A proper Sunday roast is a simple thing. Beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, gravy that's actually made from drippings. It shouldn't be this hard to find.
I grew up with it. Every Sunday, without fail. And look, I'm not saying San Diego owes me a carvery. But I've been here long enough, twenty years selling real estate, and I still haven't found a place that does it right. There are a few gastropubs around town that get close. Close isn't the same thing though, is it.
This is going to sound like a weird pivot, but bear with me. I was showing a buyer a unit at Riverwalk last month, right there off Camino de la Reina. Nice complex, good bones, HOA that doesn't make your eyes water. And we ended up talking about what the area's missing. Not housing stock. Restaurants. Specifically, the kind of neighbourhood spot where you'd go every weekend without thinking twice.
Mission Valley has more rooftops than ever. Thousands of new units delivered in the last few years, thousands more in the pipeline. The retail and dining hasn't caught up. That gap between residential density and the stuff that makes a neighbourhood feel like a neighbourhood is real. If you're an investor, that's worth paying attention to. Retail tenants follow density, and the density is already here.
My old financial planning brain kicks in on things like this. Population growth in a corridor, underserved commercial demand, rising foot traffic near the trolley stations. These are the same fundamentals I used to build projections around, just in a different wrapper.
For buyers, I'd say the same thing differently. You're not just buying a flat. You're buying into what that area becomes over the next five to ten years. Mission Valley in 2019 and Mission Valley today are barely the same place. The trajectory matters more than the snapshot.
So yes, I'm still looking for my Sunday roast. Somewhere with a proper joint of beef and potatoes that have actually seen the inside of an oven. If you know a spot near Friars Road, I'm all ears.
And if you're looking at Mission Valley for different reasons, I can help with that bit too.