All right, so this video is all about the top five mistakes to avoid when buying a home here in the city of Murrieta, California. I'm gonna go over what I think are the top five biggest things to avoid, and really I think these are kind of some local tips that don't necessarily apply in different areas.

So hopefully it's good information for you guys. 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 Temecula, and this video is all about the city of Marietta, and we're gonna go over the top five Ms. Stakes to avoid when buying a home here in the city of Marietta. You know, I've lived here locally for a really long time, so over 25 years, and really all of my real estate business is here local, in the Temecula and  Murrieta and Menifee Valley and, and kind of the surrounding area.

So I think I can give you guys some really good information. That, that's, and really I think these are things that really pertain locally that don't necessarily apply to different areas. Um, but before I get into all the information, you know, if you are liking real estate videos like this, please do me a favor.

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So again, we're gonna go over the top five mistakes to avoid when buying a home here in Marietta. And we're gonna start with number one. So again, we're gonna go over the top five biggest mistakes to avoid, and number one on my list. Is ignoring hidden costs, uh, when comparing one home to another. And so what, what I mean by that is if you're gonna buy a home here in  Murrieta, you may, you may be looking at homes.

Let's say you're looking at an $800,000 home, right? And so you're looking at all the homes that are for sale for 800,000. And obviously that's super important. You know, prices one of the biggest factors, and you gotta make sure it's gonna be affordable and it's gonna fit in your budget for you and your family.

So it's super important. But in addition to price. Different homes might have some of these other extra items that you're not thinking about that can significantly change the cost. So, uh, number one would be the property taxes. So if you're not familiar with this area, different neighborhoods we'll have different, what they call special assessments or Melrose.

So basically these are just extra property taxes that are gonna be, that you as a homeowner are gonna pay each and every year. Um, so you might be looking at two $800,000 homes. One has. Very low to no special assessments. Um, and so that means, you know, per year, like your total tax rate is gonna be right about 1.2% or so, and then you might look at a home across the street that's maybe a little bit newer also $800,000, but that home has a lot and very, very high special assessments.

And that might have a 2.2% tax rate, right? And so that 1% difference in tax might not sound like a big deal. But on an $800,000 home, 1%, that's like $8,000 a year in extra taxes from this second home compared to the first home. And if you go, you know, over over 12 months, that's like, you know, that's probably, what, 700 bucks a month or something like that?

Difference. Two homes that are priced the same, but that second one's gonna have higher taxes. So that's a little extreme, but in. That scenario happens all the time because different neighborhoods do have different special assessments and some of those different taxes. So that is really something that you want to pay attention to when you are looking at homes locally is what is that tax rate?

What, if any special assessments do they have and how does that compare to the others that I'm looking at? Uh, the second thing that I would bring up there and really consider more of a hidden cost. In addition to this home itself, you also want to pay attention if that home has any type of solar panels on it.

So. Obviously if you live in a home, your home's gonna be connected, you know, to the electricity grid. Right? And you're gonna have power to home and you're gonna have an electric bill. I think everyone understands that. Right. But in addition to that, you know, over the last 10 years or so, solar panels in this area become much more common.

And it's even law now in some of, in some of the new builds or in all of the new builds over the last handful of years, um, that it can, the, the solar. The solar panels can kind of complicate this process a little bit. So if a home has solar on it, we typically see two different ways that that happens.

Uh, one is if you're gonna put solar panels on your home, you can just pay cash for them. Buy them outright and place them up. Place them on your roof. And put 'em on your property. And that, that's a big benefit if you're gonna buy a home that has paid for solar panels, is, is what that's called. So if you have a paid off solar panel, you know if you're gonna buy the home, whatever electricity those panels generate, it's just free electricity.

And really for you as a home buyer, that makes that home more desirable, right? Because it's gonna give you less or no electric bill. Uh, but in this area, that's not super, super common. We do see it, I'd say about 35% of the time or so, more often than not, if it's. Home has solar panels on it. We see that, we see it more often that that home has a lease for the solar panels.

So what that means, if you're gonna go buy a home that has solar panels with the lease, uh, when, when you go to buy it, you're still gonna have an electric bill. But in general, instead of paying the electric company for your electricity, you're gonna pay a bill to the solar company for the electricity.

