Santa Cruz CA areas to avoid (Primary Residence.

[Account Closed]

I have a friend looking to buy a primary residence in Santa Cruz California. She found a great townhouse built in 1980 in the south side of Santa Cruz for $450k. She loves it and is ready to buy. However her friends (who have no experience or knowledge in Real estate) claim that it's the ghetto and she should back out of the deal. Can anyone familiar with the area give me some insight on this.?

[Shane Pearlman]

Howdy folks,

Don't the the out of towners fool you, there are all the real estate classes in the wonderful beach town of ours. From a primary property perspective, it is worth putting the time in to do the due diligence.

The 1100 block off capitola road is an area called Live Oak. I have some very good friends who live within two blocks block in both directions and we owned a rental property a handfull of blocks away. Here is the low down on live oak. Its gentrifying but it has some rough streets. The challenge is that each and every street in that area is remarkably different. Our rental was at the end of Kinsley St near 17th ave. The first 10 properties on Kinsley were mostly low income multifamily. Plenty of nice hard workers, and a bunch of drug dealers. We had property damage, twice someone stole all our landscaping (basically left us with a front yard with holes in it), and our home was turned into a grow house. As Kinsley keeps going though, it gets nicer and nicer and another 20 houses further, I would call it solid A/A- class. Unlike some areas (capitola for example) where I can tell you with complete confidence all is well, live oak requires a good neighborhood walk. Also, if your friend has kids, the elementary schools on 17th are both on the lowest end of the spectrum in regards to performance. 

When we consider properties in that neighborhood (and we do), I basically canvas and knock on doors, introduce myself and just hang out with people. I get the low down. And it becomes quickly obvious if this part of the street is on the upswing, or still has more issues than I personally want to deal with. There are some REALLY nice streets in live oak and there are a few deals I'm really glad I backed out of.

Your friend is welcome to DM me for specifics.