Alright, this video is all about the city of Murrieta, California and how to find the perfect home. We're going to talk about the different parts of town, what areas are really most desirable, what's going to be least desirable, and some other tips that you really want to make sure you've paid attention to when you're buying a home here in Murrieta. Let's go ahead and get into it.

Hey guys. Hey again, my name is Justin Short. I am a realtor and team leader for the short real estate team here in Temecula, California, in Murrieta, California here at Keller Williams. And this video is all about the city of Murrieta and how to find the perfect place in the right neighborhood for you and your family. So we're going to talk about the different parts of town. So we're going to talk about the pros and cons to each, what makes certain areas more desirable or less desirable, ect. But before I get into all the information, do me a favor, please hit like please hit subscribe here on the channel. Obviously it helps me, it helps my channel to continue to grow it. And then we have new videos that we put out each and every week. So if you want to stay tuned into more real estate content and keep an eye on what we're putting out.

We do have new stuff we're going to upload each and every week. And then over the last probably year and a half, two years now, we've put up new videos every week with all types of real estate information in there. So you can keep an eye on those. We have new home community tours, we have real estate market updates, we have recommendations about missed neighborhoods, worst neighborhoods, all types of stuff that we posted. So if you want to take a look back at those, there's a lot of good information as well. And then if you guys have any real estate questions, of course, I'd love for you to reach out to me and be happy to answer any questions you may have. You can feel free, to call, you can text, you can email me. I have people that reach out all the time. Happy to point you in the right direction.

Or of course if myself and my team can help you out with your home search, I would love to be a resource and be able to help you guys do that as well. So let's go ahead and we'll get into all the info here. So again, we're talking about the city of Murrieta, California and this kind of the general, I guess I'll give this general, general rule here, and this is a question that I get from people all the time when they're making a move here is, Hey, what part of the city is really bad? Or what neighborhoods I really want to stay away from, ect. And really the truth is probably 95% of the city of Murrieta is going to be a really nice place to live. Honestly, the neighborhood itself is really squeaky clean. It's really well kept. It's a very safe area.

It's in a good school district, either all the homes are on the newer side. An older home here was built in 1990, right? So it's not like we have these old crummy areas, ect. But for the most part this is a really, really nice area to live. There's probably a couple little neighborhoods here and there, maybe where there's a bunch of rentals or there's one street in particular where right off Murrieta Hot Springs where there's a ton of quadplexes it's called, people call it the Loop. It's really not known as a really great area. But in general it is a really, really nice city. Like I said, 95% of the city is going to be a really nice place to live in. There are certain areas that are more desirable and less desirable of course, and we'll talk about some of those. But again, for the most part, Murrieta is going to be a really nice place to live.

So we're going to start with the most desirable part of town and really the easiest way to look at Murrieta, you have the city, there's the freeways that run through. So you have the 15 freeway runs pretty north and south throughout the city of Murrieta. So that runs from San Diego to call it towards Riverside or going towards la, right? It's pretty north and south. And then you have the two 15 freeway breaks off and runs a little bit more northeast. So if you look at a map, it breaks off runs northeast towards the city of Riverside, and that gives you three sections. So you have the two freeways, you have the west side of Murrieta, so it's west of the 15 freeway you have between the two freeways. That is central Murrieta, and then you have east, so east of the two 15 that's considered East Murrieta.

So pretty simple. The freeways kind of draw the lines there, makes it pretty easy to understand. But definitely the most desirable area for people to live in is going to be West Murrieta. It also tends to be the most expensive area for people to live in, so there's a reason for that. But what people like so much about living in West Murrieta is one, it's really, really close to the freeway. So just like I mentioned, you're on that 15 freeway, if that's the main freeway, it runs north and south. So if you live in West Murrieta, it's very easy to quickly get onto the 15 freeway and whether you're going to go north or you're going to commute south, either way it makes it super accessible, super easy to get on and off. You don't have to worry about crossing over the freeway, which can really suck when you live here.

