miles. She was actually upset about failing the guy, she doesn't agree with the law either, but apparently cars spew sunshine and roses once they reach 7,500 miles. There was nothing the owner could do, the van can never be registered here because of that one failure. Surprisingly they don't have safety inspections or stickers here, just a smog check every two years.

Now here's where you're gonna get raped - the truck is less than a year old so they'll make you pay CA sales tax. Fucked up, right? They'll deduct what you paid in NH which was $0 so you're hosed. You have 21 days I believe to register your cars but whatever......our NH registrations were still valid so we just waited them out. We registered them exactly one year and a day after purchasing them. DMV didn't care even though I already had a CA driver's license for 6 months. Whatever you plan to do, just be prepared for the worst.

You also have to register the Tacoma as a commercial vehicle. All pickups get registered commercial. Bringing it from out of state means you'll also have to get it weighed by a certified weighmaster at a truck stop. The sticker on the door jam is irrelevant. So is the advertised weight from Toyota. CA doesn't care. You have to get it weighed (trucks purchased here don't have to get weighed).

Smog checks - new cars purchased here are exempt from Smog checks for the first five or six years. Bringing a new vehicle from out of state negates that exemption. You'll have to get a Smog check to register it and another every two years.

Your car insurance will double. Gas prices are the highest in the country. I just paid $2.85/gallon in Arizona on Friday, then $4.25/gallon back here in CA on Saturday.

For reference, the total cost to register my 2014 Tacoma was $455 based on a $32,000 sticker price. That breaks down to:
$10 - to get it weighed at a truck stop (can be higher depending where you go)
$45 - Smog check
$333 - Registration fee
$72 - commercial vehicle fee based on weight. You'll pay this fee every year.

By comparison it only cost $223 to register the Corolla (not including the Smog check).

Auto Registration fees decrease every year for six years I believe. Vanity plates are ridiculously expensive - they used to be everywhere when I left in '97 but don't see too many any more but they're out there. They're $60-$100/year. Sales tax varies anywhere from 8-10% depending on local taxes.

You'll have to suffer through a day at DMV to get your driver's license, but if you have AAA register your cars there. There are AAA offices all over the place and they handle DMV registrations. Trust me, it'll save you many many hours pulling your hair out.

Are you sure your Tacoma doesn't have California emissions? We bought a 2014 Corolla and 2014 Tacoma in Nashua about 6 months before moving and they both have CA emissions stickers. Check under your hood. Here's my Tacoma's sticker, hopefully yours has a line referencing California.



Throw away your shovels. Buy shorts. Keep a few jackets, the lack of humidity actually makes it feel colder than what you're used to when temps drop below 70 (shockingly it's true). Dunkin' Donuts is opening 1,000 stores here, there are already quite a few open. They don't have Fluff. Sad but true. I miss Fluffernutters

I know you're not concerned about gun laws so just keep this in the back of your head - you can bring off-roster handguns into the state as a new resident. If there's anything you really want you should buy it now.

I moved from NH like the OP. It will cost him a little more. I'm also in IE.

There's not much crime in NH so car insurance is cheap (it's not even mandatory). It almost doubled when I moved here to the tune of another $1,200/year for full coverage on two new vehicles.

Inspection stickers were $25/year in NH and CA Smog check is $45 every two years so it's almost a wash.

There's no property tax (excise tax) on cars in NH.

Registration in NH cost us about about $250/yr to register both a 2001 Chevy and 2003 Dodge. We bought two new Toyotas in 2014 and paid $910 to register them both in NH. A year later paid $628 to register them in CA.

I paid a little less to register them here but paid a LOT more to insure them. Overall it's costing me about $950/year more for reg and insurance, but am also looking at an additional $1,500-$2,000/year due to California's ridiculous gas prices.

So he'll save a little at DMV but will get raped paying for insurance just so DMV will let him register it, then get gang-banged feeding it so he can drive it.

Sales tax. If the truck is less than a year old they'll make you pay sales tax on it. I mentioned it in my long post above, but basically what they do is deduct whatever sales tax you paid in your home state ($0 in NH) from the CA amount and make you pay the difference.

Technically it has to be registered within 21 days. It's not aggressively enforced though. If it's three months away from being a year old and still registered in NH.....well, I'll leave that up to you. If you do get a ticket for it, you just have to get it registered. It's not a big deal. There are separate questions on the form asking when you arrived in CA and when your vehicle was first operated in CA, so isn't really based on when you personally got here. You might have come here temporarily for work then decided to stay, or couldn't get it shipped out here with you, or any other number of reasons it wasn't in the state until it was a year and a day old. How are they going to prove it?

I'm not a big advocate for breaking the rules but California goes out of its way to make moving here difficult. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to make it happen.

I have lived in San Diego for my whole life (a very long time).
The urban and suburban parts of San Diego County are a very large area.
There are lots of nice areas to live all over the County. And not so nice all over too.
But if you pick an area to live first then get jobs you may spend your life commuting instead of enjoying living in San Diego.
Sure the traffic is not (quite) LA or a lot of other places, but you can easily have an hour commute each way if you are not careful.
Preferably you are going to want to line up work first, then pick a nice neighborhood that is reasonably close to work.
Now if you have the savings to move here and rent and then look for work (and then later move closer to work) you can do that too.

Housing is very expensive. Also historically the pay scale was often not what other equivalent areas had (It was called 'The Sunshine Tax).
Part of that pay differential was suggested to be because the large number of Military people who retire here after 20 years and then have second careers.
I don't know that the pay differential still holds true but the cost of housing is quite high compared to most areas of the country.
Really all the other issues aside from housing and work, the DMV stuff etc.- none of those should be to be deal breakers for any reasonable person.

