Turtle Ridge

Homes for Sale In Turtle Ridge, Irvine

If you’re looking at homes for sale in the Irvine, California area, Turtle Ridge is a unique area that many decide to check out. It is the Southern-most neighborhood in Irvine, bounded to the south by the 73 freeway and Newport Beach. To the west is the campus of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), with Turtle Rock just to the North and the huge (735-acre) Bommer Canyon Nature Reserve to the East.

Turtle Ridge consists of 14 separate communities with a total of just over 1,600 homes, most of which are in private, guard-gated HOAs, making it one of the more exclusive (and expensive) neighborhoods in Irvine.

Turtle Ridge Home Prices

There are some condos and townhomes available in Turtle Ridge, with prices starting in the low $500,000s for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath attached unit of under 1,500 square feet. 3 Bedroom condo units are also available and go from $700,000 to $900,000 or so.

Single family home prices in Turtle Ridge start at about $1.4 million for your typical 3-4 bedroom house on a reasonable (5,000 square foot) lot, while the higher end homes can be priced at $4 to $5 million, which typically entails both a larger home (5,000 to 6,000 square feet) and a larger lot (up to 1/2 an acre).

Other than size, one of the things that determines the cost of a home in Turtle Ridge is the location: some of the homes have spectacular views of the ocean, mountains, and city lights.

Living in Turtle Ridge

The first Turtle Ridge homes were built in 2002, and like all of Irvine’s newer housing developments, there are ample amenities available. Turtle Ridge’s amenities include:

Private Summit Park – accessible to residents of Turtle Ridge Summit HOA, which includes:

• 3 more parks that are accessible to all residents
• Several pools, including an adults-only pool, an Olympic sized pool, cabanas, and hot tubs. 
• Two clubhouses – one of which includes a full movie theater
• A full fitness center open from 4:30 AM to 11:00 PM with a personal trainer available

The neighborhood is absolutely gorgeous, being crisscrossed with bike paths and walkways and having access to stunning trails throughout the Canyon via Vista Point.

Also in Turtle Ridge is the enormous 18.3 acre Las Lomas Community Park, which includes soccer fields, basketball courts, racquetball, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and a huge multipurpose area. Also available at the park are camps and after-school programs.

Aside from the amenities, Turtle Ridge is in a great location for commuters. Lying along the 73 toll road, it is a quick shot to either North or South Orange County, and provides faster access to Newport Beach than any city other than Newport Beach itself.

Also, like any neighborhood you can pick in Irvine, the area is very family oriented – you won’t find a lot of singles living nearby. As such, if you are concerned about schooling, your children will attend some of the very best schools in the state – K-6 attend Turtle Rock elementary school, which is not only among the very highest ranked schools, but your children will be attending school with students whose parents really care about school – a significant percentage of classmates will have children of UCI professors as classmates and an astonishing 50% of student’s parents have completed graduate school.

High school aged children in the area attend University High, which was ranked as the #1 best high school in California and #8 in the nation by Newsweek, and in 2012, 10 University high students had perfect scores on the ACT, which is a national record. In the most recent year 63% of students at this high school went straight to a 4-year university and 96% went on to some sort of post-secondary education.

Turtle Ridge Pros and Cons

Even though there are considerable benefits to living in Turtle Ridge, it’s not necessarily the best place for everyone.

While the location is perfect if you plan on traveling in your car, it’s not really a very “walkable” location aside from the clubhouse and park area, there’s no place to actually walk to (other than looking at all the pretty things), so a trip to the grocery store or a restaurant entails at the very least a ten minute drive – and often a lot further than that. (Turtle Ridge does provide relatively quick access to some of the best shopping and dining available just ten minutes away at Newport Beach’s Fashion Island, however)

Also, getting places from Turtle Ridge quickly can often mean driving on the toll road – the costs of which can add up relatively quickly. While budget is not a primary concern for most living in the Turtle Ridge area, a two car family can easily rack up $600 or more in monthly toll charges by living here, so if paying highway robbery to get to where you’re going is going to make your blood boil there might be other alternative cities in the Orange County area that you could reside in that would come with less of a need to drive on a road that you have to pay to use.

Also, some people don’t like living in “planned communities” – if you want to have an ugly house or park a pickup truck on blocks in the center of your front yard, you’re welcome to do that, but you will have to live somewhere else – if you want to live in a neighborhood where the houses don’t all look the same, you’ll probably have to pick somewhere to live that isn’t in Irvine.

On the plus side, aside from the beautiful surroundings and fantastic schools, living anywhere in Irvine means you’re in a community that’s so safe, if there was a murder 15 years ago, people remember it, because there is almost never any violent crime happening anywhere in the city.