Meet John Bertsch

Why home matters to me

I'm John Bertsch, a San Diego Realtor with Coldwell Banker West, and before I sold homes I built and reworked them, in Mission Hills, Hillcrest and North Park.

Home means something profound to me. It's not just walls and a roof (although those help!). Homes are repositories of emotions and memories, the places where we should feel the safest, the most at ease and able to be our true selves. So buying or selling one isn't only a transaction to me. It's my chance to guide and accompany you through one of the biggest moves of your life. The greatest compliment I've ever received is that my clients felt they had a true companion at their side.

From a West Texas sketchbook to San Diego's streets

I grew up in Seminole, Texas, a speck of a town of 5,007 people (according to the sign at the edge of town) where the only real estate that changed hands was farmland. It was flat and a little desolate, so I drew my own town, with diagonal boulevards, skyscrapers, hardware stores and a "fancy" restaurant I named the Golden Chandelier. From sixth grade on, I wanted to design places.

A high school career test said I belonged in public relations, and I believed it for a few semesters at the University of Texas at Austin. Then I found my way back. I earned a bachelor's degree in history and a Master's in Architectural Studies with a specialty in urban design. My thesis was among the first housing designs for gay and lesbian households: real floor plans and elevations at a time when I could find nothing published on the subject.

A series of happy accidents brought me to San Diego, and within a couple of years I was building. With Safdie Rabines Architects, who lived five houses away, I built two contemporary homes on a canyon lot on W. Lewis Street in Mission Hills, which Architect magazine featured. That project taught me something I hadn't expected: most people can't picture something different from what's already there. That ability came naturally to me, and it still shapes how I help clients today.

Next came Cairo, a 16-unit live/work building on Park Boulevard. Construction dragged, the Great Recession hit before it was finished, and I chased a falling market all the way down. The building turned out handsome. I came out of it utterly humbled.

I discovered I wasn't so brilliant after all.

I rebuilt by teaching. I lectured at Woodbury School of Architecture to architects who wanted to become developers, teaching modules on ethics and investor relationships, and I served on student design juries at the NewSchool of Architecture. Then, in 2010, at the bottom of the recession, I turned an old ATM hut in Mission Hills into Meshuggah Shack, a walk-up coffee bar. I pulled my first shot of espresso the day before we opened. The first 18 months were a struggle, but the neighborhood embraced it, and it helped turn Mission Hills' little business district into the beating heart of the area. The San Diego Architectural Foundation gave it an Orchid Award in 2011. I ran the Shack for a decade, sold it at the end of 2019, and moved into what I'd been circling for years: helping people buy and sell homes.

How I work with buyers and sellers

What I see that others miss

I also look for creative ways to buy in a pricey market, like a purchase partnership with close friends. See my guides to Mission Hills, Hillcrest, North Park, South Park and University Heights, the neighborhoods I know best.

Credentials and recognition

Fun facts about John

Questions about John