All right, so you're going to want to stay away and avoid living here in the city of Murrieta California unless you're okay with these 10 facts. I'm going to go over the 10 worst parts about living here in the city of Murrieta. So if you're thinking about moving here, these are things you definitely want to know about. And if these are deal breakers, this is not going to be the right area for you. Let's go ahead and get into it.
Hey guys. Hey again, my name is Justin Short. I am a realtor and team leader with a short real estate team here in Temecula, California, in Murrieta, California here at Keller Williams. And this video is all about the reasons you're going to want to avoid living here in the city of Murrieta, unless these are things you're okay with. And really, these are the worst parts about living here in Murrieta. So if you're considering making a move here, these are things you're going to want to know and make sure you're okay before you actually make the move. So I'm going to get into all the info, but before I do, do me a favor. If you'd like videos like this, do me a favor, please hit like please hit subscribe. So we have new videos that come out each and every week. We have tons of videos that we posted in the past about Temecula, Murrieta and Menifee.
We have neighborhood tours, we have new construction walkthrough tours, we have market updates that we do every month, all types of stuff that we put out every week. So you can look back at those or subscribe and stay tuned to the new videos that come out. And then if you guys have any real estate questions, you can feel free to reach out anytime. So I have people that reach out, I have people that call, text and email me and ask questions about the area, all that type of stuff. So I would love for you to reach out. You're going to see either my information down below the video or at the end. And of course if myself and my team, if we can help you out with your move here or your real estate search, we'd love to help you out with that. So again, feel free, you're going to see all my contact information, but let's go ahead and we'll get into the 10 reasons to avoid living here in Murrieta.
It's the 10 worst parts about living here. And I know I mentioned this in a lot of my videos, but I have been living here in the valley for a really long time. So I went to high school out here. It's over 25 years now, and I try to give you guys a perspective from what it's like from someone that actually lives here in the area. So I think sometimes when you're browsing online, they tell you how great something is, but you want to get some cons, right? You want to get some of the bad sides and realize that there's going to be pros and cons to everything. Not everything is going to be perfect for everybody, and these are things that you really got to know if you are going to make a move here to Murrieta. So we'll start with number one, and without a doubt, the worst part about living here for people is going to be the heat.
I mean, it is a hot area. I mean, we are in southern California, so the average temperature in our hottest months are going to be August and September. They show it's about 92 degrees, is like what the stats show if you look it up online. But we definitely have heat waves that are going to take you up over a hundred. So a hundred is relatively common, 102, 103 up to even 105 or so, I would say. So each year I would say there's probably 12 to 15 days that are going to be over a hundred degrees. So it's definitely going to get super hot. Even 90 is going to be warm for a lot of people. But once you live here for a while, I think you get pretty warm blooded for me when it's 90 out, I think it's super nice, it's super comfortable.
And if we make a trip in the middle of the summer down to San Diego or something where it's like 70 pretty much every day, honestly, I'm a little cold most of the time and I got to have a little sweatshirt or something because it get’s chilly. So you get used to the warmer weather. With that being said, it does get hot here, yes, but it is for just a short period of time. The other nine months of the year, it's super, super nice. We don't get a ton of rain. We get really nice weather. It's pool weather most of the year. So I think that helps make it a really nice area to live in. Also, when you live out here and you're in that heat wave, everybody has air conditioning. So you just flip on the ac, you crank the air, it's going to make it pretty tolerable and pretty nice inside.
But obviously if you have to go outside, it's going to be warm for sure it's going to be hot. But even when we have those heat waves, because we do get such a nice breeze from over the hills and over the mountains and over the plateau, the temperature does really cool off in the evening. So you might be at a hundred degrees in the middle of the afternoon and then by six o'clock at night it's like 72 out and it's super, super nice. The breeze will come, it'll take the high heat off, makes it super comfortable. That makes this area different from a lot of other areas that are hot as opposed to something that's just truly out in the desert like Palm Springs or Vegas or parts of Arizona, stuff like that where it just never really cools down. Where here because of the breeze, it really cools it down and it's also really dry heat, so it's not very humid at all.
Pretty much part of the ever are we going to have much humidity? So it makes it a lot more tolerable than what it sounds. Alright, so number two on my list is still related to weather and it's all about the black of rain. So if you are used to living in other parts of the country that maybe you experience all four seasons, you are not going to get that here in Murrieta. So really we're only going to get a few days of rain. It's about 13 inches per year that we're going to get. We don't really have winter, winter is kind of like a fall for us. The leaves start falling right around Christmas time. We don't really have a pretty browning of all the leaves and all that a traditional fall would be and definitely not much of a traditional winter. So it's definitely a warmer climate.