So much traffic, ect. So it's really, really convenient to be close to the freeway, especially when you're on the west side. The other thing that people really, really like about living in West Murrieta is you're close to everything. So if you have kids, you have a high school, a middle school, and a few elementary schools that are super, super close to you, super accessible. You have grocery stores that are right down the street, just a block or two away from most areas. There's shopping centers. Again, the freeway access is really easy. It's easy to go south and be able to get towards Temecula really, really quickly. But it's just a real accessible area. And also you have some really good schools. So the elementary schools, they have some of the best elementary schools in Murrieta, some of the best, I think the best middle schools in Murrieta and probably the most desirable high school in Murrieta as well.

So all that’s over on the west side. Again, it tends to be a pretty desirable area because of that area Number two we'll talk about is going to be central Murrieta. So like I said, there's going to be pros and cons to all these different areas, but Central Murrieta is kind of what I refer to as a little bit more of kind your typical kind of bread and butter tract home in Murrieta. So what people like about it is the location is pretty good. It's pretty easy. You can access the 15 freeway, you could access the two 15 freeway, but it tends to be an older area which has some pros and cons. So because it's an older area, most of the homes are built anywhere from, call it 1988 to probably 2003 or so. And there's some exceptions, there's some newer ones, ect.

That's a pretty good rough range. And most of those homes have no HOAs, which sometimes people, a lot of people do like having no HOA cause you don't have rules yet to follow, ect. It also can really help with cost. So if you are having a hard time maybe qualifying for home and you're really narrow on your budget, if you don't have to factor in an extra HOA payment, that's really going to help you. Also, the property taxes. So because it's a little bit older, the property taxes are going to be lower. They don't have a lot of these different higher special assessments, ect. that a lot of these other areas have. So it tends to be a little bit more affordable on tax wise, on HOA wise. And then just overall price point, because it's a little bit older, tends to be a little bit more affordable as well.

People too tend to like because they are older homes, they tend to have a little bit bigger lots, a little bit more space between your neighbors, ect. So those are going to be really good things. You're still part of Murrieta school district, so you're still relatively close to the different freeways, ect. I would say the biggest to Central Murrieta that people don't like is if you are looking for something that's brand new and super modern and super updated and kind of this real open concept living that you're going to see all over HGTV, ect, right? You're probably not going to find much of that inside Central Murrieta because the age of home, the homes are a little bit older. You search on people updated over time, but there's going to be some older styles, some more traditional colors. You might have a large entry kind of dining room slash living room and a smaller family room.

So there's going to be some compromises there. But depending on what you're looking for, I think it can be a really nice area and I think it's an area that I point a lot of my clients to just from pure affordability, right? It's a great place to live. You're still in a great city, you still have a great home. It just might not be everything you're going to see in all these different magazines or online or whatever. So that's area number two. Area number three is going to be East Murrieta. So again, east Murrieta means you're east of that two 15 freeway. Like I said, there's going to be pros and cons to all these different areas. What people really like about East Murrieta is it tends to be newer construction. So you're going to see homes built anywhere probably from 2006, from 2012 to 1518, 2020 and newer.

So still new construction that's still finishing up over there as well. So because they're newer homes, you tend to have more of that open concept layout, that one big giant great room. You tend to have some of these fancier finishes with LVP flooring that people like quartz countertops and stainless steel appliances and just all these newer trends that people like nowadays that you might not see in some of those other areas. So that's going to be there. The other big benefit to East Murrieta, and actually I've lived in East Murrieta. My home is slightly older than most, but I lived in East Murrieta for a long time. One of the things that I really liked living there is you could live on that side of town and you are very, very close to the city of Temecula. So city of Temecula is super, super accessible.

You're very, very close to the mall and the shopping and the restaurants and all of that other stuff that's over there. So I always thought that was a big plus. You are so close to being able to enjoy all the different things that the City of Temecula offers. Also, there's even parts where I lived where I was in the city of Murrieta, but I was actually a part of Temecula school district, which is also a great school district and I thought that was a plus as well. So the biggest to living over in East Murrieta is going to be one. The taxes tend to be a little bit higher. They tend to be newer homes that you're going to have higher property taxes. A lot of homes are going to have HOAs, most are going to have HOAs at least. And then also just the location because you're over on the east side, it doesn't seem like that big of a difference.

