Is Carmichael a nice place to live? (Sacramento, Stockton: real estate, apartment complexes)

[fairytalelover]

My real estate agent is showing my father some houses for us (we are in L.A) in Carmichael, even though we are more interested in Roseville. But what is Carmichael like? Does it suck?

[CityGirl72]

Some areas of Carmichael are REALLY nice! And it has the San Juan School district which is pretty darn good! Just make sure you pick a good part, it does have a few not so great areas...but other wise it's a good affordable choice

Roseville is better - but will cost more than Carmichael

[wburg]

Carmichael is an unincorporated suburb in Sacramento County. It was originally a farming community. Pretty nice place, for the most part. It's not a happening, urban kind of place (neither is Roseville) but rather a pleasant suburban community--although if you don't find suburban communities pleasant, you won't like it (neither will you like Roseville.)

[KidBlue]

I personally like Carmichael better than Roseville because it is older and has many more trees and more character (IMHO). There's a wonderful park in the center. To me it has more character, but if you like newer neighborhoods, you would like Roseville better. The schools are very good in Carmichael and the crime rate is relatively low for the Sacramento area. If you can afford Fair Oaks, the area is even nicer.

[MamaToThree]

Originally Posted by KidBlue

I personally like Carmichael better than Roseville because it is older and has many more trees and more character (IMHO). There's a wonderful park in the center. To me it has more character, but if you like newer neighborhoods, you would like Roseville better. The schools are very good in Carmichael and the crime rate is relatively low for the Sacramento area. If you can afford Fair Oaks, the area is even nicer.

I agree. Carmichael and Fair Oaks are two of the nicest areas in Sac, if you ask me. There are some run down areas in Carmichael, but you have that in any town. What area of Carmichael are you looking at? The homes behind Del Campo high school are really nice (between Manzanita, Winding Way, Dewey, and Madison).

[duong]

Hi,

I'm thinking about buying a house around the Mira Loma high school. Appreicate any advice that you could give.

Regards,
Duong

[tande1n5]

The main difference between Carmichael and Roseville, although both suburban, is that Carmichael was developed before wall to wall tracts were very viable in Sacramento, because it was so much smaller of a town. Thus, most of Sac's older suburbs are somewhat rural for "inner ring suburban" standards. Now that Sacramento is more on par with the rest of CA's cities, tract it is.

[zen_klown]

In that part of Carmichael, you are buying into the neighborhood schools. If there is a home you are interested in, I would look up what schools your kid would be assigned to here.

SJUSD Schools

Then I would look at the test scores for the those schools here.

County List of Schools

Then you can click on the stats for a school you are interested including demographic information for the neighborhood here. It will tell you the race and the ethnicity of the folks in the neighborhood as well as the average parental educational attainment as well as how many people are getting free lunches.

School Demographic Characteristics

Mira Loma is unusual in the Sacramento Region for having an IB program. If you don't know what that is read about it here. But basically there are a lot of college level courses taught at the school.

International Baccalaureate


You might find this map a useful way to compare test scores in the Sacramento region. You will have to click on Sacramento a couple of times to see the results.
California School Performance Maps


You might also be interested in the skills/income and ethnicity maps here.

STI: ERsys - Sacramento, CA (Skills)

[duong]

Hi Zen,

Thank you very much for the info. Yes, we'd buy in because of the school, but my most concern is about the crime rate. The IB program is a pretty good one, and my daughter signed up for it. Do you know if it's safe around that area? I drove around the school a few times, and it looked fine to me.

Regards,
Duong

[zen_klown]

In general the neighborhood is actually pretty safe and mostly owner occupied. In the map on the link, there is a park mislabled Renfree Park which for a while had a problems with homosexuals having anonymous sex, but supposedly that has been cleaned up. Also on the other side of the freeway, on Watt Ave, one can find streetwalkers. But, the freeway and Auburn Blvd (which is fairly busy street) act like neighborhood boundaries and I don't think they will actual pose practical problems for you.

West of Watt Ave, both Auburn blvd and Edison become much less desireable neighborhoods. West of Watt Avenue, there are a lot of Apartment complexes and west of Watt Avenue on Auburn Blvd there is a mobile home complex.

Attached is a crime mapping tool. I found it best, to screen by specific crimes because it only shows the 100 most recent crimes.

Sacramento Bee CrimeMapper

The San Juan Unified School District has an open enrollment policy. Which means that you don't need to live in the attendence district of the school you are interested in attending, but if you live outside the schools attendence zone, you are responsible for getting your child to school.

If you wanted to buy into a better neighborhood, say closer to the American River, you could still send your daughter to the program.

Also there are other IB programs in the Sacramento region. You can read about them here and if you have specific questions about the neighborhoods surrounding them versus Mira Loma, I am willing to give you some feedback.

I am assuming by your handle that you are Asian. In the Sacramento Magazine article, they say that John F. Kennedy High School is now offering an IB program. JFK High School is located in neighborhood referred to locally as both Greenhaven and the Pocket Area. That neighborhood has one of the higher densities of highly educated Asian folks in the Sacramento region. Stockton Blvd has probably the biggest collection of Asian stores and restaurants in the Sacramento region. The Pocket neighborhood, is near those stores, but still far enough from Stockton Blvd to be away from the some of the problems associated with Stockton Blvd (mainly street prostitution at night).

You might prefer the Pocket Area to the area surrounding Mira Loma. At Mira Loma, your daughter won't be the only Asian girl in the program, but at Kennedy, there will be a lot more Asians. In the neighborhood around Mira Loma, there isn't a lot of Pho shops, there aren't a lot of asian grocery stores. In the Pocket Area, you don't have to drive so far to find that. In the Pocket Area, if your daughter gets a boyfriend, he is more likely to be Asian. I don't know how important any of that is to you, but if it is an issue, I would look at the Pocket Area and at Kennedy.

Rating the High Schools - Sacramento Magazine - August 2008 - Sacramento, California