Actually the Mello Roos is much lower than the new homes in Del Sur and 4S ranch. The sales office lists as 1.9% in combined property tax and mello roos, but that is the worst case situation which more applies to those million dollar estate homes with large lot Lennar built earlier. For Belleza home it is more likely 1.7%. In the Lakes community mello roos consists mainly of 2 parts: One is Poway USD CDF and the tax is based on home square footage. Any home with less than 4000 sq ft pays the minimum amount. The other is Rancho Santa Fe CDF which is based on lot size regardless of home size and 15000 sq ft is the cutoff size for least tax. For a typical Belleza home, the combined mello roos is about $4755 for 2011-2012 tax year.
4S rancho new homes have true 1.9% tax with the same price range. Del Sur new homes have tax of 1.9 – 2.05% with $176 monthly HOA and the homes have small lot and very close to each other. A $500K new home in Del Sur has $11K annual tax bill with mello roos counted in.
I attended Lennar grand opening of home release of Lakes in summer 2008. The plan that time was for homes in $900K – 1m. Lennar changed plan after they realized it was difficult to sell at that price range in 2009. They mostly stopped building homes of old style and started new Belleza model in 2011.
Lennar CEO already declared house bottom in the recent earning report conference call. He cited strong increase of demand and orders in west coast region.
Each home in Lakes will have 2 addresses: one is the physical address and another is the mailing address which is a P.O. Box with a Rancho Santa Fe zip code. The mail box is actually inside the community and you no longer have the need of going to post office to get P.O. Box mails. Some people like it: a way to mark up your true location and a prestigious Rancho Santa Fe 92067 zip code. Some people may not like it with 2 addresses.
The parking seems to be an issue as most streets don’t allow parking, so it make hard for friends to come over for large party. There are certain street and areas to allow parking inside the community. The streets are private roads, so some people can accept the no parking rule.