But if you are over on the east side of Murrieta and you need to commute back to the 15 freeway to get on there for your commute, and then especially say if you're going to go south to San Diego for your commute, that difference from one side of town to the other can be pretty drastic. You could probably cost yourself easy 15 minutes, maybe even closer to 20 minutes one way in the morning just from commuting from the east side over back over to the 15 freeway. So if you are a commuter and you decide to live over on East Murrieta, which people decide to do because newer and shinier and tend to be a little bit less expensive than the west side, you just got to factor in, you're going to have that commute and that's going to be there on a daily basis.

So that's something you've got to know and got to think about and just weigh in balance for what that quality of life is going to be for you and your family. So again, the three areas you have: West Murrieta, Central Murrieta, East Murrieta, there's going to be pros and cons to all of them. Pricewise, central Murrieta is the least East, Murrieta is probably a little bit more, and then West Murrieta is definitely going to be the highest price wise depending on what you're going to be looking for. Also, the other just kind of general rule of thumb that I wanted to point out as far as if you are wanting to buy a home in Murrieta and things you're going to want to take a look at and really think about, especially if you're not from the area, a lot of people will not know this.

Different homes out here will have different tax rates. So different homes and different neighborhoods will have different special assessments, and that's really what they're called. The amount of special assessments that a single home may have can vary drastically. So you may look at an older home, let's say something in that central myriad area that we talked about, and they're going to have some special assessments and it might be a hundred dollars a year in special assessments, which you pay your taxes yearly. So over the course of a year, that's going to cost you eighty bucks a month or so. Not a big deal at all, nothing you're really ever going to care about. However, you can look at something across the street, say it's over in East Murrieta and it's a newer neighborhood, and those special assessments could change from $80 and they might be $4,000 per year right now that's a big deal.

So that's almost $350 per month in extra taxes that you're going to pay living in the newer home versus the older home. So if this is not the case in many other areas, and even in other parts of California, right, this tends to be an issue in these newer constructed suburb areas. So if the older homes aren't going to have it, the newer homes will, the cutoff tends to be about 2003, 2004. So anything older than that tends to not have those high special assessments. Anything newer tends to have some special assessments, and then the newer you get, the higher the taxes are. So that's just kind of a general rule of thumb. So something you really want to pay attention to, you want to see how high those special assessments are on any home that you're going to be purchasing. Of course your real estate agent should be able to help you out with that and give you the right information.

Of course, myself and my team would be able to do that, but even if it's not us, you got to make sure you know that. And especially if you are using an agent that does not know the area, they probably don't even know what you're talking about. So that's going to be a big thing. Also, the other thing that you really want to pay attention to is the school district. So a lot of people move, this happened a lot, especially during Covid because so many people are relocating here. People were buying houses remotely and online and all these different types of things, but they didn't necessarily know how to get all the information for what they were buying. They just kind of made some assumptions. So one of the reasons that people move here to the city of Murrieta is the school district. It's a really great school district.

So Murrieta Valley Unified School District is super, super highly rated. There's great schools from elementary to middle school to high school, all across the board and this is a reason why people want to live here. But you can buy a home in Murrieta and not be a part of the Murrieta Valley School District. I told you earlier, I owned a home. I was actually in the Temecula School District, which was still a good district, so not a big deal for us. But you can also buy a home in Murrieta and be a part of the Paris Unified School District.

That is a drastic drop off in the quality of the schools there. You've really got to pay attention to where the maps are to know, Hey, if I go too far north, I'm going to get out of the district and now all of a sudden I'm in a different school district. I need to be aware of that, right? If you decide you and your family, that's the right fit for you guys, and it's worth a little bit of a cost savings to have that awesome at least. But if what you don't want to see is your whole goal is to move here, to be a part of a good school district and all of a sudden we end up in a different school district and it is not apples to apples, that's an apples to oranges conversation for sure. And you're not going to get the same thing. So that's something you want to pay attention to is where that house is and what school district it is assigned to. So those are big deals when you're spending all this money. So I hope it's good information for you guys. If you have any questions, you can feel free to reach out, you can call, you can text, you can email, and hopefully I will talk to you soon. Thanks.