I heard from my best friend recently. I was shocked when he told me that he had bought another home in SoCal, about 15 miles south of Newport Beach, in a coastal location on Insterstate 5 running down to San Diego.
I was surprised because I would never expect him to move from the DC area, where he lived nearly his entire adult life and still has family there. He said they were escaping the cold. The price he paid for the small 1,000-sq.ft. place is close to 1/2-M, not a lot less than his very nice and much larger home in MD.
I will pay him a visit in a few months. I would never thought of living in coastal CA, the prime reason being the horrible traffic. Where his new home is, I guess the local traffic may not be bad, but to go anywhere would take you to the crowded freeway, and it would drive me nuts. But I guess my friend is used to traffic around the Beltway. It is all about what you are accustomed to.