Moving to Sacramento. Need help finding perfect area! (Granite Bay, El Dorado Hills: home, schools)

[Alicia64]

I'm not sure of the zip code for Arden Park. We lived one street over from Arden Park proper and the zip was 95864. That's likely it.

[looking4change]

What about Walnut Grove, it is a small rural town off the Sac River. Like a little Mayberry. People wave, very safe, everyone knows everyone kind of town.

[ky4444]

I am very interested in hearing more about Arden Park.

We are considering relocating our young family from Seattle to the Sac area and I have been primarily looking (online) at houses in Granite Bay, Folsom, West Roseville, Rocklin and EDH.

My husband's job may be in downtown so the prospect of him having a shorter commute is appealing. What makes Arden Park so great?

[zen_klown]

Attached is an education map of the Sacramento Region. What you will notice is that area on the North Bank of the American River, has one of the higher concentrations of highly skilled folks in the Sacramento region.

STI: ERsys - Sacramento, CA (Skills)

Arden Park, Arden Oaks, Campus Commons, Willhaggin are all fairly close to CSUS and a lot of the professors who teach at CSUS have decided to live in these neighborhoods.

Additionally you have pockets of very exclusive homes. When they were Govenors, both Pete Wilson, and George Dukemejian lived on Lake Willhaggin Drive. You can find multi-million dollar homes backing the American River in these neighborhoods. Its an area where you can find big homes on big lots. Off of Hawthorne Rd for instance, you can still find homes where people are boarding horses, next to their guest houses.

You are close to several country clubs. The Arden Hills Country Club where Sherm Shavor coached Mark Spitz and Debbie Meyers to Olympic Glory is off Fair Oaks Blvd. The Sacramento regions most established country club, the Del Paso Country Club isn't too far away.

In that area, the local public schools are very strong, plus you are close to some of the better private schools in the region. The better private prep schools are also in this region: Sacramento Country Day School, Jesuit, St. Francis.

See the map of public schools by test score here. You will need to click a few times to pull up the Sacramento region.

California School Performance Maps

Most of Sacramento's prominent developers/builders have homes in this region. The Benvenutti family has huge home off Crocker Drive. Several members of the Tsakopoulos family have homes in Arden Oaks. Joyce Teel, who own Raley's supermarkets has huge home facing the American River off River Oak Way. Doug Ose, the multi-millionare developer/former congressman was sending his daughter to Arden Intermediate School and when he retired from congress spent some time as the yard duty at the school.

If you were working in Roseville or Folsom, Granite Bay is closer and also an excellent neighborhood, but if you are working downtown, that area North of the American River has a lot of advantages as well and is much closer to downtown.

[Alicia64]

Having lived in Arden Park and directly next to it, I can tell you: you'll be happy you checked it out.

The schools are A+.

It's 10 mins. on the freeway from downtown.

It's buy cool shopping: Lohnmann's Center, the Pavillions, Ettore's Bakery (!).

The homes themselves are a mix of Mayberry homes and larger homes. One neighborhood over and it gets super ritzy.

Just guessing that it's very low crime. Nice people. Plus a nice park with a community pool in the middle of it all.

Second place to look if your husband works downtown: Fair Oaks. We live in FO and my husband really likes taking Light Rail to work. Plus there are good schools in Fair Oaks. But be careful to make sure that the house you buy feeds into the Bella Vista High School which is considered one of the best in the region.

One of my friends who only lives a couple of blocks away doesn't feed into Bella Vista and is very bummed about it.

Alicia

[Alicia64]

I meant: it's by cool shopping.

One other suggestion: Gold River. Gold River is right off Hwy. 50. Some homes are large and expensive and some are closer to $400. Safe, nice parks within, great schools. Gold River feeds into Rio Americano High School.

Again one of the best in the region, if not the best, but known for designer drug use by the kids. Sadly, a teen driver seems to kill a car full of teens every year from Rio and the kids were using or drinking.

My husband was saying this and I said, "that happens at any HS" and he said, "it seems to happen more at Rio." He grew up in the region so I semi-trust his thoughts.

Alicia

[ky4444]

Arden does sound really nice. In addition to good schools, I would love for our kids to have a community pool, which is what both my husband and I had in growing up in the Bay Area.

Quick questions, I noticed that many of the houses I looked at online of Arden were built between 1940s-1975s (at least in our price range) -- are there a lot of empty nesters living in those areas? We definitely want a family oriented neighborhood which is why we were focusing our search in the Folsom, Granite Bay, Rocklin, etc areas.

Thank you again for your help.

[zen_klown]

The people who live in the area north of the American River, tend to like it and don't want to leave. This means that there are a lot of empty nesters in that neighborhood. During the housing boom, the area got so pricey, that a lot of the families with kids couldn't afford to buy into the neighborhood, so the enrollment a lot of the schools started to shrink.

The situation is improving now, but overall prices have fallen less in these neighborhoods than in the Sacramento region as a whole. So in terms of neighborhoods with lots of new families, you probably would find more of that in Granite Bay or Folsom. The trade off is the commute from Granite Bay or Folsom to downtown. Traffic on both 80 or 50 to downtown can be unpleasant and public transportation via busses and light rail is much worse.

[mingalabaa]

Originally Posted by aaa12345

I vote for davis. with 1M you can get a pretty nice house there with good schools and safe community

Natomas is about 20-25 minutes from Davis. Educated surroundings, nice restaurants.

[moovin]

I vote for Granite Bay. You will get the least amount of home there than in any other area around Sacramento - and that is because it's the most desirable. The schools, elementary through HS are in the top 10% of all Ca schools. Other areas have equally good schools but GB retains its property values better and overall it's just slightly more affluent. There isn't much to do in GB except raise kids and that's why a lot of people move there.

You will find that the people in the areas of GB, Roseville, Rocklin, Folsom, EDH are 99.99% White (I'm exaggerating). I don't particularly like it and I'm White but I like the area(s) because my neighbors keep up their property, are very friendly, and are school and community focused.