What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
Las Flores median real estate price is $1,377,466, which is more expensive than 77.7% of the neighborhoods in California and 95.1% of the neighborhoods in the U.S.
The average rental price in Las Flores is currently $5,108, based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis. The average rental cost in this neighborhood is higher than 90.3% of the neighborhoods in California.
Las Flores is a suburban neighborhood (based on population density) located in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.
Las Flores real estate is primarily made up of medium sized (three or four bedroom) to large (four, five or more bedroom) single-family homes and townhomes. Most of the residential real estate is owner occupied. Many of the residences in the Las Flores neighborhood are established but not old, having been built between 1970 and 1999. A number of residences were also built between 2000 and the present.
In Las Flores, the current vacancy rate is 2.3%, which is a lower rate of vacancies than 84.8% of all neighborhoods in the U.S. This means that the housing supply in Las Flores is very tight compared to the demand for property here.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Rancho Santa Margarita, the Las Flores neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
If you come to know the people here, you will recognize that you're in the company of one of the wealthiest communities in the nation. In fact, a mere 1.1% of America's neighborhoods are wealthier than the Las Flores neighborhood. Real estate here is exceedingly well-maintained, and similarly, tends to maintain its value over time. The cars driven are mostly luxury brands like Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and Lexus. If the public schools aren't up to snuff, the residents of this neighborhood preferentially send their children to private preparatory schools. Vacation to Disney? Yes, but equally popular are summers in Europe.
In addition, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, Las Flores is among the best neighborhoods for families in California. In fact, this neighborhood is more family-friendly than 98.6% of neighborhoods in the entire state of California. Its combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes gives this area the look and feel of a "Leave It to Beaver" episode. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a strong sense of community. In addition, the high number of college-educated parents influences the academic success of the local schools. Overall, you will find all of the amenities a family needs to thrive in the Las Flores neighborhood. In addition to being an excellent choice for families with school-aged children, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for highly educated executives and urban sophisticates.
Real Estate
Most neighborhoods are composed of a mixture of ages of homes, but the Las Flores stands out as rather unique in having nearly all of its residential real estate built in one time period, namely between 1970 and 1999, generally considered to be established, but not old housing. What you'll sense when you look around or drive the streets of this neighborhood is that many of the residences look the same because of this similarity of age. In fact, 89.3% of the residential real estate here was built in this one time period.
In addition, one way that the Las Flores neighborhood really stands out, is that it has more large 4, 5, or additional bedroom homes and real estate than 95.7% of the neighborhoods in America. When you walk or drive around this neighborhood, you'll instantly notice the size of the homes here which definitely makes a strong visual statement.
Diversity
Did you know that the Las Flores neighborhood has more Iranian and Slovak ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 5.6% of this neighborhood's residents have Iranian ancestry and 3.1% have Slovak ancestry.
Las Flores is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 2.9% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Persian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the Las Flores neighborhood in Rancho Santa Margarita are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 98.9% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.6% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 79.9% of America's neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the Las Flores neighborhood, 63.7% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 20.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (11.8%), and 4.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the Las Flores neighborhood is English, spoken by 78.0% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, Tagalog (the first language of the Philippine region), Persian and Chinese.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the Las Flores neighborhood in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Asian (18.4%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (11.1%), and residents who report English roots (8.4%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (6.6%), along with some Irania ancestry residents (5.6%), among others. In addition, 15.8% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in Las Flores neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (39.6% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (76.6%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
