Neighborhoods in Temecula (San Diego, Vista, Murrieta: house, schools, income)

[Webrah]

We are relocating to Temecula in the next few months. We have a 3 year old child. Looking for a breakdown of the vibe of the different neighborhoods in Temecula. We are looking for excellent school system, not a golf course community, views, safe, easy to commute to SD, well easier....any areas to avoid, any progressive community areas?
Thanks!

[forzalugano]

Sought after schools are Great Oaks HS and also Murrieta Vista as well. On that note there is not a bad part of Temecula, Harveston, Crown Hill, Morgan Hill, Paseo del Sol all great communities.

RedHawk and Wolf are in the Great Oaks district and both very nice, Vail too I believe.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by Webrah

We are relocating to Temecula in the next few months. We have a 3 year old child. Looking for a breakdown of the vibe of the different neighborhoods in Temecula. We are looking for excellent school system, not a golf course community, views, safe, easy to commute to SD, well easier....any areas to avoid, any progressive community areas?
Thanks!

Commute to SD will not be easy from Temecula.

[Fess_2]

expatca ..what do you mean the commute to SD will not be easy. Are you referring to weekdays or in general...?

[Think (Freedom)]

Commuting to SD will take you a while but I think it’s doable. I used to live in murrieta and drove down to San Diego regularly. Be prepared to sit in traffic, but then again that’s anywhere in SoCal.

[shmoov_groovzsd]

Depending on where in SD you are commuting from will factor in the weekday commute.

We sold our home in San Diego and moved into what was our 2nd home in Murrieta recently. My spouse can work remotely, but when she does travel to UTC, on a typical day its 1:30 going to and about 1:45 coming back for the typicaly 9-5ish commute.

A good chunk of that commute time is simply trying to get in/out of UTC area. One of the big reasons we sold the house we had in San Diego was because it was literally taking her over an hour to drive on the 805 south to come home which was ~20 miles.
Its funny how it happened over the course of 7 years. There were times in the beginning where it was just a 'bad day' commuting then those days became more frequent. Up until the last two years it just never improved and saw the writing on the wall.

We bought the Murrieta home as an investment property during the downturn and having been here for a couple of months can attest to it being a great community to live in. The people, community vibe and amenities are really all here.
While it is more "affordable" by standards in San Diego, one really interesting observation is that many of my neighbors have one spouse working whereas any colleagues would never be in that situation in San Diego. Presumably because of the high cost of housing requiring dual income.

In the long term however, I dont see the commute getting much better along the 15 either as development is getting pushed out to areas like Fallbrook.