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Health & Fitness

Location, Location, Noise?

Many factors affect your decision to buy a home, and in Laguna Niguel noise ranks near the top.

Ever since I started my real estate sales career in the 90s I have heard that only about 15 percent of the population will purchase a home that backs to a busy street and/or there is a visual of the street from the house.

I don’t know where that came from but my day-to-day experience seems to bear out that statistic. What about noise in general? What if the road noise can be heard but the street is considerably down below the level of the home. I am sure that is relative to actual noise levels but again my gut would say 50/50.

The city of Laguna Niguel, as I always say, is a wonderful place to live and own a home. The MLS system we Realtors use in Laguna Niguel divides the city into quadrants using the major roads. Those roads are Crown Valley which runs from the I-5 freeway southwest down to PCH, and Niguel Road which runs from on top of Niguel Summit down to PCH. Our coastline in this area runs diagonally from NW to SE.

Find out what's happening in Laguna Niguel-Dana Pointwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

This really confuses visitors to Laguna Niguel, as well as those who are, we might say, “directionally challenged.”

These roads that bisect our city really help the traffic flow and are either four lanes or even six lanes in some places. They, however, can be noisy. Back to my point, there are some great homes and condo complexes that back to these roads and therefore are financially impacted.

Find out what's happening in Laguna Niguel-Dana Pointwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

But everything is a trade off, right? Many of the homes in Laguna Niguel that have views are above roads. I am amazed how the traffic sound can diminish just one street away from a major road or even two or three homes away.  

Some homeowners spend very little time outdoors and may like to entertain indoors while other use their backyards as another room. These buyers may have different tolerance levels for noise. We installed new replacement windows in our home and were amazed how it cut down on noise. We love hearing the train whistle late at night, though.

There are that are very quiet and peaceful. This is always noticed by my buyers. So how do you quantify these noise issues? I have no idea, but like views, noise issues are subjective. We always say in real estate practice that there are no two properties alike.

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