I hear ya. I rented in Irvine for 8 years, first at Las Palmas and then at Woodbury. Had a nice brand new carriage unit in Woodbury, with nobody above or below, only one shared wall in the bedroom to my neighbors bedroom, corner unit with a nice view of trees and quiet street. The best apartment I've ever had and I've been renting in OC since 1992. One thing I always had to have was a balcony. So our priority list for homes looked something like this: 1. View 2. View 3. View 4. Walk-in Closet. Guess which one was not mine.
Living in Irvine was great. Each blade of grass was hand-cut and bird song from Disneyland was broadcast everywhere from speakers I could never find. I mean really, it was so well maintained and designed that I could not imagine how to make it any better. Everyone was friendly, plenty of local retail, access to everything, SO walkable...but I have to say living in Irvine really raises the bar on what you're looking for. You need something you are so happy with that it beats living in a place like Irvine, and that is really hard to do.
Irvine was perfect for us to buy a house in except for two things: 1) Price. Too much money for too small a space compared to anything outside of Irvine and 2) Uniformity. Irvine is beautiful, but being from New England, it had none of that 'charm' for me and I really miss that from CT.
Since we were all about the view, and me being from CT, I am used to, and really like, inhomogeneous homes/neighborhoods that can have some visual character and unique style and architecture. So in N. Tustin, love the darkness, the large lots, the views, the freedom to build anything, no HOA, no Mello-Roos. If those were the most important criteria in our home search, you can imagine how difficult it was to find that in all of OC and why it made it really hard to leave Irvine for anything less then EXACTLY what we wanted. Short of finding the perfect house, we were staying.
Of course everyone is different, so the perfect house is always different, but if you're going to lay low on the leeward side to ride out a storm while you look and look like we did, Irvine is the place to do it.
Some other thoughts on the negatives of the N. Tustin hills:
1. I was a little worried about the planes originally, but clearly that is an infrequently used approach path as hours can go by without a single plane, then one or two planes, then hours of nothing again, or like I said, six in a row then nothing for hours. But still, there ARE planes and that could bother some people.
2. I was also worried about the commute. I work next to JWA, so it added about ten minutes for a total of 25 mins. I mostly just shoot down Jamboree from Santiago Canyon which is a smooth ride, only a couple reds, to Irvine Blvd. Depending on the construction at the 5 I stay on Jam or hop on the toll road then over to Von Karmen. Not too bad. 10 mins more than when I was in Woodbury, but its a more "smooth" ten minutes, if that makes any sense, because I am not on the 405 with stop and go.
3. One more thing I thought of last night...if you have small dogs or cats, I would say I see a new MISSING poster on the telephone poles every other month. Pretty sure we have the fattest coyotes in SoCal.
4. My house, so I imagine the others, has a sewer ejector. Never seen one before. The thought of it failing terrifies me...lol. For the uninitiated, its an up-hill sewer pump. Whenever you run water, the pump goes off every few minutes or so to pump everything up to the main lines at street level.
5. The homes can be very VERTICAL. I remember in Irvine the 3-story condos were called "wife killers" when they put the laundry room on the first floor and all the bedrooms upstairs. Many of these homes have LOTS of stairs, so again, with kids, it has to be considered. In our case there is a laundry room with a laundry chute from the master bedroom with only one floor elevation difference so not too bad. But if you leave your keys in the family room and your garage is on the top floor, you are going to have a Rocky in Philly moment. Happens a lot. On the bright side, I think I'm losing weight.
6. My neighbors told us the first week we moved in about the wind on the hills. They said it can get bad enough to blow tiles off the roof and that everyone uses the same roof company after a wind storm for the volume discount. Since we had no outdoor furniture it didn't matter (except for tree vs. neighbor's roof), but that first month it was damn windy. I was used to wind and Santa Ana's in Irvine, but this is much windier, gustier I should say. It gets funneled between the hills so it accelerates. Definitely will blow off or over anything that isn't heavy, weighted down, or has a flat surface. That said, it's been many months since that wind and its never been windy again soooo...limited event.
7. Watch for the flips. I think there are a few going on right now. I try to do the OPEN HOUSES on them when I can, both before and after so I can see how they did their crud covering.
8. From what I've seen, people I've talked to there doesn't seem to be much crime on the hills. That might have to do a lot with everyone knowing everyone and being there for so long, the vertical-ness of the homes make it harder for people to hide or do something unseen, and everyone has home alarm systems. BUT, the area down on Chapman to the 55 is definitely not Irvine. I wouldn't say it's "bad" as in I would feel fine walking there at night, but it would probably be uncomfortable for anyone used to Irvine (people showing up in car trunks aside). Also something to consider. Definitely worth taking a spin down the street to get a feel for it in case it might bother you. If you go on the OTHER SIDE of the OC Mining Company, its no problem at all, quite nice actually. Just the strip from OCMC to the 55.
9. Since it IS so vertical on the hills, your have less privacy than you might be used to. Apartment living got me used to staring at other people's windows (not intentionally - unless she was cute - j/k) so that may have gotten me used to it. The upside is that the hill IS so vertical that my roof is in line with the bottom of my cross-the-street neighbors backyard...so his windows are so much higher up that they would have to actually come to their balcony or right up to their window glass and purposely look straight DOWN on my property. In flat spaces like Irvine in homes surrounded by walls, this is less of a concern.