Okay. And that's not necessarily a terrible, terrible thing there. There's benefits, right? The solar panel. The solar company is gonna tell you, well, the reason that you should do this is 'cause we're gonna charge you less per kilowatt than the electric company. And that's true in a lot of cases. So the solar, like on your electric bill, you have a charge per kilowatt, you know, it's written down there.

And let's say I, I, I'm just making up numbers. Let's say the electric company charges you 19 cents a kilowatt. Solar company says, Hey, we're gonna charge you 15 cents a kilowatt. Right. Those are just ma made up numbers, but that's kinda the general principle, so it's less per kilowatt, which sounds like a really good thing, and so it would make sense.

Hey, let's do the solar release. I'm gonna save money. Typically, people will only put solar panels on their home if they are gonna save money. So they might save 40 bucks a month, 60 bucks a month, a hundred bucks a month, you know, whatever it is. But they're gonna do it because it's a savings. Okay, great.

The challenge becomes when you go to sell the home, let's say I'm, let's say I'm selling the home. Let's, let's say it's my home, right? And I work from home a good amount of times. I have a couple kids. My kids use a lot of electronics and technology, right? They use iPads and we watch TV and my wife works from home as well.

So we would be considered like high electricity users, right? I have a pool, we gotta pay to do all that. Right? We're high electricity users. Okay, great. Say, say, if we're gonna sell, sell our home, and let's say we're gonna sell it to you, and you are an empty nester, and it's just two of you that live together.

There's no kids. You don't really use much technology, right? You don't even really internet that much. Maybe you watch TV a little bit on the weekends, but you're, you're out of town a lot or. You know, you just, yeah, you take off your a snowbird, whatever it is, but you're a very low electricity user, so I'm a high electricity user.

You're a low electricity user. I have a solar lease because it saved me money. But my lease payment is, you know, $240 a month. And I did it because it saved me 40 bucks a month. Cool. Um, now if you're gonna come in, you're a low electricity user, your average electric bill might only be like a hundred dollars a month, right?

And so to buy my home, you must assume my lease at 240. So we have to kind of match up, right? Because it's gonna be really difficult for you to assume my lease. Because you're gonna be locked into that $240 bill and you're, you're not gonna use that much power. That's like, that's a huge con, that's a huge negative, right?

So that, that can be, be complicated. So you do have to kind of match up with the if with the solar lease and make sure it's a fit for you and your family and how much electricity you're gonna use, et cetera. So it can get a little convoluted, a little complicated. That is something you really wanna pay attention to, because I have a lot of clients when we're, when we're talking, they just say, oh yeah, I wanna buy a home with solar.

Well, yes, it could be a good thing, especially if it's paid off, but if it's not paid off, it's not necessarily a benefit. Like we gotta kind of weed through it a little bit and look at the bill and kind of understand if it's truly a benefit for you or if. A big negative. Alright, so number two on my list.

And that would be underestimating commute times or just overall road congestion. So what, what I mean by that is most people when they move here to Murrieta, don't necessarily work here locally. Most people live in  Murrieta and they make a commute out for work. They commute to San Diego. They commute to LA and they commute to Orange County.

So if you're lucky enough to be able to work locally, obviously that's a huge benefit compared to most everyone else that lives here. So that's like, I would be super excited if that was the case. Um, or if you're able to work from home that's even better. Right. And obviously. Post COVID, so many more people are able to do that.

So if you're lucky enough to be able to work from home or work from home, maybe not even every day, but three, four days a week, that's gonna be a big benefit for sure. Um, but if not, if you are gonna be on the road, you really want to pay attention to where you're gonna be commuting versus where you're buying a home at within the city.

So for example, you know, there's two main freeways, you know, here in Marietta. So that's the two 15 freeway and the 15 freeway. Most people do go south towards, uh, towards San Diego, but a lot of people do commute north towards, you know, Corona towards the Orange County area, you know, what, what have you.

But let's say if you live in the northern, like say like the northern portion or even like the eastern portion of  Murrieta, basically just far away from the 15 freeway. And if you're commuting. South down towards San Diego. Well being on that side of the city compared to where to where you're trying to get to, even though you're still in the city of  Murrieta as opposed to living on the other side of town, your commute might be an extra 15 to 20 minutes each way.

