What area of San Diego really has it all? Schools, safe neighborhoods, short commute to 32nd street naval base?

carlsbad!!!!!!! its amazing good schools, great atmoshphere, very safe, i go to their farmers market every saturday and its so fun, the beach is RIGHT there, the people are so nice, its very family friendly, casual and low key. its an awesome place so i deffinetly suggest u check it out :]

There aren't good areas within 15 minutes of 32nd st Naval Base. It's adjacent to a really high crime area. Eastlake is longer than 15 minutes and the area's gone downhill because a lot of risky loans in that area so house values have declined steeply. The schools aren't awful but not great either. South Park has some nice neighborhoods with fun little restaurants but terrible schools. Poway/Rancho Bernardo/Rancho Penasquitos all use Poway Unified Schools which have a great reputation but only condos or townhouses in the price range you're looking at. And it's maybe a 45 minute drive to 32nd st. in good traffic. Shopping for you is mostly big box stores. Kensington (maybe 25 minutes from 32nd st.) has some really cute neighborhoods, lots of little coffe shops and bookstores and cute little restaurants but schools are terrible; you'd have to go the private school rounte. ADDENDUM: I just read you are considering Temecula...HOLD UP! That is NOT within 60 minutes of 32nd St. Base, not even if you were driving at 3 am! Well, maybe exactly 60 minutes at 3 am. But I am assuming your husband will be doing most of that drive between 5 am and midnight. You need to understand that the drive will take way longer than an hour most of the time. The traffic on Hwy 15, which is the only route south from Temecula toward downtown, is often down to less than 20 miles an hour by 6 am. I work at a hospital that has many nurses living in Poway/Escondido/Rancho Bernardo area, which is a half hour south of Temecula, who allow for a 45 minute drive between their home and our hospital, which is a half hour north of 32nd street base! You seriously need to rethink this one. IF THAT DOESN'T CONVINCE YOU another staff member of our hospital who does live in Temecula drives in each morning and tells me it takes an hour 15 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes to drive to our hospital each morning, and a similar time to drive home, all due to the terrible traffic that is a constant for the hwy 15 route. And keep in mind that your husband would be driving a half hour further south!!! Which means that any time he'd be making the drive during the heavier traffic hours, it would take between an hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes each way. If you and he think you want to do this in order to be able to save money on buying a home, which doubtless you would, keep in mind that the reason why the houses are so inexpensive there right now is that lots of people who thought they'd suck up and make the long drive so that they could afford a nice home in a safe neighborhood for their families are getting out now because with the rise in gas prices that eliminated any economic advantage for the cheeper house prices, since they were paying so much more for gas. So make sure you take that into account.

I'm active Navy, stationed in San Diego. Sounds like you are also. You should look at moving into housing. The houses available for under $400K (yes, 400) are either 40-60 minutes outside of San Diego or in the ghetto. The entire area around Naval Station is one of the worst neighborhoods in San Deigo. You do not want to be within 10 minutes of that base, 15 minutes is borderline. Poway is nice, but it is a lot further than 15 minutes, closer to 45 to 60 minutes away from base. If you really want to buy and want a nice area with good schools then you should probably look at Escondido or Temecula and have him suck up the commute. If you want more info, e-mail me.

Poway and University City have good schools but you wont find any homes for 300k in either and it's more than a 15 min. commute to 32nd St. Eastlake public schools are not so good, If you live in Eastlake you will want to send your kids to a private school.