I rented in Talega. I am not surprised in the least. While it is a master planned community close to the beach and beautiful weather, it had little else of substance going for it. Mediocre schools at best and far from most jobs (San Diego or Irvine).
I had heard of many in the neighborhood that were realtors or loan agents. And the SoCal cultural pathology was in full force there (ie. many with Hummers, decked out backyards, and it just felt like everyone was trying to compete to show off that they had more toys, etc).
They still have new homes available there (Standard Pacific, etc). Moreover, many of those homes were sold during 2004-2005. I was frequently surprise by the type of people at the phase releases. For example, for homes in the 900k-1.1M range, I saw quite a few very young couples. I just figured that they had vast amounts of equity or great jobs. Many probably didn’t. As it turns out, it was merely that the banks were just too happy to give them $1m to buy any home they wanted.
