Living in a zip in San Diego? Well, you have certainly chosen the right time to move here if you are a recent arrival. You might wonder how the general decline in real estate prices can be good for you, but the fact is if you had moved here a few years earlier, you might not have been able to afford a home at all. The increase in home values was so marked during the first half of the century that people would buy a house and have nothing left over for a wall mounted boiler or any other type of home improvement.

Since the real estate crash in 2005, San Diego's house prices have started to get back to normal, as investors have abandoned their properties and moved on. That means you can now find affordable housing in the city, with all the perks that come with living here. There are a wide range of activities, and of course the economy is still as solid here as ever (if you're not in the real estate business of course). In fact, this is one of the few locations in the United States where drop through valves for various manufacturing sectors are still in demand.

That's right, manufacturing is still a huge part of the San Diego economy, ahead even of the tourism that the city is best known for on a wider scale. The biggest player is the high tech industry, headed by companies such as Qualcomm. The company designs and builds computer chips which are used in everything from laptops to horse waterers. Software company Websense Inc is also headquartered in San Diego, along with 400 biotechnology companies.

San Diego also holds the title of the only city on the West Coast to include a shipbuilding and submarine building facility. The United States Navy has always had a huge presence in San Diego. In fact, it is the number one contributor to the economy as a whole. That made the city the ideal place to build up the naval defenses on the west coast. There are dozens of shipyards protected by fire sleeves and other disaster prevention methods. They turn out some of the highest priority maritime weaponry that the country has in operation today.

As we allude to earlier, and as most people already know, tourism is the third of the big industries driving the economy here in San Diego. The San Diego zoo is the most famous on the continent, thanks in large part to developer's efforts at breeding programs and modernizing exhibits. It's one of the only places in the world where you can watch a panda bear born in captivity chewing on a sheave of bamboo.