Cheri Kilby

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El Dorado Hills · Folsom · DRE 01483621

Communities › El Dorado County

Welcome home to the Foothills

Cameron Park, Shingle Springs and Placerville. Past the last of the planned communities, where the money stops buying square footage and starts buying land. The same money buys a great deal more of it out here than it does down the hill, and the whole decision comes down to what you make of the drive.

The facts, with dates on them

Homes I sell here: $1MMy recent range
Days on market, Cameron Park: 33Redfin, July 2026
Days on market, Placerville: 28Redfin, July 2026
Sale to list, Cameron Park: 99.5%Redfin, July 2026
Sale to list, Placerville: 99.3%Redfin, July 2026
Listings with a price cut: 41.0%Cameron Park, Redfin, July 2026
Mello-Roos: Rare out here, but not unknownConfirm on any specific parcel
To downtown Sacramento: Roughly 35 to 45 miles on Highway 50, depending which townApproximate, free-flowing traffic

On the market with me

The Foothills, right now.

I do not have a listing up the hill today. What I do have out here is thirty years of knowing which parcels are worth walking and which ones look wonderful in photographs and drain badly in February.

Nothing of mine on the market here today

Out here, the listing tells you almost nothing.

Two houses on the same road can be a world apart on water, on the septic, on how the driveway behaves in the wet and on what the insurance will cost. None of that is in the photographs. Tell me what you are looking for and I will send you the ones that are actually worth the drive, and tell you which ones to skip.

Search Cameron Park

Every home for sale in Cameron Park, Shingle Springs and Placerville.

Three towns and three different markets. Start with one and switch, or open the map and draw your own area.

The oldest argument on this map

What the drive is actually worth.

Everyone out here has a view on whether the extra twenty minutes is worth it and nobody has done the sum. So here it is, in both currencies at once. What the price difference saves you every month, and what the extra miles cost you in hours a year. Then you decide, which is the part a website cannot do for you.

Which town

Where you drive to

The house you are looking at out here $1,000,000

Move it to whatever you are actually looking at up here.

The equivalent house down the hill $1,500,000

What the same house would cost you in El Dorado Hills. This is the whole comparison, so set it to something you have actually seen.

Days a week you make that drive 3

Counted over forty-eight weeks, so vacation time is already out of it.

Interest rate 6.5%

Thirty-year fixed, twenty percent down on both houses. Move it to whatever you are actually being quoted.

What this does not count, and it is the one that matters: home insurance. Fire risk is priced street by street out here and it has moved a great deal in the last few years. On some foothill addresses cover costs a few hundred dollars a year more than the same house in El Dorado Hills. On others, in the higher hazard zones or where a carrier has pulled out and the FAIR Plan is the only option, it runs to thousands and it can take a real bite out of the number above. There is no average worth publishing, because the variation between two houses on the same road is larger than the variation between towns. Get an actual quote on the actual address before you decide anything, and get it early, because it has stopped being a formality.

How this is worked out: both houses are figures you set yourself, with twenty percent down on each and a thirty-year fixed rate. Property tax is estimated at 1.1 percent, which is the one percent base plus voter-approved additions typical of El Dorado County. Driving distances are approximate one-way road miles on Highway 50 and the extra time assumes an average of 55 miles an hour, which flatters the drive at eight in the morning and is roughly right the rest of the day. Fuel is $4.85 a gallon at 26 miles to the gallon; only fuel is counted, not tires, maintenance or the value of the car, which together typically cost more again. Not counted at all: insurance, well and septic maintenance, propane where there is no gas main, or Mello-Roos, which is rare out here but not unknown. A planning number, not a loan estimate.

Three towns, not one place

Cameron Park, Shingle Springs, Placerville.

They get lumped together as the foothills and they are genuinely different from each other, more so than Folsom is from El Dorado Hills. Ten minutes of Highway 50 separates a subdivision with a runway from a gold rush main street.

TownRoughly to SacramentoThe characterWhat to check first

Cameron Park

About 35 miles

The closest and the most conventional. Real subdivisions, a lake, and the Cameron Airpark, where a few streets are wide enough to taxi a light aircraft home to the hangar attached to the house.

Whether you are on mains water and sewer or not, because both exist here and the answer changes the running costs.

