Relocating from Santa Cruz to Placerville Foothills...Wondering (Sacramento, Orange: real estate, houses)

[carpentershomeschool]

Hi,
We are a homeschooling family with 6 children and another on her way soon. We currently live in Santa Cruz and like it a lot. We have been here for 13 years and live in a very nice neighborhood. But we are outgrowing our house and see the opportunity to move to property in Placerville area. We are looking at houses with land (5 acres or so) in the Placerville/Shingle Springs area. Since we have always lived in neighborhoods, we are concerned about the amount of work living in the country requires with our large family, however, we love the idea of having a more slower lifestyle and a peaceful, serene environment. My husband would work out of Fair Oaks and we are trying to keep the commute to 30 min. or so. We had some questions. Any advice would be much appreciated.
1. Are there many large homeschooling families in Placerville area? Any contacts? 4-H?
2. For those that have lived in both neighborhood and country, what are the pros and cons that you have found?
3. Can you list any "hidden" expenses we might have for living in the country that we might not be aware of if we were on a well, septic, and propane? I'd like to know what it costs to live in the country vs. city areas since I have no idea. We don't use an A/C by the way in Santa Cruz, so I have no idea what that costs in the summer. We want to have a pool too so please include any costs of that.

Anything else you can think of would be much appreciated!
Thanks, Shannon

[Jimbo15]

If you are trying to keep the commute to less than a half hour to Fair Oaks, you might want to look more at Cameron Park and Shingle Springs than Placerville. Placerville is pretty, but its probably more than 30 miles to Fair Oaks and when you throw in traffic across the Sunrise Bridge, you aren't going to make it in under a half hour.

But you might find some thing in Shingle Springs or Cameron Park that might work.

For information about 4H in Placer County, try here.

Placer-Nevada Counties - Placer County 4H Newsletter (http://ceplacer.ucdavis.edu/newsletterfiles/newsletter49.htm - broken link)

If you are interested in country living, where you would probably get some really good information is at a local horse show. At a local horse show you will meet a lot of people who own 5 acre plots and they can help break down the costs and what are the considerations of things to look for. Often the shows are sponsored by people who sell stuff to horse people, horse trailer companies, real estate agents who specialise in horse property (meaning 5 acre + property). The weakness of this site as far as you are concerned is that it has too many people who live in the urban and suburban parts of the Sacramento region and not enough people who live in the more rural parts of the region. Thing you can do to get more out of this site would be to search the archives for stuff on Placerville, Cameron Park, Shingle Springs and possibly horse property. You also might check back several times in the next week or so to see if anyone from a more rural area actually posts on this thread.

You can find some of the horse shows in this area here.

MURIETA EQUESTRIAN CENTER Schedule (http://www.murietaequestriancenter.com/calndrcntcs01xx.shtml - broken link)

You might also look into horse property in either Orangevale or Carmichael. You can find larger properties off California and Garfield Avenues in Carmichael and again off Oak Ave in Orangevale. This would be a lot closer to where your husband works in Fair Oaks.

[elyess77]

We are also considering moving to Placerville and would like some land as well. My husband would be working in Mather/Rancho Cordova - which is basically right across hwy 50 from Fair Oaks. I am a little more optimistic about the commute than Jimbo15 (although maybe Jimbo15 has personal experince with this drive? and in that case his opinion would certainly trump my hopeful guess). I feel like most of the traffic begins to build up closer to the city, so I think your husband would only hit the tail end of the traffic, if that. And I also assumed that the Sunrise bridge (which I totally agree with Jimbo15 can be a bit of a pain in the b_tt) traffic would be going opposite to what your husband would be driving (heading to the frwy in the am and into fair oaks in the pm). Maybe another poster could shed some light on this...

Best of luck!

[edwardius]

Google shows that its 32.3 miles from Placerville to Rancho Cordova and 30.9 miles from Placerville to Fair Oaks. That also assumes you aren't living to far from where Google defines the center of these towns. Assuming both of you get horse property, you probably will be living outside of town and again that will add to your commute.

I infrequently go to dinner at a friends in Placerville. Generally I have had to deal with traffic until at least El Dorado Hills and then again usually in Placerville itself because of the stoplight in Placerville. I haven't done that trip much in the morning rush hour, but I would allow for between 35 and 40 minutes and probably more on Friday nights when you have a lot of people going up to Tahoe, Apple Hill etc for the weekend.

If you are working near Mather and looking for horse property, you might have better commuting options if you looked at either Sloughhouse, Wilton or the areas between those places off Dillard Road. From those areas there are several different routes to Mather, so there are several different ways to avoid traffic.