How about Elk Grove? (Fresno, Sacramento: sale, houses, job market)

[zepp]

I live in Elk Grove and love it. There are different parts of the city, like others. Some have been hit hard by forclosures (you could get a great deal), while where I live in East Elk Grove, by Wilton, we hardly have any houses for sale in the neighborhood. Do your research with schools (the ones with the higher scores will be the better neighborhoods). There are pockets of good and bad neighborhoods. As far as if you plan on commuting, it's about 20 minutes no traffic to downtown from Elk grove, but the 99 is always pretty congested so it might take you 30-35. You could take side streets too. For $500,000 now you'll get a very large, nice house. You could spend less and get something really nice. If you want more info, feel free to ask.

[suzie02]

Originally Posted by Majin

Just make sure you stay clear of elk grove.

Why?

[oregonn8v]

Originally Posted by Majin

Just make sure you stay clear of elk grove.

Majin:

I appreciate everyone's advice and opinion. But when you make a statement like this without providing any reasoning I have nothing factual to work with.

Can you provide some reasoning behind your statement? Is it a gut feeling you have? Do you know of issues in Elk Grove that I should be concerned with? Are alien abductions up 63% over other parts of Sacramento?

Help me out here.

Thanks.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by oregonn8v

Are alien abductions up 63% over other parts of Sacramento?

That's it. Majin was abducted, they sucked his brains out, filled him full of negatives and returned him to C-D.

How'd you guess?

[Phil Minor]

For whatever its worth you are at a price point where it might still make sense to actually hold off buying in Sacramento.

There was an article in the paper today talking about how the median price is up in Sacramento, but there is some evidence to suggest that is a result less of housing prices rebounding, than a shift in the composition of sales. There are fewer subprime homes being foreclosed upon and more high end homes that are going into foreclosure.

Region's home prices moved upward in May - Sacramento Business, Housing Market News | Sacramento Bee

There is much better in depth discussion of it here. Make sure you use the tab on the top right corner to enlarge the scribd link so you can actually read it.

Sacramento Real Estate Statistics: T2 Partners On The Sacramento Housing Market

Average Buyer has some posts also showing the foreclosures are notice of defaults are increasing in Folsom and El Dorado Hills suggesting that T2 partners hypothesis is correct and that what is driving the change in the median isn't the market recovering as much as the composition of the market changing. Compartively fewer subprime foreclosures and more high end foreclosures.

Average Buyer: Folsom & El Dorado Hills Historical Sale Data

Average Buyer: Housing Market Stress Indicators - Folsom & El Dorado Hills


In short if you are in position to buy in Sacramento in a year or two instead of today. You may be able to find something you like in Folsom or El Dorado Hills instead of just in Elk Grove.

[jopes]

ELk Grove is turning into the Oak park of Sac. crime is going way up. My 18 year old neice and her BF were both robbed by gun point on the night of her SR ball, Then not a week later walgreens was held up by 4 men and robbed not a half mile from my inlaws house.

Not saying all parts of Elk Grove are bad, but I honestly think any place in the country where there is high unemployment your going to see higher crime. Isn't Elk Grove around 80k people now?

don't get me wrong, Just about anything you need will be fairly close by which is nice.

[Rocketir]

Before making that major of a decision I would get some real life expierence. Take a week off and rent a hotel and check out the community and the drive to work to make sure it works for you. I would also be looking in Folsom and checking to see if the light rail would work for you.

[NewToCA]

Originally Posted by Rocketir

Before making that major of a decision I would get some real life expierence. Take a week off and rent a hotel and check out the community and the drive to work to make sure it works for you. I would also be looking in Folsom and checking to see if the light rail would work for you.

While I agree with the suggestion to stay a little while and look around Elk Grove, I think the Folsom idea is a bit of a stretch. When looking at the original poster's requirements, Folsom seems to be a bit far out and expensive, relative to their needs.

[Phil Minor]

These are the most recent Uniform FBI Violent Crime reports that I could find.

In 2008, Elk Grove with a reported population of 139,395, had 660 incidents (that is a rate of about 1 violent incident for every 211 people). Now compare that with Sacramento which had a reported population of 467,065 and 4667 incidents (that is a rate of about 1 violent incident for every 100 people). In short you are more than twice as likely to face violent incident in the City of Sacramento than in the City of Elk Grove.

Table 4 - Alabama through California

Now I suspect anywhere in the region where homes are going for 500k, the rate of crime is going to be substantially below the average rates of crime for their regions. I imagine if you are living in the Pocket Area, the rate of violent crime is probably less than in Meadowview. Similarly I imagine that if you are living in the parts of Elk Grove where the homes are selling for 500K, the rates of violent crime in those areas will be less than in the parts of Elk Grove where homes are selling for substantially cheaper.

One thing I am quite confident about is that violent crime in the parts of Elk Grove where homes are selling for 500k are going to be substantially less than in Oak Park.

[Majin]

Hey Phil I've been watching your posts and I find it quite funny that every time you make a statement you source your data. I have never seen anybody post on forums so thorough as source their claims in every single post.

In fact, most people do the exact opposite and make wild and random claims and disappear into the night whenever another poster calls them out and ask them to back up their statements with actual facts.