Bernie Talks About Huntington Beach California

Alex, Victoria and Bernie Insider talk

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:02 Alex It's Alex, the.

00:00:01:02 - 00:00:17:17 Alex Displaced social media manager. You're about to watch me and Victoria interview Bernie, a best Places user. In the interview, we discussed Bernie's experience living and working in Huntington Beach, California. Enjoy.

00:00:17:19 - 00:00:20:18 Alex Give us your name and tell us where you're living currently.

00:00:20:19 - 00:00:36:01 Bernie That's my name is Bernie Torbett two RB Okay. And I live in Huntington Beach, California, to a city in Orange County about halfway between San Diego and L.A..

00:00:36:03 - 00:00:46:03 Victoria zGreat. Thanks. And what about your experience of living down in Huntington Beach made you want to reach out to best places for this interview?

00:00:46:05 - 00:01:21:12 Bernie I, I read some comments about Huntington being being nice, but too expensive. And taxes being high. And I thought that they were very superficial comments. I've lived here 21 years and it is expensive if you're a first time buyer. But a lot of the people moving here or living here have owned their homes for many years and as a result have benefited greatly from the price appreciation in California.

00:01:21:14 - 00:01:50:14 Bernie One of the reasons this is a very nice place to live is the climate. The there's there's a very narrow strip of land between San Diego and let's say, about Santa Barbara, where the climate only varies about four or five degrees Celsius all year. It's never snowed here. It's never been below freezing. We have had hail once, but it's almost a perfect climate.

00:01:50:16 - 00:02:21:22 Bernie So, you know, it attracts a nice mix of people. The homes are nice. There they are to someone not from California and not from the East Coast or from, say, London or should be. They do look expensive. But again, a lot of people have been here a long time in terms of it in terms of the cost of living, I think California gets a very bad rap if you are.

00:02:21:24 - 00:02:50:20 Bernie Well, let me put it this way. Rumor has it that our taxes are very high, but that doesn't take into account the fact that property taxes, especially if you've lived in your home for a long time, are very low. And that's a big expense for a lot of people. I've compared what my property taxes are. Well, let's just for argument's sake, say the House is worth 800,000.

00:02:50:22 - 00:03:16:17 Bernie I've compared the taxes on this House. What they would be for somebody in New Jersey, somebody in New York and somebody in Texas. In New Jersey, I'm paying under 13. I'm paying about 50 $600 a year in property tax. Somebody in New Jersey would be paying over 20,000 a year. And somebody in New York in, let's say, Westchester County or on Long Island would be paying about 22 or 23,000.

00:03:16:19 - 00:03:44:14 Bernie In Texas, property taxes are based on the market value of the House, and it's typically 3 to 2 and a half to 3% of the market value. So outside of California, your property taxes are much higher. California's system is not unlike what's in Nevada or in Florida. You you also have to take into account the cost of heating, air conditioning, cooling.

00:03:44:16 - 00:04:12:13 Bernie If you live in the coastal area where the temperature varies between, let's say on the low end, maybe seven or eight Celsius, so maybe about 46, 47 Fahrenheit in the winter, up to a low to mid seventies in the summer. You don't have a lot of air conditioning. I have coworkers who live in Florida who have two air conditioners in their home and sometimes they need to run a heat pump as well.

00:04:12:14 - 00:04:37:17 Bernie New Jersey. It's not unusual to hear people with five and $600 a month gas bills in the winter. My gas bill and my electric bill all year because we have solar and not even $400. So, you know, you do pay. Yes. California has high income taxes if you're in the million of category. I'm not, unfortunately. But they are high.

00:04:37:17 - 00:05:12:04 Bernie But, you know, when you take into account everything cost of living, property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes. California doesn't tax service taxes, does it really? You have to look at the whole picture. And that's why I said that I what I thought had been published on your site was it gave a very misleading impression of what the cost of living in California is and what the and in a coastal area like Orange County in particular, what it actually is.

00:05:12:06 - 00:05:45:09 Bernie So for that reason, I reached out to you. What drew me here was I moved from Toronto, which is a very cold climate. I'm not exactly a big fan of winter, and I wanted to live where I could enjoy, you know, a relatively mild climate all year. It took me two trips to California in March and going back to Toronto, where they had another eight or nine weeks of winter to decide to move out here.

