Review of Santa Rosa, California


Great if you bought 15 years ago!!
Star Rating - 7/31/2009
This place used to be affordable for california, with people in the early eighties being able to buy a house for 70k to 110k. Have wages went up 600%? No, just another reason why the young and working class leave in droves. I am planning my leave as well for somewhere in the midwest where a fixer upper can be had for $10,000 or so. The weather is not that great! I mean the weather is wonderful, sometimes 75 degrees in december and January. But there comes a time when you realize that you will never ever be able to afford a home here. I see ads where people are living 2 to a room. I do not see why anyone would chose to come out and live here, if your poor you will exploited by high rents, if you are rich why pay california taxes? The traffic is terrible. If you want great weather I would try chico or the foothills if you want to be in California, but then again that is where people in California go when they try to find cheaper real estate, then you realize that everyone is fleeing these high prices into Arizona, Nevada etc. So I am going back to the midwest where I have lived and its not too bad. There is a wine industry, so what, pay high prices to nibble on food and taste wine, big whoop. I drive by these vineyards everyday. The ocean is close, but after you have been there a couple of times you are done with that, and the water is very cold. What really got me is that in my search for affordable rents I looked at mobile homes, $700 a month space rent on an old single wide that you have to buy for $15,000 or more, thats horrible, in the south and midwest normal space rents are $110-$220 and you have three times the yard size. Pass on this area if you are workingclass.
Dave | Santa Rosa, CA
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2 Replies


If you are so unhappy here and your view of our wonderful city has gotten this negative, then please leave, we don't want unhappy, negative people here.
Kevin | Santa Rosa, CA | Report Abuse

I grew up in Chico and it is a very nice city of around 100,000 in the Northeast corner of the Sacramento Valley. It isn't nearly as nice as Santa Rosa though, and if you don't like it hot it's between 90 and well above 100 degrees for 4 months of the year. It's also out in the middle of nowhere, and a very inconvenient place to live if you like to travel. It's 100 miles North of Sacramento, 170 miles North of San Francisco, 500 miles North of Los Angeles, 500 miles South of Portland, OR, and 150 miles West of Reno, NV. If you like going to the beach for the day forget it. It takes 3 hours to get to the beach, so you'll have to pony up about $150.00 a night for an average motel near the beach. Same with Lake Tahoe, You could make the trip in about 2 hours and have a nice day, but it makes for a lot of driving and more than likely will be crowded if you go on a weekend day. Plan on spending $150.00 for an average motel in Tahoe as well. If you're a homebody and like being isolated then it would be a nice place to live, but it's not like Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa is 55 miles North of San Francisco, 25 minutes to the beach, and non-stop flights to Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Diego. From any of those cities you can fly anywhere you want to in the entire world. Chico, not so much. 3 non-stops to San Francisco daily at inconvenient hours for meeting up with other flights from SFO. It's sad that so many people don't appreciate what they have and focus on negative things and exaggerate them. Happy traveling!
Kevin | Santa Rosa, CA | Report Abuse
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