Last month a buyer I was working with put in an offer on a two-bedroom in the Watermark building in Mission Valley. Good unit, solid HOA, walkable to everything. They were laser-focused on getting the seller to come down 15K on the purchase price. Fair enough. But they hadn't looked closely at the HOA special assessment that was likely coming in 2026, or the fact that their lender's rate lock was about to expire.
The offer price gets all the attention. It shouldn't.
Your real number is what you're paying per month, total, for the next five to seven years. That includes your rate, your property taxes (which in San Diego get reassessed at purchase), your HOA, your insurance, and whatever deferred maintenance the inspection turns up. I spent years as a financial planner before I got into real estate, and the biggest mistake I see buyers make is treating a home purchase like a single transaction instead of a cash flow decision.
Here's what that looks like in practice. Two identical condos in Mission Valley, both listed at 550K. One has a $400/month HOA with healthy reserves. The other has a $280/month HOA that hasn't done a reserve study in four years. Buyers flock to the lower HOA. I'd rather you pay the higher one. That gap is going to close, and it's going to close all at once, probably with a special assessment north of 10K.
Same logic applies to rate buydowns. I've seen buyers this spring spend so much energy negotiating 5K off the price while ignoring a seller credit that could buy their rate down a quarter point. On a 30-year loan, that quarter point saves you roughly three times what the price reduction did. The MLS data doesn't show you that. Your monthly budget does.
So before you write an offer, I want you to build a simple spreadsheet. Purchase price, down payment, estimated rate, taxes, HOA, insurance. Run it monthly. Then run it again with the alternative scenario, maybe a higher price but with a seller credit toward the rate. Compare those two columns.
You'll be surprised which "worse" offer actually costs you less money.
What's the monthly number you can sleep with for the next five years? Start there.