Living in Temecula Ca | Pros and Cons | Best Neighborhoods

Today we are going to be talking about the best things about living in Temecula and the worst things about living in Temecula and we are starting right now.

Hi, I’m Jessica Genung and I’m a local Realtor here in the Temecula Valley with Active Realty.  I’m married to Chris, he is also a Realtor, and we work as a team.  We have 2 boys ages 2 and 4 (point left ) and a Border Terrier Zoe (point right).  Thanks for checking out my channel which we created to help those of you considering moving to our area learn more about it.  

So let’s get right to it.  Temecula is an awesome place to live and has become a very desirable place to move. The pros far outweigh the cons, don’t get me wrong.  But no place is perfect and it’s important to have all the facts when considering making a move.  Let’s start with the bad news first.  Here are some of the worst things about living in Temecula.  

The first CON for living in Temecula is that it is the most expensive city in Southwest Riverside County to buy a home.  The market has decided that Temecula is the most desirable city in the area to live. As of the latest stats available, for the month ending April 2020, the average price of a Single Family Home (SFH) in Temecula was $580k compared to $542k in Murrieta and $404k in Menifee. There is a premium to pay to live in Temecula.  

The next CON for living in Temecula is that it is sort of “land of the HOAs” and “HOA” is short for Homeowner Association if you happen to not be familiar with that term.  Most homes in the city are part of a HOA which comes with an added monthly expense.  The fact a neighborhood has HOA could also be a PRO depending on how you look at it.  Other than the obvious amenities that an HOA can offer to a community like pools, parks, lush landscaping and so forth, an HOA can also help hold your neighbors accountable to a high standard of keeping homes and yards up to par by issuing violations.  

A well run HOA can insure that your next door neighbor will not be able to paint their house lime green or park a bunch of cars on the front lawn or leave their christmas lights up till July etc.  Nobody wants to look at that.  But if you don’t want the added expense of an HOA or to be held accountable to them, then you might want to consider the neighboring town of Murrieta. Murrieta has more neighborhoods without HOAs.  Temecula has few neighborhoods without HOAs, but Murrieta has more overall.  

One last thing before we move on, there are many neighborhoods that do not have an HOA, but LOOK LIKE they do. For example, there are quite a few a great neighborhoods like Copper Canyon in Murrieta where most folks clearly have a high level of pride of ownership in their home and yard. Check out my Copper Canyon video right here (point up).

Real quick, if you are considering making a move to our area we would love to hear from you.  Even if you are as long as a year out from making your big move, we would love to schedule a zoom chat or phone call with you and answer any questions you have about moving to our area.  We can also get you started on a property search as well.  Call, text, email, we love to hear from you.  Also, don’t’ forget to subscribe because we post a new video every week telling you everything you need to know about moving here.  Back to our topic:)

The last CON that we are going to be discussing has to do with Temecula becoming such a popular place to move. Most of the land has already been developed and if you are interested in New Construction, options are very very limited right now.  Not only are they very limited, but the new construction that is available is pretty dang expensive. I’ll give you an example.  

Lennar has a community called Marbella which is located in a great South Temecula location, but it is currently priced starting in the mid $600,000s and mid $700,000s for the larger models and that would be before upgrading your flooring, etc.  This video and that pricing is as of early May 2020. 

Let’s dig into that price a little more. I really like Lennar and have been working with clients lately in a Lennar development in Menifee called Heritage Lake.  Menifee is 2 towns north of Temecula. So you have Temecula as the most southern city, then Murrieta, and north of Murrieta you have Menifee.  The prices in Heritage Lake start in the mid 300,000s and go to the high $400,000.  

One reason for the big pricing difference is there is more undeveloped land available in Menifee. This translates to more new construction options, more builders and communities to choose from.  

The good news is there is a new master planned construction community coming soon to Temecula.  It will be called Sommers Bend.  There is not very much information out yet about this new community, but here is what we know so far: it is scheduled to break ground this summer and will consist of 12 new home collections.  

Sommers Bend plans to build a new 10 mile trail system, a 20+ acre sports park, 181 acres of preserved open space and an ALL ages clubhouse. I’ll repeat ALL ages and that will make more sense in a minute. The ALL ages clubhouse will contain resort style lap pools, fitness rooms, a kitchen, bar and coffee kiosk, bbq and picnic tables, event space and an event lawn, whew, that’s a lot! 

There will also be a separate clubhouse for those 55 and older with their own pool and spa, terrace and fire pits, bocce ball, BBQ area, and our latest favorite: pickle ball!  Pickleball is not just for older people, but Sommers Bend includes it in the 55 and older amenities list.

It looks like it’s going to be fairly condensed living with the largest lots going up to only 5,500 sq ft.  This size of lot would be considered medium/small in our area.  I just got an email announcing the initial builders and they will be: Woodside Homes, Richmond American, & Taylor Morrison. I will keep you updated of course as we learn more about this up and coming community.   

Lets move on to more PROs about moving to Temecula.  

One of the best reasons to move to Temecula, is that it’s in Southern California and our area is known for a mild climate. I think about 75% of the year the weather is near perfection.  We don’t get snow at all. Just a little bit of rain here and there. We are not particularly humid. We don’t have many bugs or mosquitos so you can enjoy the outdoors, no need for screened in porches or pools, that sort of thing.  In our Temecula and Murrieta area, we don’t get Las Vegas or Phoenix hot in the summer.  We do have very warm summers though so if you want some tips on how to deal with the summer heat, check out my video called Top 5 reasons to move to Temecula which I will link at the end of the video.  Chris wants me to be sure to mention the Whole House Fan part of that video. Anyway, I have an entire segment in that video telling you how to best deal with the summer heat.

Besides the climate, the awesome Southern California location cannot be beat.  Temecula is located in the middle of San Diego, Orange County, and the Palm Springs Desert area.  The beach, mountains, desert, several amusement parks are all a short one to one and a half hour drive from Temecula. All of those make for easy day trips.  For more ideas of fun things to do that are within this short drive, I go into more detail about it in the video I was mentioning Top 5 Reasons to move to Temecula.  

The next great reason for living in Temecula is that there is a lot of investment taking place here right now.  Like I mentioned previously about the new Sommers Bend Master Planned Community that is coming soon, there is also lots of development happening out in Temecula Wine Country. Wineries have been adding hotels and building new tasting rooms, Old Town Temecula has been growing and Pechanga Resort and Casino recently expanded by adding another hotel tower, a new pool area, and event center which was a several hundred million dollar project.  I believe all of this business investment is what has spurred property values to rise as they have been in Temecula for over a decade.  

Beautiful scenery, the high ranking Temecula Unified School District, a friendly community are more great perks to living in Temecula.  But we’ll save those topics for another video in the interest of time.  Thanks as always for watching my video and let me know what PROS or CONS I missed!  Till next time, bye!