So that can be an extra 30 to 40 minutes in a car just 'cause you're on one side of town to the other. So, especially if you're not super familiar with the area, you really wanna pay attention to, Hey, you know, if I'm gonna live over on the east side of Murrieta, kind of out, outta the way a little bit.

Because it's a little bit less expensive, you know, is that worth it for me and my family in order to have a 20 minute longer commute? Right. So that's just something you really gotta pay attention to. Um, and the other thing is, is timing. I have a lot of clients when they, when they're moving out here, you know, they, they'll run like a Google map search, right?

And like. Be like, okay, how long does it take me to get from this address that I like to, to my work? Okay, my commute's gonna take me 35 minutes. Okay, great. I can, that feels doable. I can deal with that. But they don't necessarily adjust the time on that and really think about, well, hey, at. The search I ran was, you know, 12 o'clock on a Sunday.

But that doesn't necessarily mean my commute time during rush hour. So if you are gonna be commuting and you are gonna like use a website or something to look at that commute time, make sure that you are adjusting the time to look at what that traffic pattern will look like when you. Need to be at work.

So if you're gonna leave at six o'clock or seven o'clock in the morning, kind of, you know, do it, you know, adjust the time to make sure you know actually what you're getting into because that 35 minute commute on a Sunday can definitely turn into an hour and 10 minutes on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

So, um, it's just something that you really want to pay attention to and be mindful. All right, uh, number three on my list is you, you wanna make sure that you pay attention to what school you are zoned for. And especially in Murrieta, you want to pay attention to what school district you are zoned for.

Most people don't realize this, but just because you live in the city,  Murrieta does not necessarily mean that you are gonna be zoned for the  Murrieta Valley School District. Uh, there, depending on what part of the city in, you can actually be a part of three different school districts. Districts. So that is a big deal.

Uh, because they're not, not all created the same. Um, so you have the  Murrieta Valley School District, which is very, very highly rated. Um, a small section of homes that are in the city of  Murrieta are also zoned for, or instead zoned for the Temecula Valley School District, uh, which is also a very, very highly rated school district.

Um, so that. I would think would still be a good thing. Um, but then there's a pretty decent size portion of the city, more in like the northern side, closer to the Menifee border. Uh, and that is actually zoned for the Perris Valley Unified School District. Now that's a big deal because those schools are not rated near as high as the Murrieta or Temecula schools.

So that's a big deal. So typically. When you are looking at those, you're looking at those listings, you see 'em on Zillow or with your realtor, whatever it is, you know, those homes tend to be less expensive. And the reason is, is because the school district isn't as desirable. Um, now I do have a lot of clients that will buy homes there, especially if their kids are young.

Um, like the elementary schools are actually a little bit higher, more highly rated. So, and they'll go, kind of go to elementary school there and as they grow, they'll sell and move into a little bit higher rated district. So that's something you can always consider. Um, but just make sure you pay attention to that.

Make sure you know, because if you are zoned for the Paris Valley School District and you want to transfer to a different school district, it's very, very difficult to do between districts. Uh, you can transfer between schools pretty easily, but between districts is almost impossible from, from what I understand.

So that's something you really wanna pay attention to, especially in Marietta. Realize what, uh, what which of the three districts your home is actually gonna be zoned for. Cool. Um, and number four on my list is homeowner insurance rates. So if you're not familiar and you don't have any knowledge of this.

Homeowners insurance rates really across the nation, but especially in Southern California, have gone up quite a bit over the last 10 years and even the last 2, 3, 4 years. So, uh, a lot of it has to do with extra fire insurance that needed. Uh, there's a fire map, high fire risk map that depending where your home is located, might require you to have some extra buyer insurance.

And because of that, there's a lot of the big insurance companies have actually stepped out of the state of California. And because of that, uh, insurance rates have gone up. So, uh, there is, there is pretty much always, I have never seen a home that can't get some type of fire insurance on it and, you know, total homeowner's insurance policy.

So it's not necessarily like worried about being covered or not. It's more worried about having. Somewhat of a decent cost. So, you know, I will see when, when I'm working with clients and we're looking at homes and they're getting estimates, I'll see people that have homeowners insurance rates anywhere from, let's call it, on the lower end, probably $2,400 to $3,200 a year, something like that.

