I’ll answer your qestions but let’s not make this another “I hate temecula” thread and stay with the specific tracts vs others. I’m only saying this because that seems to be the inevitable direction of these things.
1-not bad, at 7 am, you have to wait through a couple light cycles to get onto 15 south, they are going to make one of those clover leafs so it will be easier. It used to suck, but they went from 2 lanes to six in the least few years, so it’s ok now.
2-The overall quality of life in the temecula parkway corridor is as good as it gets in the valley (this includes both north and south of the parkway), as far as vail ranch goes, it’s one of my least favorite developments. It’s quality of life is good, it’s schools are good, actually among the best, strike that, they are the best in this county, they share schools with redhawk, morgan, wolf and the other adjacent developments, but to be honest, vail is the weak link.
3-vail has three things working against it vs. the other choices: AGE (most of it is at least ten years old), SIZE (most of the houses are small, there a few exceptions but a 1200-1900 sq ft 3/2 or 4/2 with a 2 car garage is the average house. And NO HOA (it is one of the few large developments in the area that lacks an HOA.
If it only had one or two of the three, it might be fine, but the trifecta is a recepie for disaster. It also has a higher percentage of rentals than the other developments because most are starter homes, most were built during the last downturn and most were built when margins were very thin so they built them as cheaply as they could. The lack of uniform fencing bugs me, i guess I’m picky, but everyones fense seems to be a different color, material and stae of disrepair. This may sound trivial, but it casts of a yucky curbside feeling and i know I’d be the guy with the vinyl fence next to the guy with the dilapidated, burned out untereated balsa wood thing, propped up by milkcrates and random patches.
It’s equal in size would be paloma del sol, which I think is a better choice because the hoa has kept it looking better and it has ammenities (like pools and more landscaping). Paloma is just as old and the house size is similar (there are exceptions in both), but head to head, paloma is just nicer.
vail doesn’t compare really to redhwak, it’s very different. Redhawk is just as old if not older in some cases but the homes are in most cases about twice as large, it has an hoa and most houses have nicer hardscape, landscaping is kept up and improved more. keep in mind these are broad strokes I’m painting, each place has about 5000 people, more than a dozen tracts each, so there are some pockets of nice big homes in vail and some small ones in redhwak. There is a fill in tract in redhawk called bridlevail (off via cordoba) that isn’t in the redhawk hoa and the homes are small, but it is accessed via redhawk and almost every listing for one says “redhawk beauty.” I don’t know if realtors realize it or hope the buyer won’t. It’s still decent, it has it’s own hoa and a pool but it’s a little different, a little more vail ranchish.
The trouble with vail is that since most the homes are smaller, people tend to use their garage as living or storage space and it seems like every car is on the street (and the number of monster trucks seems to be higher, and as paramount alluded to, it’s more rednecky).
It’s not bad, but it’s no redhawk. Of the four main developments south of temecula parkway, morgan and redhwak attract a higher demographic, wolf is an enigma, it’s proximity to the casino and flatland location bothered me, but I like the actual houses and vail has a good location but has those three strikes I mentioned and would be my last pick. I had a girlfriend that lived in vail at one point and one that lived in paloma at a different point, so I am vaugely familiar with both and they were about the same sized (the house, not the girlfriend), I’d pick the paloma house, both the women were crazy so there’s no pick there, actually the vail one was…….that’s another story, but the paloma girl had a better neighborhood and a better built house.
You can label me a snob, but I considered the other three and a few places on the north side of the parkway, each has it’s plusses and minuses but I never considered vail for the reasons stated above, I’ve owned two and rented two places south of the parkway on the 11 years as a southie, none of which were in vail but most were within a mile or so. It is cheaper, but there are cheap places that are better in my never humble opinion.
