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San Diego will consider a new tax on second homes in the city soon. Tomorrow, 2/25/2026, is the first subcommittee hearing.

Per Voice of San Diego this tax will be: “For the first year, $8,000 per home. The next year it would be $10,000 per home. And there would be additional surcharges for corporate-owned empty homes, starting at $4,000 in 2027.”

There are about 5,000 such units in San Diego today. The owners of these properties pay property taxes and will now have an additional tax to pay.

How are the number of second homes subject to this tax tracked? Apparently by the number of properties that claim the Rental Unit Business Tax Exemption. This form is in image below, and property owners select a descriptor for their property. Check box 2 is for “Vacation Home / Second Home – Property is not available for rent any part of the tax year. Not reported on Income Tax Forms as income property. Proof Required. Provide copy of Utility bill.”

The Rental Unit Business Tax varies, but for many properties is basically $55 per year.

My prediction is that owners that may be subject to the proposed new tax will simply not claim the Rental Unit Business Tax exemption and will have to pay $55 (roughly) to avoid an $8,000 to $12,000 tax. Perhaps the city will deploy in-person auditors to the properties that formerly claimed this exemption. Or we’ll have random audits for properties across the city.

Either way I would be very surprised if the projected revenue of $51,000,000 per year is close to realized.

Got to visit Northern California – all the way up at the northern state border – for a few days. Absolutely gorgeous area – so many trees, so much water.

A few photos from the short hikes we did during our visit. Would highly recommend visiting and really enjoyed our time in Crescent City for the location and proximity to a wide variety of parks and beaches.

We also got to visit the Capitol building in Sacramento for a short visit, which was very good. Sacramento seemed like a town with a lot of history, I’d like to visit again.

California has such a wide variety of climates and topography, it’s really amazing. Although some of the windy mountain roads can lead to car sickness. . . .

Tacos, water views, and good company

Map link: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1AJqlbNMHbQuSPoMmYpTS1nK94G0om3s&usp=sharing

Starting in North Park at 8 AM, approx 4 hour ride with tacos, coffee, and cool ocean breezes. Hit me up if you’d like to join us. Cheers!

My spousal equivalent (SE) had a job promotion opportunity in 2021 that would require driving to work. A focus of our family decisions has been to have a pretty centralized area for daily activities (work, school, activities, residence, groceries, etc) for convenience, community ties, and cost so the need for a dedicated car for work transport was a pretty big factor in our decision on the job opportunity.

SE decided to take the opportunity and consequently we ended up buying a 2nd vehicle. We purchased a 2019 Hyundai Ioniq Plug-In Hybrid from Carvana for $23,990 in early 2022. This vehicle purchase was the absolute best car purchase experience of my life and I would highly recommend checking out Carvana. I’m not really big into car finishes and features; mostly looking for good value and convenience so that might vary for others. I think it took about 15 minutes start to finish to select, purchase (including financing, registration, etc.) this vehicle. 10 days later I picked it up (about 10 minutes total, mostly for signing documents) and drove it home.

About a year after making this purchase SE got the opportunity to transfer back to a closer work location. Making the move was a no-brainer but we kept the vehicle, mostly because of potential uses for it – who knows when a friend might borrow, or a kid is sick, or the adults in the house just want to do something at the same time in different places. So we kept the second car until after being out of town for a month, and then not using the car for another month after returning we considered getting rid of it.

The anchoring effect was strong – we already had the car so moving from the current default took effort. But we decided to go ahead (and we’ll probably purchase another second vehicle at some point in the future, but who knows?).

How much did this modestly priced vehicle cost us over our ownership period? Approximately $667.46 per month. Probably on the low side, but I’m trying to be conservative to not inflate the actual numbers – I had to estimate for oil changes, repairs, gasoline, as we don’t track tightly.

Median household income in San Diego is $89,457 so to put in perspective, this sort of modestly priced used car would cost about 9% of the median household pre-tax income here in SD.

We sold the car on Carvana and again the experience was great – quick, simple, and easy. I’d estimate we took about a 15% discount to what we might have achieved trying to sell the car ourselves on Craigslist or other sites. We sold the car for $16,940 in September 2023, about 18 months after purchasing it.

Owning a car (or 2 or 5) varies between households, but the cost is pretty significant for the average household. Wanted to share our recent vehicle purchase and sale info.

I’m a big fan of Lenore Skenazy and her Free Range Kids / Let Grow efforts to give our children more freedom. It’s a struggle as a parent to weigh danger vs. freedom and widespread fear-mongering about child abductions and such make the decisions more emotionally charged, and less reality-based.

We’re fortunate to live quite close to our local public schools and walk the kids each day. Letting them walk by themselves is a classic and obvious step toward independence and self-reliance. However, our school doesn’t have a stated policy about coming and going for the students alone and during Covid moved toward a default parent check-out for each child that had been much looser in the past.

I noticed another family nearby that had their children walking to and from school alone each day and asked how they arranged with the school and teacher. They had simply written a note and provided it to the teachers, with a duplicate copy in each book bag in case needed.

A lovely, and simple, way to clearly indicate parental OK. Awesome. I followed their lead and below is the note that I now use. I wanted to share here in case it’s helpful to other parents locally, or elsewhere, that would like to give their kids the ability and authorization to ambulate solo.

Date: XXXX

I, John Anderson, and my wife, XXXX Anderson, give our son, XXXX Anderson, permission to walk to and from school, be admitted and dismissed from school, and in general move about the neighborhood of his own volition.  Thank you for your support of developing independence, responsibility, and confidence in our youth.

If additional permission or information is needed please advise.

Thank you,

John Anderson

Email : | Phone :

Another bonus at our school is the open playground and field after school – easier to stay and play when kid’s are on their own schedule.

Montreal – half Canada (hella nice) and half France (hella chic). Amazing old town buildings, a fantastically clean Metro, and lots of great little restaurants. (I didn’t get to try to many of said restaurants with 4 kids on the visit but it’s all good.)

Highlights:

• Jean Talon Market – our Airbnb was really close to this market (and the Metro stop of same name). Very cool daily market with tons of produce, stands with processed foods like salami, pickles, etc.
• Airbnb – we stayed in a second floor apartment in a three story building. It had an enormous patio, about 625 square feet, and 3 bedrooms. I love Airbnb when we travel as hotels are pretty darn difficult for a big family – although we miss having swimming pools, breakfast, etc.
• Metro – so clean, so fast, and great pricing. A 3 day pass was about $21 and up to 4 children were free with an adult. I really like family / kid friendly policies like this. Most of the Metro stops did not have elevators and often had many steps which was a challenge for strollers and toddlers and I’m sure would make a challenge for handicapped people. The Metro does not go to the airport, but they have a frequent bus connection that worked well for us, about half the distance on the freeway was in a bus / taxi only lane which is a great idea for other places like San Diego to utilize.
• Lachine Canal / bicycles – Bicycles are awesome and we got to rent for a day and ride about 20 miles on the Lachine Canal. Beautiful weather and water views of the canal on the way out, and the St Lawrence River on the way back. Massive amounts of park space along the way with playgrounds, trees and grass, sculptures, and more. Highly recommended. (We missed the Verdun public beach which would have been great and had tons of people enjoying the water.)
• Summertime – we don’t get a lot of weather changes in San Diego but being in an area with lots of water, lots of trees, and long summer days was great. Long days were also amazing in Minnesota, for a farm visit after Montreal.