00:05:45:11 - 00:06:19:05 Bernie And I did that about 30 years ago and I've never had it. My only regret is I didn't do it much sooner than I. I did coming here. People usually come here either for the mountains or they come here for the desert or for the beach. I chose the beach and I've been very happy. It's a very little informed lifestyle, not, you know, very structured and rigid like it would have been in Toronto or in New York or in, say, Washington, D.C., or even San Francisco, more formal.

00:06:19:11 - 00:06:48:23 Bernie So, you know, very nice, laid back lifestyle. The people are very informal, laid back casual. HUNTINGTON In the past, I've lived here 21 years, and this particular residence and you've seen a lot of a lot of good things, I would say, you know, cities after the great financial crisis either had very serious financial problems or they improved dramatically.

00:06:49:00 - 00:07:22:23 Bernie Huntington was one of the ones that benefited greatly from a big influx of overseas money, new building, new businesses opening. A real big increase in the quality of the businesses that were here, the restaurants. So everything is very close. And that's another point that I would make. People compare this to Newport Beach or Laguna or places like that is very much the same, except it's a little more.

00:07:23:00 - 00:07:44:03 Bernie I'm also downscale, but it's a little more understated than Newport. We don't have the big name celebrities, although we have a lot of celebrities who live here. And it's everything's very close. I don't have to drive more than five or 10 minutes to go to the best restaurants, to my favorite stores. I can walk to a lot of them.

00:07:44:05 - 00:08:04:24 Bernie Everything is it's pretty level here. There's not a lot of hills. So you know, what's not to like? It's it's perfect climate sunshine over 300 days a year. It's not that expensive. And everything is close by.

00:08:05:01 - 00:08:17:22 Vicotria Great I mean, those all sound like amazing things and good reasons to live somewhere. And obviously you, having been there 30 years, that you found your found your sweet spot. So I'm glad. I'm happy for you.

00:08:17:24 - 00:08:49:18 Bernie We did. I you know, I I've been asked by friends if I would ever think about moving out to Hawaii because we spend time on the big island and it's it's less expensive. Surprisingly, homes are less expensive. I think the cost of food and things would be more expensive. But something else you've got to consider when you look at a place to live is what's the you know, what's the quality of medical care like what you know, what kind of a network do you have for care providers and things like that?

00:08:49:20 - 00:09:14:09 Bernie And again, I've heard many, many times people who live in California and live outside of California say the quality of the health care here in coastal Orange County, San Diego, L.A. is among the best in the world. And this is coming from some people who lived in the in the desert, in Cold Springs, on desert, which are not, you know, hard done by places.

00:09:14:11 - 00:09:37:00 Bernie And they said just coming over here, having access to Hoag Hospital to some of the other facilities we have here, Scripps down in San Diego, you really do have the best of all worlds. So, you know, looking at other places to go, where would I live? Hawaii is the only place with a nice climate. Florida's humid. I wouldn't.

00:09:37:02 - 00:09:49:19 Bernie Bugs and gators and snakes. No, thanks. Texas. No, thanks. No parts of Australia are nice. But where? You know. Show me a place that's better than us.

00:09:49:21 - 00:09:52:13 Alex & Victoria [Laughter]

00:09:52:15 - 00:10:08:09 Bernie I know in Oregon it's very pretty. And I know people move up there for various other reasons, but I'm just saying from the standpoint of weather and amenities and natural beauty and everything else, where would I go?

00:10:08:11 - 00:10:11:05 Victoria Yeah, lots of great days up here.

00:10:11:07 - 00:10:16:18 Alex So you are from Toronto. Is do you live anywhere else or is it just Toronto to Huntington?

00:10:16:20 - 00:11:04:20 Bernie No, I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area and I moved to Toronto to attend university. I lived there for on and off for 20 years and then moved out here. So, you know, I've seen I've seen East Coast. I've seen what it's like for the border. Having lived here now for 30 years, I can see this is home and well, were like I said, as I didn't do it earlier, I had the advantage of living overseas with my job and traveling to, you know, well, we've spent a lot of time in Australia, spent a lot of time in Ireland, England, Canada, Europe, both business and pleasure.