I would offer to list  the nice areas but there are too many and I certainly don't know them all -
Also you may want to live near the beach, others will want a quieter suburban or semi rural area etc...

Message me if you want me to look into anything specific and I'll get you some info.
Nick.

If you have a shell on your truck and it isn't currently registered as a commercial vehicle, there is a possibility, that you can get it registered as non-commercial.  So, I've been told.  My truck was so old, it didn't really matter one way of the other.

This. California calls is "Use Tax" because there is no sale taking place, but the effective rate is the same. You'll save thousands of you delay you move until after the one year mark on the car.

I'm going to be rude.  Stay home.  We are short on water and jobs.  California needs to start deporting folks, both illegals and legal folks from other states, back to where they came from.

The idiot mayor of l a called for water use cut backs and then in a day or so said he wanted to build another 100,000 housing units in the city.

The shell has to be permanently attached as if it's a part of the vehicle. You can never take it off and can never transport anything in the back (which defeats it's purpose entirely).  My wife's cousin did this and DMV gave him a hard time.

A "permanently" attached camper shell/topper doesn't meet the requirements for registering as non-commercial and thus avoiding the annual weight fee - a camper shell doesn't make the truck an RV.  I've looked at this in the past - I'm a 30+ year CA resident with multiple pickups to my name.

There are exemptions from the use tax being levied on a vehicle being imported in to CA - check the Board of Equalization (state tax board) site.  The intent of the 7500 mile requirement is to prevent legitimate CA residents from buying vehicles in other states in order to avoid the sales tax.

I was giving basic information. The next step would be to make it look like it's used for human habitation which anybody with basic carpentry skills could do. Carpet, a bed, and shelves. As I said, my wife's cousin did it.

The 7,500 mile rule applies to everybody, not just California residents, and only applies to vehicles that don't have a CA emissions sticker. The idea being that the engine is broken in so is running more efficiently with lower emissions. California residents have to pay the use tax regardless so isnt going to discourage anybody. It's the "use tax" itself that's supposed to discourage buyng a car out of state.

IIRC there has to be fresh water system, toilet and cooking equipment in the "RV" in order to avoid weight fees - a carpet kit alone doesn't cut it.

I think you're confusing "use tax" and "sales tax".

"Use tax" is the yearly fee on your registration - it's tax deductible.  IIRC it's 2% of vehicle value rounded to the nearest odd $100. No way to get out of this one.

"Sales tax" is based on the purchase price of the vehicle (including used cars in CA)  and CA will ding you for it if the vehicle is "too new" when you come to CA - there are exemptions for this.  WA state wanted my parents to pay sales tax on a 5 y/o 5th wheel when they moved to WA - no sales tax was paid when my folks bought the trailer since they were NH at the time.  WA wanted sales tax based on MSRP not actual price paid.  Needless to say I own two 5th wheel trailers - both titled in CA - neither trailer was purchased in CA, sales tax wasn't paid on either trailer.

My wife's cousin used a piece of plywood as a subfloor to mount a bed frame and set of cabinets then covered it with carpet. It worked for him. DMV here isn't exactly a model of competency so maybe he just got lucky. Mounting a toilet in the bed of a pickup doesn't sound like a pleasant place to sleep

I called it sales tax in my first couple of posts. Homeinvader said it was a Use tax so instead of arguing semantics just referred to it as a use tax in my next post. OP was just looking for basic info so didn't feel the need to go any deeper. Overlapping conversations. CA charges 8% of the sticker price for out of state vehicles less than a year old so yes, it's sales tax. We're on the same page

The $2560 listed as Use/Sales tax below is 8% of the purchase price. Actually it's based on the sticker price, not the purchase price, so they kind of screw you. I only paid $25,000 for the truck but DMV went by MSRP. I changed the dates in the calculator to reflect a truck less than a year old but the rest is fairly accurate. I paid $405 to register mine (with weight fee) so they're pretty much the same - the website is giving an estimate. I only paid $72 for weight based on my truck weighing 4,450 lbs so it either went up or they prorated it.

DMV told me what it would cost to register it when I got my license. Needless to say it didn't get CA plates until it was exactly 366 days old.

OP - if you want to play with the DMV calculator it's HERE

Where ever you end up. Take a visit to the local police station.  They can give you the real info on where not to set down stakes.  

Consider NorCal -- Sacramento. The Bay Area has its charm, but traffic is not nice, and home prices are insane.

Any major metro/surrounding area in CA has traffic issues - 50 mile commutes are not unheard of in order to purchase a house.

 
50 miles one way here.

I'm willing to bet you don't drive to work at 65mph either.

 
Well the speed limit most of the way is 70 mph, so..................

Why all the complaining, Californians?

Because things are just toooooooo good.  

 
Why edit the ant burner post?

Both posted by people unwilling to post the state they live in...................

If you looking to move to SoCal I suggest looking at the Murrieta or Temecula area. Its about an hour north of San Diego but housing will be cheaper and its located about an hour from anywhere you'd want to go, beach, mountains, Disneyland/Knotts Berry Farm. There are several hospitals in the area as well as many car dealerships.

Ummmm,... possibly so it isn't an ant burning post?

Actually, I could argue you guys are being the ant burners with all the complaining about the state of affairs in your State.

I am in So Cal.  I never noticed it doesn't show under my name.  I don't care enough to change that, but I am a born-and-raised Californian who remembers when things were better.