This video is the five steps that you're going to want to follow if you're going to make a move here to Temecula, California. 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 and Murrieta, California. This video is all about the five steps that you're going to want to follow if you're going to make a relocation here to Temecula, California. We're going to get into the video in just a minute, but if you are liking videos like this, you want to know more about the cities of Temecula, Murrieta, Menifee, California, if you want to know about best schools, best school districts, what part of the neighborhood you want to live in, what part of town you want, what to stay away from, et cetera. Do me a favor, please hit, please hit subscribe to this channel. We have videos that are coming out each and every week. We have a catalog of dozens and dozens of videos going over all that type of stuff. Then we have new stuff that comes out each and every week.
Then, if you have any real estate questions or anything that we can do to help you out with your search, of course, I'd love to hear from you. You're going to see all my contact information. You can feel free, you can call, you can text, you can email. I have people that reach out all the time. Always happy to answer a couple questions, point you in the right direction, or of course we would love to actually help you with your search and help you through that process, as well. We'll go ahead and get into the info here.
But again, we do these videos, we post them up on YouTube, we have a lot of people that contact us, and then the biggest segment of people are really people that are relocating from out of state. We have a lot of clients that contact us from YouTube that they're making moves from Texas, from Oklahoma, from Washington, from Midwest, from really all over different parts of the country. They're relocating here to Southern California, and that's how they're reaching out to us. We helped a ton of people relocate here from out of the area, dozens and dozens and dozens. Myself and my team, we've sold hundreds and hundreds of homes here locally. We know the area really well. But, there's a couple things that we recommend that we're going to go through to help you as a home buyer nail down the right areas and help make it an easier move for you.
Tip number one is really just going to be thinking about what part of town that you want to actually live in. It's really easy when you're on Google or in this YouTube and doing some research and seeing what's out there, and you're just like, "I want to live in Temecula, California or Murrieta, California." But, I don't think what people realize is we refer to this area as a bedroom community. But there are in this surrounding valley, like 500,000 people that live here locally. That's between Temecula, Murrieta, Menifee and the surrounding area, surrounding cities. It's a big, large area. Especially if you're going to live here and you're going to make a commute out, what part of town you're going to live in is going to make a huge difference.
Really what I'm talking about is looking at a map and thinking about, "Well, hey, I am going to be living here in Temecula, this is the area that I've narrowed down, this is where I want to be. This is the school district that I want my children to be a part of. And I'm going to be commuting south to San Diego five days a week." Well, if you think about that, you're going to be on the road every day. If that's going to be the case, when you look at a map, you're going to want to be more towards the southern section of town in Temecula to really shorten that commute. Because if you don't live here, what you don't know is that if you live on the other side of town, your commute's going to be probably an extra 20, 25 minutes longer each way. That's another 40 to 60 minutes in the car just by being on one side of town to the other.
Obviously you're not always going to know that when you don't live here, and so I'm going to be a source of information for you there, to help you through that process. But that that's going to be important. Or alternatively, let's say if you're like, "Hey, I'm an empty nester, my kids are grown up out of the house, I don't have any kids that are part of the school district. And I want to get the biggest home possible." Well then you're probably [inaudible 00:04:16] I'm probably going to live maybe more in the Menifee area where you can get more for your money, you get a better bang for your buck. Or if you want to be be off the 15 and be part of the Murrieta school district, you're going to want to be on maybe on the west side of town, so you're actually close to the freeway. Because the other side of town you might be 20 minutes to actually get to the freeway from one side to the other.
So all these things make a difference. So really, I recommend to people to try and narrow down based on your living situation and are you going to be commuting? Are you going to be working from home? What school district do you want to be a part of? What part of town, what city is kind of catching your interest? And you can kind of help narrow down maybe a section, whether it's like South Temecula or West Murrieta or a certain portion of town. So, that's really my biggest recommendation is really thinking about what part of town that you actually want to live in.
So tip number two is taking that a step further and really understanding different neighborhoods and different areas. So yes, let's use our example. Let's say if you're going to make that commute to San Diego, you want to be in South Temecula, that is awesome. That's really going to help the commute. I think that's a good idea. But when you're looking ... now you've narrowed it down to South Temecula, you really want to think about affordability. And if budget's going to be a concern, which it is going to be for most people, most people are going to have some type of a budget there. You want to think about maybe what your mortgage payment is going to be, including all of your taxes and HOAs and all that type of stuff.