00:11:04:20 - 00:11:17:04 Bernie And the only place that comes close to this climate wise, quality of living wise and in terms of the amenities is Sydney and Melbourne. In Australia.

00:11:17:06 - 00:11:33:16 Victoria Interesting. Thank you for that. Is there? So we've heard a lot about what you love and what keeps you in Huntington Beach. Is there anything maybe that you could live without or wish for a different?

00:11:33:18 - 00:12:02:11 Bernie There's a big debate here right now about what people call, you know, densification or building high rise buildings. Well, you know, if if you're coming from Toronto and you're used to seeing 70 and 80 story towers, a six story building doesn't sound like it's very high, but they are very large buildings. So what in this is true, I think, of much of Southern California.

00:12:02:13 - 00:12:37:00 Bernie The debate is about how dense and how, you know, how what's the best way of putting it, I guess just how dense of a population do we want to have? I predict I would not particularly want to see it get much denser because one of the advantages of living, say, in Huntington Beach versus Long Beach, where I moved from before I came over here, a Long Beach had gone through a period where they had a lot of low rise bungalows, single family homes.

00:12:37:02 - 00:12:59:01 Bernie They tore them down. They put up a lot of apartments. Then you had a lot of congestion, a lot of crime, a lot of problems associated with it. This is still very much a suburban community, you know. Yeah, you do need some, you know, multi-family housing and but there are right ways and wrong ways to do it. I wouldn't want to be.

00:12:59:03 - 00:13:28:13 Bernie We have a six storey building on the corner of one of the busiest intersections in Huntington Beach and the garage, two eggs that the building comes out right where cars turn right onto a major thoroughfare between the major street I referenced and the freeway. It was, you know, classic example of poor planning and very, very dangerous planning on the part of the city.

00:13:28:15 - 00:13:47:23 Bernie So I hope that, you know what I you asked what I could live without. I could live without some of the proposals to increase the density of the population and the misguided places that buildings are placed.

00:13:48:00 - 00:13:55:20 Victoria Yeah, I could I could see how that that would be better without too much crowding and and and I mean, I think it.

00:13:55:20 - 00:14:29:09 Bernie Happens in most cities. So if you go down to Newport, you can see it down there. They've put up a lot of buildings around one of the major shopping centers. The only people that benefit or the developers, the public doesn't benefit. The parking is worse, the congestion is worse, it's less safe for pedestrians. I've seen it in Hawaii, where they build a they put, you know, a 30 and 40 storey condo towers on the parking lot of the Alamo on a shopping center in Honolulu.

00:14:29:10 - 00:14:52:10 Bernie Not only clean up park, but it's dangerous if you're a pedestrian. So, you know, densification sounds great on paper. And I suppose to some politicians and developers, it's, you know, it looks great. But if you think it through and you look at the consequences of it, it's just it's a bad idea.

00:14:52:12 - 00:15:00:09 Alex With all that in mind, the densification issues and all that, would you recommend someone else move to Huntington Beach? Do you think it's a good place?

00:15:00:11 - 00:15:26:06 Bernie It's a great place for families. It's a great place for singles, It's a great place for retirees. It again, one of the big advantages here is that everything is closed. You've got a lot of cultural institute chains, the Orange County performing Arts Center is less than 50 minutes away. We've got great local orchestras, summer in the park concerts.

00:15:26:08 - 00:15:50:21 Bernie It's an incredible, safe city. It's one of the ten safest cities in the country, according to the FBI. And I think in California, only Irvine is safer. A lot of the police and public safety people live right here in the city. So it's good from that standpoint. We have a lot of parks. I think we have more parks per capita than any other city in the L.A. basin.

00:15:50:23 - 00:16:19:05 Bernie You know, the beaches are pristine, unlike Florida. In the south, you can't build right on the beach here. So anything in within I don't know how many feet it is, but it's protected you. You won't see a high rise on the beach like you do in Hawaii or in Florida. So, you know, in many respects, cultural amenities, natural amenities, parkland, safety, quality of life.