You know, two to $250 a month, that type of thing. Um. All the way up to like your mid-level costs could be, you know, four to $5,000 a year. That's a pretty big bill. Now we're talking about $400 a month. And then something that's super sky high, that's probably, this is probably more of a remote area. Um, but this is big property, but this would be super, I, I've seen it, you know, this would be super high, you know, north of $10,000 a year, so that's almost a thousand dollars a month just for your homeowner's insurance.

So those are big deals. Uh, there's also some things you gotta learn about as far, it's called the California Fair Plan. So depending where your home is zoned, uh, you might have to add on this extra fire insurance that you can only get to California Fair Plan. Um, and it, you can kind of get in the weeds on some of this stuff, but basically it's important to know what.

The homeowner insurance rate is gonna be on the home that you're buying and make sure it's gonna be affordable for you and your family. So really something you wanna pay attention to. Um, I guess the other thing that I'll mention with that I have a lot of clients. When we first start talking and they start getting their homeowner's insurance quotes, they'll go to like their favorite homeowners, their favorite insurance company.

So like they'll go directly to AAA or to State Farm or farmers, whatever it is. Um, that's really, really difficult to do nowadays because of how many companies have stepped outta California and. Uh, just the big varying ranges and costs that different companies charge. Really, I recommend that pretty much everybody contacts an insurance broker, uh, to see what those rates, what rates they can offer you, because the benefit of a broker, you know, they could shop 25, 30 different companies very, very quickly.

Uh, rather than you, if you're gonna go, let's say to aaa, they're just gonna. You're going to one company at a time, right? So that can be very, very tedious to get all those different quotes. Um, if you can get a decent quote, great. You might just luck out. But I would say 90, 90% of the time people end up going with a broker.

A lot of times I have one that I recommend or another one that maybe they get a referral from somebody else. But a broker just is so valuable right now because there's so much, um, unknown and so much changing with the homeowner's insurance costs. And you wanna make sure you get a decent rate and still make sure you're getting good coverage.

Okay. Um, and then number five on my list as far as mistakes to avoid is not factoring in resale and long-term appreciation factors. So I, most everybody that I deal with when we're going to buy a home can, everyone has the same thing. This is, everyone says the same thing, oh, this is gonna be my forever home.

I'm gonna live here for, you know, forever. And what, it's, you typically not the case. I mean, I've said that myself like four times and. You know, my, I've, I've moved four times. I moved three times, so it's just, it's not, it is always good to have that mindset, but life tends to. It take you to different places than you would imagine, and there tends to be turns and twists and different dynamics and life changes, you know, so, um, your odds are that, your home, you're probably not gonna live there for 25 to 30 years.

You know? I definitely hope my current home, I will be there for a very, very, very long time. Uh, but, you know, we'll, we'll see what happens with life and it's just, it just. It doesn't always work out that way, but so because of that, you do want to make sure that you are paying attention to potential resale and what appreciation is going to going to do long term for you.

So, so what that means is when you're buying a home and it backs up to a busy street and you're like, eh, well you know what? I'm used to living next to the 4 0 5 freeway, and so this is just kind of a main road, but the road noise doesn't really bother me. Which is great, but you do need to think about, hey, long term when we go to sell it, like, is my home gonna be less desirable because I back up to main road?

Well, the answer's probably yes. So just keep that in mind when you're, when you're buying a home, like, like that. Um, and it's, and the other thing as far as appreciation that I wanted to mention is the school district. So I talked about earlier how there's three different school districts and you know, each one's gonna be.

Depending which district you're zoned for, each district's gonna be a little bit differently rated, and especially if you're in like a low rating district, your home might be a little bit cheaper. But at the same time, if you are living, your home is zoned in a lower rated school district, it's probably not gonna appreciate as much as something that is zoned in a highly rated district.

So, um, that's something they pay attention to. So even though you don't, you might not have school aged kids or you're never gonna have kids, or your kids are grown, right? And it's not important to you. It will affect you down the line when you go to sell the property. 'cause it's not gonna sell as much, you're not gonna make as much profit on appreciation.

So, um, anyways, I hope that's good information for you guys to think about and these are, you know, real world examples of things that I see pop up with my clients and other agents, clients that I know. So hopefully it's good information. Hopefully it helps. If you have questions, feel free to reach out.

Thanks for watching me ramble for a bit. Uh, and hopefully I'll talk to you soon. Thanks.