Nick and Katie Deponte grew up about 30 minutes away from each other in Southern California — she in Claremont, Calif., at the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, and he in Redlands, Calif., in San Bernardino County.
They didn’t know that until 2019, when they met in Phoenix and discovered they had a mutual childhood friend — one who later told them she should have fixed them up long ago. The Depontes got married in 2023.
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“We always talked about moving back to California to live close to our parents and siblings,” said Mrs. Deponte, 33, a physician’s assistant and educator. “But when our son Graham was born, we knew it takes a village to raise a child, and that motivated us more.”
Mrs. Deponte’s parents, who still live in Claremont, offered to contribute as much as $125,000 for the down payment on a house. “A lot of my friends need help from their parents, too,” she said. “We’re so grateful because we wouldn’t have been able to buy without their help.” She loved growing up in Claremont, a charming town known for its seven affiliated colleges and historic downtown village of shops and restaurants.
“Katie teaches at Claremont and works as a P.A. at a clinic, and I was able to transfer locations to California with my company,” said Mr. Deponte, 35, a sales account manager for fitness center design and equipment. “Now my sister moved here, too, from Huntington Beach, and we have lots of family nearby.”
As they geared up to relocate from Arizona to California, the couple got in touch with Laura Dandoy, an agent with the Real Estate Resource Group in Claremont and a family friend of Mrs. Deponte’s parents. She told them to consider resale value along with their more immediate needs.
“You can’t buy a house just because it’s pretty,” Ms. Dandoy said. “You need to think about the bones of the house and the school district to understand what affects value over the long term.”
The Depontes wanted a house with at least three bedrooms and two bathrooms, as well as some outdoor space for gardening and to accommodate their growing family and their dog, Zoe. Their budget of $800,000 would be tight for that kind of home in the area — the median listing price in Claremont was $1.18 million in September, according to Ms. Dandoy.
“There wasn’t much to see in their price range, so we looked at nearby towns to see if they could find a better match that wasn’t too far away,” she said.
Among those towns were Rancho Cucamonga, a few miles east in San Bernardino County, where the median list price was $914,201 in September; and the smaller Upland, sandwiched right between Rancho Cucamonga and Claremont, where the median list price was $910,970. But the preference remained Claremont.
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