Alright, so this video is all about the top five reasons that you don't want to make a move to the city of Winchester, California. I'm going to go over what it's like to really live in the city. I actually lived in Winchester for over a decade, and I can give you some really good perspective of what it's like to actually live there and hopefully help you and your family make the right decision, see if it's right for you guys. So let's go ahead and get into it. Hey guys. Hey again, my name is Justin Short. I'm a realtor and team leader with a short real estate team here at Keller Williams, and this video is all about the city of Winchester, California. I'm going to go over the top five reasons that you don't want to make a move to Winchester and hopefully give you guys some perspective on what it's like to really live in the city and not just kind of paint it all rosy.

Hopefully give you some cons and some things to really pay attention to so you and your family can decide if it's the right area for you guys to move to. So before I get into all the information, if you are liking videos like this, do me a favor, please hit like please hit subscribe. Obviously it helps me, it helps my channel as we're trying to continue to grow it. And then if you guys have any real estate questions, you can feel free to reach out anytime. So you're going to see my information either at the end of the video or down below so you can feel free, you can call, you can text, you can email me, happy to answer any questions you may have, point you in the right direction, or of course myself and my team, if we can help you out with your home search, we'd love to help you do that as well.

So we'll kind of get into all the information here. And if you are not super familiar with the city of Winchester, just to kind of point out to you guys, what makes it desirable, what makes it popular? It is a city where we see a lot of new construction and is a city that is continuing to grow. It's been around for about 25 years or so, I guess a little bit longer. About 25 years we've really seen some true growth and you're starting to see more and more construction happening. So it tends to be a desirable place for people. It also is less expensive than some of the surrounding areas. So it's pretty significantly less expensive than Temecula. A good amount less expensive than Murrieta and even a little bit less expensive than the city of Menifee as well. But on the flip side, there's always going to be some cons.

And that's kind of what I wanted to point out to you guys and give you some perspective on what that actually looks like. I had mentioned I actually lived in Winchester for a decade, so I can give you some good perspective on what it's actually like, what some of the real cons are. So let's go ahead. We'll start with number one. So the city of Winchester is a very large area geographically, it covers a lot of acres. It is actually size wise, I believe it's bigger than Temecula and Murrieta and Menifee, so it is a very vast area. However, the amount of land that has been constructed and developed is actually pretty small. So because of that, it's a very spread out city. And when you buy a home in Winchester, you tend to be pretty far away from everything else. So there's really two main areas.

So you have this big huge glob of a city, Winchester, you have your southern section, which you also will see referred to as French Valley. So that's actually where I live down in that French Valley area. And then you will see the northern section where you see, this is where you see a lot of the new construction, which is really more on the border of Hemet, right off of doe, kind of up in this area up here. So you have some houses scattered throughout, but these are really the main two large areas. And because of that, if you are so spread out, your distance to shopping centers and schools and things like that can be pretty big and you're just so spread out over everything. Now the flip side of that is over the next decade I'm sure there's going to be a lot of construction to fill all that empty space in, especially because the cities of Temecula and Murrieta are pretty well built out, so there's not much space for them to develop.

So I'm sure the city of Winchester will continue to grow, continue to see a lot of development, but in the meantime you're pretty far spread out from everything. And it's kind of weird. It's kind like two cities within one, but they're 15 minutes apart. It's kind of an odd setup. So number two is the school district. So it's an interesting setup. So because Winchester is such a large area, they do not actually have their own school district. So they're actually a part of three different public school districts. So if you're in that lower French Valley area, you could be a part of the Temecula school district. There's some portions that are considered Winchester. They're actually a part of the Murrieta Valley School District. Both of those are really, really highly rated, very, very good school districts. And then that northern section is actually going to be part of the Paris Unified School District, which is not rated near as highly.

So depending where you're at and what specific house and what specific neighborhood you're buying a home in, you really got to pay attention to what school district you're a part of, if that is important to you and your family because you might be expecting one thing and you're going to get another. Also, when we are looking to buy houses, you're buying a home. The homes that are zoned for those higher school districts tend to be significantly more expensive than the homes that have those lower ranked school districts. So the draw to Winchester, right, tends to be, it's more affordable, you can get more for your money, et cetera. But if you have kids are going to be going to school and if school districts are important to you, you really got to pay attention, look at where you're buying and make sure it's going to be a good decision for you.

So point number three is the higher property taxes, and this isn't just to Winchester, but really any area that is newer has a lot of new construction. You are going to see higher property taxes, really anything from 2005 and newer. We tend to see more of these special assessments and these higher tax rates. Basically what that means to you as a homeowner is a low tax home might be right around that 1.2% tax rate and a high tax home, which a lot of homes in Winchester are like this might be closer to that 2% or 2.2% tax rate. So that 1% difference might not sound like a big difference, but on a monthly basis that could be anywhere from 350 to $450 extra per month that you're going to pay just to extra taxes. So that's something you really got to pay attention to. That's going to be neighborhood specific.

But in Winchester it's really, really something you got to weigh heavily and make sure that you are aware of. The fourth item on my list is the temperature. It is hot in Winchester and yes, it's hot across the board, it's hot in Temecula, it's hot in Murrieta, it's hot in Menifee, but Winchester tends to be the hottest. So you're a little bit more northeast than those other cities. You have the highest average temperature. So in July and August your average temperature is about 98 degrees, which is almost averaging a hundred, right? So that's six degrees hotter. And then Temecula and Murrieta are going to be on average at their highest months. So it's a pretty significant step up. Also, you get a little bit less of a breeze that's up there. It's hotter, right? And Murrieta already hot, you just got to pay attention to that temperature, make sure that something you and your family are going to be okay with.

But it is significantly hotter than some of the surrounding cities. And the number five is you're far really where you're located, you're really just kind of far from everything. So like I mentioned, the area's continuing to grow. You're seeing a lot of construction. It's a little bit further northeast, but because very little of the city has been built out so far, there's really just not a lot of infrastructure in place. So what that means is there's not a ton of schools that are close by. You tend to be making a little bit longer drives to your schools, but there's very few shopping centers. So you are going to be making more drives out to farther away shopping centers. Restaurants are going to be more of a trip. You're going to be making trips to those bigger cities, Temecula and Murrieta mostly, and especially to the freeway, depending where you're at in Winchester, you could be making an easy 15 minutes to a 30 minute drive just to get onto the 15 freeway.
So might not be such a big deal if you're making a one-time trip with a family down to the zoo. But if you are commuting to San Diego every day for work and you're commuting 30 minutes just to get the freeway, that's going to make a big difference and it's going to make your life on the road quite a bit different. That's something you really want to pay attention to. If you're going to buy a home in Winchester, hey, where it's located, how long it's going to take you to get to the freeway, especially if you're going to commute because that can be a big difference. I mean that's going to be a change of quality of life for sure. So I think the biggest cons are Winchester. Again, I lived in the city for 10 years. I think it was a really good place to be. It was affordable. It fit my family's budget. So that was the biggest draw of course. But there's definitely some compromises. You're going to take some quality of life hits to get a home that's a little bit more affordable. So it's just something that you and your family got to decide and make sure it's going to be a good fit for you. So hopefully that's good information. If you guys have questions, you can feel free to reach out. You can call, text, you get an email, and hopefully talk to you soon. Thanks.