We're not going to get those traditional four seasons. So that's something that you're used to with where you're living. You got to know that's not going to be the case if you make a move here to Murrieta. Okay, so number three on my list is the lack of local jobs. So most people that live here in the area, they do not work here locally. So most people live here in Murrieta and they commute out to San Diego, LA or Orange County. And that's because there's not a ton of big businesses out here. It is a large area. There's 500,000 people that live here in the surrounding cities. So it's a big area. It's not small by any means, but there's just not a ton of industry. So most people live here, most people go to San Diego, a handful do go to Orange County and a handful do go to la.
But a lot of people make that commute south to San Diego, it is a more expensive area, there's more business down there. So here locally there are definitely going to be a lot of medical jobs. There's a lot of public jobs, such as firefighters, police, nurses, doctors, school teachers, school district employees, stuff like that. There's a ton of that that's out here, but there's just not a ton of big business. So especially now post covid, so many more people work from home. If you do are able to work remotely and you do work from home, even if it's just a couple days a week, that's going to make this area a lot more palatable for you, a lot nicer to live in because so many people live here and they have to make that commute out five days a week. And that commute can easily take 50 minutes an hour, hour and 20 minutes each way and for a few weeks it's going to be pretty doable.
But after months and months and months of doing that, it's really going to grind on you. The traffic, it's not getting any lighter, it's getting worse and worse each year. So you just got to know and think about what your job situation's going to be. Plenty of people do make that commute and you can definitely be okay with that. My parents did that growing up when we lived here and when we moved here. It's a very common thing for people to do, but you got to think about what that lifestyles are going to be like and think about if that's something that you are actually going to be okay with. All right, so that's going to take me right into point number four. And really that is just all about the commute. So because so many people don't live here locally and you're on the freeway making the commute, the average commute for someone that lives here in Murrieta is right at an hour.
So it's an hour each way. That's two hours a day you're going to spend on the road. So if you are going to be making that drive, that's something you really want to think about. You can get up, can get on Google Maps and you can do your drive time estimators, et cetera. That's something you really want to think about. If you are going to make that drive five days a week, even if you can work from home one, two or three days a week, it'll make it a lot nicer to not have to be on the road every single day. Alright, so number five is it's expensive, it's an expensive area to live in. So we are here, we're in southern California. The average priced home right now is $750,000 here in Murrieta. So if you compare that to the average price across the nation, it's right about, it's like 360 I think the last time I saw it was over double the average price point to live here in Murrieta than your national average.
Now does that come with some really cool things? You're here in southern California, you're in a really nice area, you're in a really good school district, you're in a super clean suburb that's continuing to grow. It's probably going to be a really good place to live just as far as appreciation goes, as home prices go up over time. So I think there's a lot of reasons why this is a nice area for sure, but you just got to think about that price point and make sure it's going to be affordable for you. So because of the price point, it can be kind of a tough area for first time buyers to buy their first home. A lot of times people will buy their entry level home, build some equity over time, sell that, then use that as your down payment to actually buy something here in Murrieta.
It's just so expensive. Obviously it depends on your job situation, et cetera, and what your means are going to be. But it is very common for this to be more of a move up area as opposed to an area for first time buyers depending on your situation. Alright, so number six is this is not a walkable city at all. So everybody here has a car and really everybody here probably has a car for every adult in the house. So I've had a lot of clients that relocate from other parts of say Northern California or somewhere over on the west coast that are from a big city and maybe they don't have a car at all for the family or they have one car for the family to share. But out here, the way we're in the suburbs, you're relatively spread out. If I did not have a car and I had to walk somewhere, probably the closest shopping center is probably going to be an hour walk one way.
So you're not going to do that every time that you need groceries. It is not practical. So you really cannot live out here without a car. And especially if someone's going to commute, most of you have two adult lives. If you and your spouse and one person's going one way and one person's going another, you're really going to need your own car for each person. And even then as teenagers get older, and they probably need their own car too, just their activities are going to be all over town and they're going to need to be able to get around. So it is just not a walkable city at all. Alright, so number seven on my list is politics. So the politics here in our area in the Murrieta Temecula area, we are a part of South Riverside County. They are much different than what most people think.
So most people think of Southern California as being a super blue leaning area, super liberal area. I think anytime it's a presidential election, people probably know as soon as California results pop in, boom, the state turns blue. That's typically going to go vote blue in a presidential election. But here in Riverside County and southwest Riverside County especially, it definitely tends to lean more red and more conservative. So I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing. You shouldn't really know what any of my political beliefs are. I don't think that really matters, right? But it can be a little bit surprising for people when they have this idea of Southern California and their mind and Hollywood and all these different things. And then you come here and the day-to-Day politics are a little bit different than that here in southwest Riverside County. So just something to think about, make sure you're okay with it.
