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We are interested in this area because of the short commute for Dh who will be working in downtown area and the great schools. However, the cheapest house that will qualify our kids to go to the following schools is $900K.
1. High School: Rio Americano
2. Middle School: Arden Oak or Sierra Oak
3. Elementary School: Mariemont or Del Dayo
Are these schools that great? Is the area really safe? How's about the area nearby?
We can get almost 2 houses in Rocklin. The schools may not be as great as ones here at Arden Oak or Sierra Oak and probably takes Dh almost 1 hours during rush hours. But Rocklin seems to be alot safer.
So, is Arden Oak and Sierra Oak really worth the high price?
In this region, you aren't going to have problems with personal safety in any neighborhood where housing is selling for $900K plus. So if your budget is 900k, you have a lot of options.
In Arden Park or Mariemont/Gordon Heights, you can still find homes for less than 900k, that would still get you into you into Rio and Mariemont elementary.
If you wanted to send your kids to Del Dayo and Rio Americano, again you can find homes within walking distance of Del Dayo and biking distance to Rio for under $400K.
Rocklin is by no means a bad neighborhood. Most of it is fairly new. It just means that you would face a much longer commute from downtown Sacramento. In terms of safety, I doubt you will find any meaningful differences between Rocklin and any of the neighborhoods I mentioned. These neighborhoods are all too expensive for gang members.
But there are intangibles. Do you want to be spending all of this time in car commuting? Do you want to live within walking to the American River and the American River Bike Trail? Do you think your kids are smart enough where they would benefit from the ability to take a lot of AP classes, to take college classes at Rio or to take college classes at CSUS and have the San Juan Unified School District pick up the tab for them?
There are plenty of people who live and thrive in this region in houses selling for less than 150K. If you can afford to spend more, you have more options.
The housing market is what it is. If you think driving more is worth it, drive more. If you want to get your kids into the neighborhoods we have been discussing, you have a sense of what it costs to live in these neighborhoods.
I live fairly close to Del Dayo School. I really love my neighborhood, my neighbors and the school. Is it worth it to me to live here? Yes. Might other people decide differently? Yes.
In this region, you aren't going to have problems with personal safety in any neighborhood where housing is selling for $900K plus. So if your budget is 900k, you have a lot of options.
In Arden Park or Mariemont/Gordon Heights, you can still find homes for less than 900k, that would still get you into you into Rio and Mariemont elementary.
If you wanted to send your kids to Del Dayo and Rio Americano, again you can find homes within walking distance of Del Dayo and biking distance to Rio for under $400K.
Rocklin is by no means a bad neighborhood. Most of it is fairly new. It just means that you would face a much longer commute from downtown Sacramento. In terms of safety, I doubt you will find any meaningful differences between Rocklin and any of the neighborhoods I mentioned. These neighborhoods are all too expensive for gang members.
But there are intangibles. Do you want to be spending all of this time in car commuting? Do you want to live within walking to the American River and the American River Bike Trail? Do you think your kids are smart enough where they would benefit from the ability to take a lot of AP classes, to take college classes at Rio or to take college classes at CSUS and have the San Juan Unified School District pick up the tab for them?
There are plenty of people who live and thrive in this region in houses selling for less than 150K. If you can afford to spend more, you have more options.
The housing market is what it is. If you think driving more is worth it, drive more. If you want to get your kids into the neighborhoods we have been discussing, you have a sense of what it costs to live in these neighborhoods.
I live fairly close to Del Dayo School. I really love my neighborhood, my neighbors and the school. Is it worth it to me to live here? Yes. Might other people decide differently? Yes.
Thanks for the link on the listings. We are looking for a 4bd house with at least 3000 square feet. We have 2 kids and one more on the way.
Have the school boundaries always been this way? Will it ever change?
Do you feel safe to let you kids walk to schools? Where do you shop for your groceries? Are they in the safe area too?
Do you need the flood insurance in that area? Thank you.
In this region, you aren't going to have problems with personal safety in any neighborhood where housing is selling for $900K plus. So if your budget is 900k, you have a lot of options.
In Arden Park or Mariemont/Gordon Heights, you can still find homes for less than 900k, that would still get you into you into Rio and Mariemont elementary.
If you wanted to send your kids to Del Dayo and Rio Americano, again you can find homes within walking distance of Del Dayo and biking distance to Rio for under $400K.
Rocklin is by no means a bad neighborhood. Most of it is fairly new. It just means that you would face a much longer commute from downtown Sacramento. In terms of safety, I doubt you will find any meaningful differences between Rocklin and any of the neighborhoods I mentioned. These neighborhoods are all too expensive for gang members.
But there are intangibles. Do you want to be spending all of this time in car commuting? Do you want to live within walking to the American River and the American River Bike Trail? Do you think your kids are smart enough where they would benefit from the ability to take a lot of AP classes, to take college classes at Rio or to take college classes at CSUS and have the San Juan Unified School District pick up the tab for them?
There are plenty of people who live and thrive in this region in houses selling for less than 150K. If you can afford to spend more, you have more options.
The housing market is what it is. If you think driving more is worth it, drive more. If you want to get your kids into the neighborhoods we have been discussing, you have a sense of what it costs to live in these neighborhoods.
I live fairly close to Del Dayo School. I really love my neighborhood, my neighbors and the school. Is it worth it to me to live here? Yes. Might other people decide differently? Yes.