00:16:19:07 - 00:16:51:21 Bernie The air is incredibly clean because we get a nice coastal breeze. The weather, why wouldn't you want to live here? That's my question. Yeah. If you don't have an income, if you're a first time homebuyer and you're trying to buy 3000 square foot house, well, that's going to be a problem. But, you know, if you're if you've inherited the money or the bank of mom and dad are willing to fund you and you're looking for something, you'll be fine.

00:16:51:23 - 00:16:54:21 Victoria You give a good sales pitch. So, you.

00:16:55:00 - 00:16:56:07 Bernie Know, you got to come tried.

00:16:56:12 - 00:17:13:01 Victoria Yeah. So you mentioned. Yeah, living in D.C. and Toronto and now you're in Huntington. I have all the moves that you made. Which one felt like the biggest move, whether it be a change or the move itself.

00:17:13:03 - 00:17:47:21 Bernie Toronto to here because I lived in a I lived right in the downtown core in Toronto and it was a very, you know, a nice older area. But when I moved here, it was like everything was completely different. There were no high rises. Instead of taking the subway to work, I drove to work, you know, instead of putting on three layers of clothing in December, January and February, I was in shorts and a T-shirt and yeah, it just complete shock.

00:17:47:21 - 00:17:55:20 Bernie And I was I felt like I still feel like I'm on vacation every day. It's it's just kind of a place nice.

00:17:55:22 - 00:18:03:04 Alex Yeah, lovely. Do you have any tips or tricks for people that might be undertaking a similar move sometime soon?

00:18:03:06 - 00:18:31:12 Bernie That's a very good question. My advice to them would be to look at the total experience, consider whether you want to live in an urban or in a suburban area, whether you want to be in a major metropolitan area or not. If you don't want to be in a in an inner and an urban area like Los Angeles or in San Diego, maybe this is the right ticket for you.

00:18:31:12 - 00:18:58:04 Bernie But if you want to be somewhere where there you know, where there's more congestion, more higher density, you might want to look at another area or a nearby. Some people I know my in my own family, some people like for seasons, I think forces those are great as long as the other three only last a week. I don't particularly want to live in snow or anything like that.

00:18:58:04 - 00:19:20:01 Bernie So if you're you know, if you're somebody who needs four seasons and you want them to last for a while, this isn't the place for you. But if you want to, you know, like the movie Endless Summer and you want to be there surfing and the beach and live a casual lifestyle, then this would probably be the right place.

00:19:20:03 - 00:19:49:18 Bernie Don't come here with any misconceptions about what California is like. It's like any place. It's good, it's good, it's bad. Friends can be hard to make here because it does tend to be a transitory place for a lot of people. You'll find them coming here and some decide they don't like it. I know people who've come out here from the East Coast and they just was definitely not their ticket.

00:19:49:20 - 00:20:13:13 Bernie Others have come here. My wife came here. I didn't know her name, but she came here around the same time. And you know, equally, the thought of going back to Indiana and trudging through snow and January were just you know, once you're here, you're here. So think about the whole package. Think about what's important. Think about what kind of an area you want to live in.

00:20:13:13 - 00:20:38:24 Bernie Climate is incredibly important to me. A lot of people need sunlight. And I can appreciate that. Maybe up in Oregon you're adjusted to, you know, more, you know, darker, I'll say gloomier days than we are down here. But if you need sunshine or you're used to that and it grows on you very quickly, then think about what kind of an area you want to live in.

00:20:39:01 - 00:21:07:02 Victoria That's great advice. I feel like you touched on this already. A little bit of that move from Toronto to Huntington. And what was the positive change for you if you can expand on that, if there was anything you didn't mention, but was there anything in that big change of moving down south that was kind of negative other than the sea and the city getting denser now.

00:21:07:04 - 00:21:35:15 Bernie Is two things come to mind. And you asked me earlier, what could I do with that? Well, Toronto has a very, very good public transportation system subways, busses, streetcars, train cars, and it's very extensive. And I was used to that. I wasn't used to driving long distances on a freeway or something like that. That's something you need to be used to if you come here.

