I thought I’d take the time to post an update as I’ve now been living here in Santaluz for over a year now.
I’m glad that this thread has helped several people. I’ve received several PM’s from people that ended up buying in Santaluz or are in the process of closing on houses now as they said the information on this thread was valuable.
I don’t regret for a second buying here. In fact, everyday my wife and I wake up thankful that we live here. It’s a wonderful community and we remain absolutely thrilled with living here.
There has been no downsides or negatives at all with the house, the neighborhood or the development.
The development is very well managed and all the staff from the security guards, to the employees at the Club to the management staff are all professional and friendly and great with communication and always quick to get back to me any time I had a question.
I honestly feel like the HOA is great value for the money. The HOA fees actually decreased in the past year from $450/month to $440 a month. And in that as mentioned before I get digital cable included and also high speed Internet from Time Warner which is very fast. I routinely get 20 MB download speeds. Also, garbage pick up is included as well.
The development is immaculately maintained! In fact since buying they have resurfaced the entire development streets.
It’s always clean and the security is really really top notch. I’ve been impressed with that.
We really feel a sense of community here and last year our first Christmas here, all of our immediate surrounding neighbors brought gifts to our house.
They also have an annual block party which we just had a few weeks ago and it’s a great way to meet your neighbors and their kids.
Especially in our block it’s great as almost all of the people around me are original owners and have been here since the development started in 2003. Everyone around us are professionals (lawyers, doctors, engineers or business owners).
We are members at the Club and people there are friendly as well. We’ve met a few members there where they have invited us to their homes for dinner. You can’t ask for nicer people. As mentioned in another post, my personal physician happens to live here as well in Santaluz.
I personally like that they are so strict with their rules because the quality of life is very high. But it does annoy people that they can only paint their house one color, paint their garage door one color, etc.
But I love the fact they force people to maintain their lots nice here. Most of the people around us all have gardeners/landscapers that come every week.
They are very strict here with things like speeding since there are so many young kids here in the development. The development is 3,800 acres! So it’s quite expansive and big. They have patrols that have radar guns within the gates and set up stations that say how fast you are going and supposedly cameras to issue tickets.
I’ve never gotten a ticket but a few times I think I was going over the limit so they just flashed the lights on top of the roving security patrol. I’m not sure if people actually get speeding tickets.
The only person that I heard getting fined for noise was one of my neighbors down the street that I didn’t meet before. She told me she had to get rid of her dog. Apparently she has a very difficult neighbor and he kept calling in to complain about the dog barking.
She said the first time she got a warning. The 2nd time she got a $100 ticket along with a 3rd time getting another $100 noise ordinance ticket. I’m not sure how loud the dog was but she said she worked during the day as well as her husband and she felt so nervous and worried about getting more tickets she got rid of the dog.
That goes to show you they are very serious about noise ordinances, which I think is actually a good thing. I’d hate to have a neighbor with a noisy dog. It’s nice not having to worry about those types of things.
The development and home surpassed our greatest expectations/hopes and we LOVE living here and I never see us moving until maybe when the kids are out of the house and we won’t need such a big house.
The house has been perfect with no problems at all except we did have to replace a spring on a garage door that went bad a few weeks ago. But other than that absolutely no problems at all with the house or the development.
We LOVE being so close to the beach. It literally takes us no more than 15 minutes getting to the beaches in Del Mar taking Carmel Valley/Del Mar Heights and I go to the beach about 4 times a week.
It’s great having easy access to I-56 or even to I-5 just taking the back way to Rancho Santa Fe on San Diegito Road. And also being close to I-15 as well. We can pretty much get anywhere we need to without it taking too long.
I met a few people from this board that currently own houses here or previously owned here and all were class acts and enjoyed meeting them.