$405 w/swimming pool - I looked at the first listing only - is not bad at all, and right now, many people are still overvaluing what their homes are worth.
You can also go the private school route...
You know, the one thing you can't buy more of in life is time, especially the time you spend commuting to work. If these neighborhoods are closer to your job, remember, mortgage interest is deductible. Gasoline, insurance, repairs and maint, plus the wear and tear on your nerves and time not available to spend on your family or other aspects of your life may make the tradeoff for a higher mortgage in a close-in neighborhood worth it to you. Rocklin and Roseville are a ways out even on a light traffic day and traffic in the local areas up there sucks.
School boundaries tend to change most rapidly in neighborhoods that are growing rapidly. When an area is growing rapidly, the local schools start to fill up and then they start building more schools to ease the overcrowding. This is going to be more of an issue in Rocklin or Granite Bay. In the areas that we are discussing, the neighborhoods are mostly built out. There are a lot of tear downs in Arden Oaks, where older smaller homes were replaced by bigger homes. There are also some old horse properties that are being subdivided and usually turned into a gated community. But for the most part in the neighborhoods we are discussing, the neighborhoods are pretty stable. The schools are neither overcrowded nor under enrolled. I see no reason that these school boundaries will change any time in the foreseeable future.
San Juan offers an open enrollment program, where if there is room in a school, they will allow kids from out of the schools attendance district to attend these schools. If you enroll in a child in a school outside his normal attendance district, the district has no obligation to provide a bus for your child to that school. As a result, generally you see Del Dayo, Mariemont, Sierra Oaks, Deterdine and Del Paso Manor generally fill up when ever there are openings. The intra-district transfers tend to keep Rio fairly full as well. But first preference to a school goes to kids who live inside the schools attendance zone.
I really have had no problems what so ever with crime. When the cheapest homes in an area are going for 375K, crime is not an issue. The reason the schools are so good in these areas is that to buy even the cheap homes in this area, you need to be making more than about 100k. This is how you end up with schools where 50% of the parents have graduate degrees. Its not the mansions in Arden Oaks or Shelfield Oaks, that keep the schools strong, its the 1500 sqft homes in Arden Park or Del Dayo going for $375k.
I live with in walking distance to Del Dayo. I follow the sales. I shop at the Raley's at Walnut and Fair Oaks, the Bel Air at Arden and Eastern and the Safeway at Watt and Arden. I occasionally hit the Whole Foods Market at Arden and Eastern, the 99 cent store at Marconi and Fair Oaks and the Trade Joes in Town and Country Village at Marconi and Howe. Crime really hasn't been an issue.
My kids don't just walk to school, they play on the street when they get home from school. Its a really nice little neighborhood. On the fourth of July we have a neighborhood block party. We block off the street and have a fourth of July parade. The kids decorate there bikes. There is a watermelon seed spitting contest. The kids bob for powdered doughnuts. The adults drink cocktails. The neighbors pitch in to rent a bouncy house. People open up there pools to the neighbors, there is a huge potluck. Last year we tried to barbeque a pig (Hawaiian stytle), but it really didn't work well. At night everyone from the neighborhood watch fireworks together. On Christmas Eve, everyone pitches in to put up luminaries in the neighborhood, there is a Christmas cookie exchange. This is a neighborhood where the neighbors get really excited about the Halloween or the Christmas decorations. When people are out of town, the neighbors will pick up the mail or take out the trash without being asked.
I am not saying that this couldn't happen in Rocklin, it might. But it might not. But I see no reason to give up a good thing. This is why even if I could find a newer cheaper home in Rocklin, I wouldn't do it. I really like my neighbors.
By statute, the Department of Water Resources has to publish the best available flood maps. Here is the one for Sacramento County as well as a link to other counties in the state.
Where I live near Del Dayo, is inside the 200 year composite floodplain map. Because its inside the 200 year and not the 100 year floodplain map, I don't technically need to buy flood insurance. But I did it anyways.
Here are some homes larger than 3000 sqft with more than 4 bedrooms inside the attendance zone for Del Dayo and Rio going for less than 900k.
Whats with the pre-occupation with crime on this forum anyway? Every single "moving to sacramento" post in this forum has someone scared to death of crime of any neighborhood they want to move into. Crime happens everywhere and is just a fact of life, stop being so damn scared. If you're moving into a neighborhood where homes are selling for nearly a million dollars you're just being annoyingly paranoid if you're still concerned about crime at that point.
I'm tempted to buy a 64 Impala, some dubs, throw my hat on backwards and drive through your neighborhood just to scare you.
In Coastal California, there isn't much of a middle class. You can transition from relatively wealthy neighborhoods in Sherman Oaks or Encino into fairly sketchy neighborhoods in Van Nuys with out much of a transition zone between the two. In Oakland, Rockridge is fairly nice, but you don't have to go to far west before the neighborhood gets really sketchy really quickly.
One of the strengths of this region is that we haven't priced out the middle class, the way the coastal part of the state has. But if you are moving from a part of the state where there isn't much of a middle class, you spend a lot more time trying to figure out where the transition zones are between good neighborhoods and sketchy neighborhoods.
May I ask why you are so set on Rio Americano? I mean its an ok High School I guees. You might be better off buying a cheaper house in a different area and sending them to a private school? You could also get a place in Folsom and have them go to Vista Del Lago (awesome brand new High School) or Granite Bay or something.
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