00:21:35:17 - 00:21:56:01 Bernie I have the advantage of working from home so I don't have to worry about a long commute. And even if I did, my office is about 15 minutes away. But for a lot of people, that's not going to be possible. Even, you know, even now that we're opening up again after COVID 19. So that's something that to me was a huge change.

00:21:56:01 - 00:22:25:06 Bernie The fact that I no longer had a good at least in Orange County, not a good or not a good public transportation system. The other would just be the I alluded to the fact that Toronto was a more formal place. You tend to get dressed up more. You tend to, you know, find restaurants are more formal and some of the venues you go to, whether they're concerts or otherwise, are more formal.

00:22:25:08 - 00:23:00:24 Bernie Not so here. I mean you know James and and teacher shorts in a t-shirt are fine most of the year you put on a Hawaiian shirt if you want to dress up. So that informality tends to be great for most people. But again, people who are used to a more formal setting or who have a problem adjusting to the informality, the low key, we call it open lifestyle that you get in California and especially in Southern California, tends to be a problem for some people.

00:23:01:04 - 00:23:05:10 Bernie And again, they you know, they don't unless they go back home.

00:23:05:12 - 00:23:05:21 Victoria All right.

00:23:06:01 - 00:23:15:11 Alex So just in all of these moves that you've made has the best places, ah, website helped you in any way And if so, how? Like, how are we impacting and improving your life?

00:23:15:11 - 00:23:53:23 Bernie Hopefully it does. I look, I don't remember how I came upon it exactly, but first of all, I'd encourage you to, you know, do a better job or do a more extensive job of promoting yourself. Second, See, I would say the compassionate people, people like me are looking for comparisons of cost of living, you know, the whole package, taxes, things like that.

00:23:54:00 - 00:24:27:01 Bernie And there were some very good comparisons or information on your site about Hawaii, about California, about, you know, Arizona, Texas and places like that, getting more detailed information like that would be very helpful. And I think, you know, you could appeal to an affluent demographic if you did that. There were what I what I found and I just disregarded them because I thought it was, you know, poor taste and sour grapes.

00:24:27:03 - 00:24:48:00 Bernie Some people, you know, there were questions about Hawaii and they said, it's a dump or it's a part of the language should whole. And they gave a few reasons why and and you know yeah but you know, there's a lot of places in Hawaii and if you can't, you know, just base your experience on Honolulu. I wouldn't go to Honolulu either.

00:24:48:00 - 00:25:16:00 Bernie It would stay in L.A. the weather's better. I'd go to one of the other islands. You know, more facts, more figures, more detailed information, more firsthand experience that, you know, could be verified. Personal opinions are nice. But let's back it up with our fact and figure. It's it's kind of meaningless, right?

00:25:16:08 - 00:25:34:18 Victoria we appreciate that feedback. And we'll definitely pass it along to our team because, yeah, we're always, we're always looking for input from folks that use our site of what, what, what else they would like to see, what works for them, what doesn't. Was there, was there anything else we didn't touch on that you wanted to share?

00:25:35:16 - 00:25:57:00 Bernie no. I think you've asked all of the right questions. I don't want to I don't want to get into politics or anything like that, but just, you know, just know that this is a very laid back place. People are very accepting of different opinions. As long as you don't try and, you know, insist that you're right or something like that.

00:25:57:00 - 00:26:08:23 Bernie But the fact that it is a very informal and laid back place is one of the main reasons that my wife and I were attracted to it and why we feel very safe here.

00:26:09:00 - 00:26:11:18 Victoria Good. Well, that's great to hear.

00:26:11:20 - 00:26:25:12 Alex I hope you enjoyed that interview. Don't forget to like and subscribe and ring that notification bell. So, you know, when we upload new videos, you can also follow us on social media to keep up with the team and what we're doing. All of that will be plugged in. The description. If you've ever lived in California or Hawaii, leave a comment telling us how you felt about it.

00:26:25:17 - 00:26:26:08 Alex Thanks for watching.

00:26:26:08 - 00:26:27:04 Alex And we'll see you next time.