So you probably should think ahead of time, hey, do I want to be a part of an HOA? Am I okay? Am I comfortable living inside of a homeowner's association? Inside of an HOA. Am I okay abiding by maybe some of those rules that they're going to have for me as far as what color can paint my house or maybe a certain upkeep I got to do or some different rules and regulations that are going to have. Am I okay with that? A lot of people are right, they kind of prefer that. And some people are like, "Ah, absolutely not. Like I'm never going to live in HOA. No one's going to tell me what color I'm going to paint my house." It's not the way that they want to live. So when you think about that, are you okay with an HOA? Are you not?
And then also as far as affordability, the taxes vary drastically throughout the city of Temecula. So for example, you may live in one neighborhood, let's say we're looking at a $700,000 home. You look at one neighborhood, and let's say your mortgage is $3,500 per month there. And that's a low tax neighborhood. You may look across the street at a different neighborhood that's maybe a little bit newer, same $700,000 home and that home has higher taxes, and that mortgage payment might be an extra $350, $400 per month higher. So that's a big difference.
And so if we're concerned about affordability and we want to make sure that mortgage payment is affordable, we need to think about those taxes and how that's actually going to affect you on a month to month basis, and make sure it's going to fit within your budget. So thinking about overall location as far as geography and schools and all that, yes, that's going to be important. But also kind of narrowing it down a little bit more and say, "Hey, yes, I want to be in South Temecula. But I don't want an HOA and I have to be in a low tax area to make sure it's affordable for me." Well, that might rule out 80% of the rest of South Temecula. Which is okay, but you want to know that going forward so you can really fine tune your search and help you find the right thing.
The third tip is going to be really thinking about interest rates. And really the best thing to do is to get with a lender and complete a full pre-approval. So I have a great local lender here in Temecula that most of my clients end up using, that I can set you up with and refer you over to. They do a great job, they're here local, they can give you all the information. You can fill out the application online and meet through Zoom if you want to do that or meet in person or on a phone call and send documents through a secure portal, et cetera.
So I mean, it's a pretty seamless process, but you want to make sure to take care of that, whether it's with my lender or some other lender you're going to be using. You want to vet that upfront and go through it and establish with what your mortgage rate is going to be based on today's interest rates. So especially because their interest rates have changed so much over the last 12 months. We've seen rates go anywhere from the low to mid fives, up to the 7% range. That's a huge range on affordability. And your mortgage payment could be $200 to $600 difference, based on one rate to another. So you really want to complete that preapproval and establish where that approximate mortgage payment's going to be based on today's rates. And that way you can make sure you're looking at the right price range. And so it needs to be something that's going to be affordable and it's going to fit in the budget for you.
So tip number four is just going to be to hire professional movers. So again, we've helped dozens of people relocate from out state. And after talking with people and even my own experiences with moving. Especially if you're doing an out of state move, I highly, highly recommend that you go ahead and use professional movers. You may hire them to load up your current house and maybe put it into pods if you're not going to have them actually move you across country or some other U-Haul box or some other type of similar system. But really what's happening is you and your family are making this drastic move from out of state. You're moving to a state on the other side of the country or other part of the country, at least, and you're going to have all these different moving parts. You're going to have to worry about flights, you're going to have to worry about maybe some temporary living situation out here in a hotel or Airbnb or something similar. You're going to paying for a house, maybe paying for some remodeling, et cetera.
You're going to have all these other moving parts. The last thing you want to try and focus on is moving all your stuff out of your old house and moving it into the new house. So for really a small fee, I highly recommend that you hire professional movers to at least load all your stuff up into either your moving truck or you're moving contraption, whatever it is you're using. And once you actually get here locally, to use professional movers to unload you. So really, it's probably going to cost most people for just the mover section, just the mover portion, maybe between $2,500 to $3,500 for the actual moving of all their stuff. And really, it's going to be such well spent money, it's going to save you so much time and heartache and frustration when all these different components are actually coming together. When you're making a big move, I highly, highly recommend that you use professional movers.
And step number five is really just going to be to reach out to us. So you're going to see our information there. You can feel free, again, you can call, you can text, you can email. We have people that reach out all the time either asking questions or having us actually help them with their move. Of course, I am a real estate agent, I have a real estate team. So of course we would love to help you guys to answer any questions that you may have. But really, you want to have someone local that you can trust, someone that knows the area well and is well versed and understands why one part of town is better than the other, why one city might be a better fit for you than another city, school districts, neighborhoods, HOAs, taxes, all that type of stuff.
So, you can do a lot of research online. Hopefully you are, you should be well-researched when you're making a move like this. But I think it's really hard to know ... you don't know what you don't know. So by having something that's boots on the ground, someone that lives here, someone that's helped other people in your situation, I think it's a big advantage for you. And of course, we would love to have the opportunity to help you. So you can see all my information at the end, if you have any questions, you can feel free to reach out. Please do me a favor, please hit like, please hit subscribe and hopefully talk to you soon. Thanks.