Shingle Springs

About 40 miles

The one in the middle, and the most rural of the three. Acreage, oaks, long driveways and very little that could be called a town center. This is where people go when they want the land more than they want the shops.

The well. Depth, yield, when it was last tested, and what the neighbors’ wells have done in a dry year.

Placerville

About 45 miles

The county seat and the only proper old town out here, with a Main Street that predates almost everything else on this map. Apple Hill is on the doorstep and so are the Fair Play wineries. Also the cheapest of the three by a distance.

The house itself. A lot of the stock is genuinely old, which is part of the appeal and means the inspection matters more than it does in a nineties subdivision.

Driving distances are approximate one-way road miles to downtown Sacramento on Highway 50 and are there to give the shape of the difference rather than to be exact. The calculator above asks you for both prices rather than assuming either, because what the two houses are worth to you is the only comparison that means anything.

Living here

Schools

Not one district but several, and which one you are in depends on the parcel rather than the town. Buckeye Union reaches into Cameron Park and Shingle Springs; Placerville and the country around it have their own elementary districts.

High school is El Dorado Union, the same district as El Dorado Hills, but a different set of schools within it. If a specific school matters to you, confirm the boundary on the address before anything else, because assumptions are wrong out here more often than they are anywhere else on this map.

The drive

Highway 50, all of it, all the way. The road is the reason these towns exist and it is the thing you are buying into. Going west it is roughly thirty-five to forty-five miles into Sacramento depending which town, and eight in the morning is a very different proposition from eleven.

Going east is the compensation. Apple Hill and the Fair Play wineries are minutes away rather than a trip, and Tahoe is about an hour, which is half what it is from the valley floor.

The shape of it

Land, mostly. Parcels here are measured in acres rather than square feet, and what people buy them for is a shop, a barn, a few horses, a vineyard or simply not being able to see anybody. That is the trade being made and it is a real one.

It also means services that arrive by pipe in town arrive by other means out here. Wells, septic systems, propane tanks, and defensible space around the house that somebody has to keep cleared every summer. None of it is difficult. All of it is worth knowing about before you fall for a view.

Cheri on the Foothills

I got my first job at Apple Hill when I was 12 and went to high school up here. The foothills have grown since then, but a lot of what makes them special hasn’t changed.

Historic Downtown Placerville still has that small-town feel. The wagon train still rolls through every year, the county fair is still a summer favorite, and every fall, people still head up to Apple Hill for fresh fruit, pie, and Christmas tree farms. The outdoors are just part of life here. There are creeks and trails close to home, rafting on the American River in Coloma, and Lake Tahoe close enough for a day of skiing.

From Cameron Park to Shingle Springs, Rescue and Placerville, you’ll find fewer traditional subdivisions than down the hill and more custom homes on acreage. Buyers come for the land, the privacy, and the views. Some want room for horses, farm animals, a workshop or their toys. Others just want more space between neighbors.

Buying here means looking beyond the house. Commute times, wells, septic systems, road access, and fire insurance can vary a lot from one property to the next. Shopping is more limited too, so most people plan on heading down the hill to Folsom for a Costco run and bigger errands. Sorting those details out early makes it much easier to find a place you’ll still love years after moving in.

If you want more land and a place that feels tucked away without being too far from everything, let’s find the part of the foothills that fits you.

CheriCheri Kilby · CK Real Estate Services

Once a month, the Foothills only

What sold up the hill, and what it really went for.

One page covering Cameron Park, Shingle Springs and Placerville. What came on, what sold, what it went for against asking, and one thing worth knowing that month. Written by me, not generated.

You already live here

What would you walk away with?

Sale price, minus the payoff, minus commission, minus what it costs to get ready. A real number, and no email in front of it.

Work it out →

You are weighing up the drive

Fifteen minutes with me.

Which roads are honestly fine at eight in the morning and which are not, what the insurance is doing on the streets you are looking at, and whether the parcel you have found is one of the good ones.

Book fifteen minutes →

Lets connect

Start with a conversation.

No contract, no obligation, and no pressure to be further along than you are. Plenty of people write to me a year before they are ready, and that is genuinely the right time to write.

(916) 296-4953 cheri@ckteamrealestate.com I read these myself

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Market notes, new listings, and what is actually moving in El Dorado Hills and Folsom. Sent when there is something worth saying, and not before.