Believe it or not, I am going through some Santaluz withdrawl. I think the place gets a bad rap here and elsewhere and I will defend its honor every chance I get. Price distress and distressed owners do not make an area a bad place to live, just a risky place to own if you are a short term owner. If you are not, Santaluz is a great place to live and own and your water bill will be a fraction of what it will be in FBR.
FBR was my first choice after all. I am very partial to lush landscaping and the custom estates in FBR won me over, but we plan on making our slighlty used FBR home look a lot like a Santaluz Tuscan or Andalusian beauty. We plan to join the Santaluz clubs (assuming I can talk my wife into it of course.) Santaluz was a close second to FBR for me, at least emotionally.
For my wife there was a massive gap between FBR and any other place. It was a no brainer for her. Santaluz was once second on her list, but I think Diegueno Hills (which I loved too) pushed it to third on her list. The first time she visited FBR, she said “this is where I want to die.”
The first time I saw Santaluz, I was like, “what is with the dessert theme?” I think we react negatively at first to things that are different from what we are accustomed. But boy did it grown on me, maybe not enough to displace FBR, but I developed an affection for my state of mind everytime I visted the place. It is Tuscany revisited. So creative was its master plan, that it is unlike anythying else around. Everything grew on me in a land with tight restrictions on what can grow there. Even the circular (privacy first) custom lots. The homes were walks through Ovid for me on some days, Andalusia on others.
