fudgemuffin
New member
With regard to the comparisons between Turtle Ridge, Shady Canyon and HIdden Canyon - having lived in Shady hopefully I can shed a little light on why we would rather live in HC than Shady.
Location wise, Shady does have much better access to Newport because of the West gate. But unless you live lower down the hill in Shady, you first have to navigate TO the gate - and that was maddening for us. On a good day, it was 6 minutes from our home to the North gate and about a minute longer to the West gate. But more often than not, especially between 9am and sunset, we'd end up following a construction vehicle, gardening truck, or other service vehicle moving so S-L-O-W-L-Y it was painful. The roads in Shady are narrow, there are no sidewalks, and there are always parked cars on one side of the main streets (in our case, Canyon Creek), so even one truck could cause a major blockage. If you were fortunate to get behind something like, say, a dump truck, you could look forward to following it all the way down the hill, around the traffic circle, to the 405....at a wonderful 20 mph. Granted, not a big deal if you leave in the morning and come back in the evening. But if you are a stay-at-home mom or work from you're home and have to go in and out during the day, well, good luck!
Although we haven't lived in HC yet, there is a separate entrance for construction vehicles, so that is a positive. We don't expect construction to last long, compared to Shady (which long ago decided to stop enforcing the 4-year build out requirement for lots and will still have construction going on when my grandkids have grandkids). At HC, a quick right out the gate and you're on Lake Forest headed to the 405. If you're lucky enough to hit the light at the gate and Laguna Altura, , you're at the 405 in about a minute. We live at Laguna Altura now, and we think the location is awesome, although the road noise can be terrible with the windows open because we are WAYYY to close to the 133/405. But from a pure location perspective and driving time to anywhere, it's great.
As far as value goes, the semi-custom homes (i.e. tract) on Prairie Grass and Vernal Springs were great deals back in 2004 or so when they were built, and again in about 2009-10 at the bottom of the housing decline. But now they are back in the stratosphere and overall more expensive than HC, smaller than most HC homes, the same size or smaller lots than HC, OLD, and most only have 2 car garages (compared to 3-cars at Marbella, anyway...). Oh, and did I mention they were OLD? I mean, 11 years old is not exactly a new home! Not even sort of new. They do have views, although I don't consider a view of an older Turtle Rock neighborhood a particularly desirable view.
At HC, we are fortunate to have an awesome view and, yes, we'll probably be in to it for 3 mil. But compare that to Shady, where we were in our home for a lot more and had zero view, and we feel pretty good about our decision. Granted, we'd like to have the home separation that we had in Shady (most of the custom homes had 1/2 acre or more) but we'd rather have the view we have at HC than the extra 30 feet between our home and our neighbors in Shady. Shady's overall density of 400 homes on 1600 acres is, of course, way more desirable than HC's. But you really only get to enjoy that if you live further up the hill, in which case you then have to deal with long drive back down the hill.
Location wise, Shady does have much better access to Newport because of the West gate. But unless you live lower down the hill in Shady, you first have to navigate TO the gate - and that was maddening for us. On a good day, it was 6 minutes from our home to the North gate and about a minute longer to the West gate. But more often than not, especially between 9am and sunset, we'd end up following a construction vehicle, gardening truck, or other service vehicle moving so S-L-O-W-L-Y it was painful. The roads in Shady are narrow, there are no sidewalks, and there are always parked cars on one side of the main streets (in our case, Canyon Creek), so even one truck could cause a major blockage. If you were fortunate to get behind something like, say, a dump truck, you could look forward to following it all the way down the hill, around the traffic circle, to the 405....at a wonderful 20 mph. Granted, not a big deal if you leave in the morning and come back in the evening. But if you are a stay-at-home mom or work from you're home and have to go in and out during the day, well, good luck!
Although we haven't lived in HC yet, there is a separate entrance for construction vehicles, so that is a positive. We don't expect construction to last long, compared to Shady (which long ago decided to stop enforcing the 4-year build out requirement for lots and will still have construction going on when my grandkids have grandkids). At HC, a quick right out the gate and you're on Lake Forest headed to the 405. If you're lucky enough to hit the light at the gate and Laguna Altura, , you're at the 405 in about a minute. We live at Laguna Altura now, and we think the location is awesome, although the road noise can be terrible with the windows open because we are WAYYY to close to the 133/405. But from a pure location perspective and driving time to anywhere, it's great.
As far as value goes, the semi-custom homes (i.e. tract) on Prairie Grass and Vernal Springs were great deals back in 2004 or so when they were built, and again in about 2009-10 at the bottom of the housing decline. But now they are back in the stratosphere and overall more expensive than HC, smaller than most HC homes, the same size or smaller lots than HC, OLD, and most only have 2 car garages (compared to 3-cars at Marbella, anyway...). Oh, and did I mention they were OLD? I mean, 11 years old is not exactly a new home! Not even sort of new. They do have views, although I don't consider a view of an older Turtle Rock neighborhood a particularly desirable view.
At HC, we are fortunate to have an awesome view and, yes, we'll probably be in to it for 3 mil. But compare that to Shady, where we were in our home for a lot more and had zero view, and we feel pretty good about our decision. Granted, we'd like to have the home separation that we had in Shady (most of the custom homes had 1/2 acre or more) but we'd rather have the view we have at HC than the extra 30 feet between our home and our neighbors in Shady. Shady's overall density of 400 homes on 1600 acres is, of course, way more desirable than HC's. But you really only get to enjoy that if you live further up the hill, in which case you then have to deal with long drive back down the hill.