You can do a little bit of research on Google and kind of see what the voting trends are, et cetera. But the politics here in this part of these cities and this city and the surrounding cities are different than what most parts of Southern California are. Just something to know. Alright, so number eight on my list, and this is something that I hear from a lot of people when they are coming, especially from the east coast where they're used to living in an area that's an older area. It was built decades and decades ago, maybe a hundred years ago, whatever it was. And because of that, there's a lot of character in the houses, in the streets and in their suburb areas. But here in Murrieta, it's definitely mostly a lot of cookie cutter tract homes. So for the most part, you're going to have a big, big nationwide builder that comes in.
They're going to buy up a couple hundred acres of land, they're going to subdivide that guy and they're going to build a couple thousand tract homes that are in there. And when they come through, they're going to start on one side, go all the way to the other, do their phases, and they tend to be a lot of stucco boxes, different shades of brown. There's three or four different layouts, a couple different facades maybe there, but they tend to be very, very similar throughout the community. So because there's not a lot of variety and really I would say probably 85, 90% in Murrieta is going to be that kind of your typical stucco box, tracted home look, right? So that's just something that you got to know before you come out here. There are exceptions to that. There are definitely a little bit more rural properties or some custom built properties that are going to have more character, some different features, et cetera.
But when you drive through most neighborhoods, you're going to see shades of brown, more of the stucco look and something that tends to blend in very, very similarly from one street to the other. So just something to know. Alright, so number nine on my list is just related to the California government, the different regulations and taxes that we have. So when you're moving here to Murrieta, obviously we are here in the state of California. It's a great place to live. Obviously the weather is awesome. There's all types of cool stuff to be able to do within an easy one hour drive to be able to access all the other cool stuff that Southern California has to offer. But when you live here, you're there, you're going to have to abide by California rules and taxes and all that type of stuff. So there is going to be a state income tax here for the state of California.
So it's over 13%. So depending where you're coming from, if you're coming from a state that has no state income tax, that's going to be a big change. If you're coming from New York and it's very similar, well it's not much of a change. So a lot of that is based on where you're coming from. So just something to keep in mind, think about what that monthly paycheck is going to look like after you factor in the taxes. Also, California just tends to be a little bit more restrictive in some of their different rules and regulations, right? Some of their building codes, they're trying to phase out gasoline cars over the next decade or so. Every time you buy a new home, it has to have solar panels on it. Some of those are good things and some of those can sometimes feel restrictive. And just the area here in Murrieta tends to be a little bit more conservative as far as what they will allow and how much change you're willing to take in and be a part of.
And so as far as building, say ADUs and guest houses on your properties and getting permits for those things approved, et cetera, there just can be some more hoops here to jump through as opposed to what other states are going to have. So that's probably the biggest thing I wanted to point out. And then number 10 is we phase into number 10 on my list, it's all about traffic. So we're in Southern California. We have two freeways that run right through here, Murrieta, you have the 15 freeway. The two 15 freeway. There's a lot of traffic. We talked about making commutes. The average commute is about an hour, but distance wise, that might only be a 40 mile drive for people, 30 40, 30 to 40 mile drive. But because there's so much traffic, it's going to take so much time. So especially at rush hour, the freeways are going to get super jammed up.
There's going to be a lot of traffic out there on the freeway. It's going to be slow moving. It's going to take you longer than you think to get where you're going. And even on the weekends when if you're living here and you're trying to get down to San Diego or up to Orange County, if you don't leave the area by 10 o'clock, you're going to hit some traffic. Even on the weekends, everyone trying to take off and go out and do their thing. So there's definitely traffic that's out there. There's traffic on the surface streets, there's a lot of people that live here. The roads are only so big and you do have to plan around that a little bit. It's just something to know.
And I know I give you a list of things that are definitely more on the negative side and things that you want to know before you make a move here. I'll give you at the end of the day, I've lived here in the valley for a long time. I've lived here for over 25 years. I think this is a great area. This is where I plan to raise my kids. This is where I plan to live the rest of my life. Obviously, we've bought a home and we plan to stay here long term. I think it's a great place to be. But hey, there's going to be pros and cons to everything. Hopefully that gives you some different perspective on some of the not so great things. If you guys have any questions, you can feel free to reach out. You can call, you can text, you can email, and hopefully talk to you soon. Thanks.
