How did you find the right neighborhood if you are searching out of town?

[kristin]

My DH just got a job offer out of state (finally) and we are trying to find a nice, family oriented community in that area (in CT). Unfortunately, we know nothing about the area and don't have any friends near there. DH's job doesn't start for 3 weeks, and we would like to get a head start on looking at homes. It's a little over 3 hours away, so we could do a few day trips, but they would have to be with our 3 yo and 20 mo.

I have spent hours looking online, and can only come up with the towns vital stats. I'm looking for info on schools, recreational activities, churches, that type of thing.

I imagine there has to be a website that profiles desirable areas to live in. Am I just missing it?

[carrie9142]

We didn't really find any useful websites when we were looking out of state. I did google neighborhoods in... My biggest resource was people who already lived here. I would email (or have DH email) his boss, and future coworkers to see their recommendations. And, there is always CC! I found someone here who was also moving to my area and who had spent a lot of time here :)

[southerner]

This thread might help: Researching the town or neighborhood you want to move to. (http://www.constantchatter.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31677)

We got a short-term lease (3 months) on an apartment. I didn't want to feel too pressured to make a decision on impulse. I wanted to live here and learn about and get a feel for the different places on my own. Some people even get a furnished apartment and store their stuff. Just throwing this out there, as it might be something you haven't considered.

[Ericka_Jarett]

We drove around the area to get a feel for it both during the day and in the early to mid-evening before we settled on the apartment we did.

[jennylou]

Try this for schools. (http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/go/CT)

churches (http://www.churchangel.com/conn.htm)

In addition if CC has a CT thread, you should pop in there. I know we've had several recently pop into the Ohio thread and between all the posters, I think we've been able to lead them into a general direction - I'd imagine a CT thread could do the same for you. :)

[LittleFredPunkinHead]

We took a day and drove around- looking for neighborhoods we liked. After that, we looked at house listings in those areas to see what was available in our price range.

We were lucky in that we were relocating for my husband's work, and his company paid for temporary housing for us. So we stayed in a place close to the towns we were considering, and did our actual house search from there. That was good too, because it helped us figure out what kind of commutes we'd have (my company's office is downtown and DH's is in the 'burbs. I love taking the commuter train, while DH much prefers driving so we chose a suburb closer to his office, and a house within walking distance of the train).

[diam124]

I did a lot of googling for different neighborhoods when we were moving to a different state. Sometimes you can find HOA websites and those can be very helpful. I found one community that looked nice, but when I found the HOA website I saw tons of posts from residents complaining about petty crime (seemed like neighborhood kids). There were enough posts that it made it clear it was a real problem.

I also can't stress enough the value of visiting before making any decisions. You can really get a feel for different communities that you simply can't get online.

[kristin]

Thanks for all the links ladies!

In the thread Southerner referred me too, I found an awesome website that has message boards for each state www.city-data.com/forum. I've already gotten tons of good info! This website is set up exactly like CC, which has been a little confusing since I don't know which board I'm on!

Diam - you DC ladies were extraordinarily helpful with info in No VA - it led me to pick out a neighborhood and preschool for my kids. Unfortunately, the company had a really terrible moving package, and also low-balled DH on salary, so we decided to take the CT position. But I really appreciated your help! I guess there are not many CT ladies on these boards :(

[off2skl]

Here's a link to the CT school profile page. It looks like you select a district, then a school and can obtain information about it (demographics, standardized test performance, etc). Basically it's a school report card.

http://www.csde.state.ct.us/public/der/ssp/dist0506/district.htm

[karlatta]

This sounds weird, but when my parents moved to a new town, my dad spent several hours on the phone calling various chambers of commerces, churches, planning and zoning boards, etc. to get information about different areas. They ended up moving to a place that they love just based on what my dad felt after each of the phone calls.

[ktdelsur]

ETA w/ the previous poster - try the Chamber of Commerce.

But also, if you are seriously going to be in need of a house ASAP, get a real estate agent! DH recently got a job in a town 200 miles away where we knew no one, and the agent really helped us in finding the right place in the right neighborhood. We exchanged emails and listings she sent for a month, then we took at trip there, and in the two days of looking, we found the perfect place and ended up putting it under contract, etc. She was a tremendous help.

Granted, we are moving to a pretty small town and we saw pretty much EVERY house in our price range within that two day timespan...:p

[framboise]

*Bump*

I wanted to bump this up in case anybody else has words of wisdom. DH & I are pretty sure that we'll be making a cross-country move later this year. We have already taken a scouting trip & have narrowed our search down to two different cities that we like. Does anybody have any additional advice for finding a realtor or buying a house from a loooooooooooong way away?

Thanks a million!

[Tenny]

I found this site to be useful, but like everything you need to takes things with a grain of salt. What some people hate others might love!

Good luck

http://www.city-data.com/forum/#u-s-forums

[ManteoChik]

When we moved, we started out by first making a few decisions about what we were looking for. In our case, we knew that it was only a temporary move (for a few years) and so we weren't buying and were going to look for an apartment to rent. From there we checked out places like www.apartments.com and www.forrent.com. We combed through apartments and printed out the stats on those we were interested in (we picked the "main" city and it gave us results for that city, and others around it). We also saw where we'd be working/going to school on a map and kinda mapped out where the apartments were in relation to those places.

We then planned a quick trip down. We flew in on a Thursday, got a rental car and checked into our hotel. We then drove around town picking up one of those local maps that are sort of "animated" because its easier to learn the roads/area that way. We hit up a local place for dinner and looked at the map. We woke up on Friday and immediately started visiting the apartment complexes we had printed info on. Several we didn't even get out of the car (they either didn't look nice, or had too many cars with college stickers on them...lol) Some places we went in, took a tour, and got info. We also picked up an Apartment Guide book for the county and found a few places in there that weren't online.

The places we really liked tended to be full, and those people were REALLY helpful about recommending other apartments. We ended up touring one we really liked, and went back to the hotel that night to think about all the places we'd seen. We decided that being an extra 5 min farther away than the other places was worth it to have a brand new apartment. We went back the next morning before leaving town to sign a lease.

For us, the biggest factor was the area, and not being near too many college kids because the town we lived in had 4 college in it. As you can imagine, the apartment complexes were overrun with them. I found that you can tell pretty much right away if a town/area isn't somewhere you want to live. Schools were not a factor for us since we don't have children and weren't planning on any while we lived there. We also knew it wasn't permanent.

[kimthebride]

We basically did this, and are THRILLED with our new neighborhood! Some tips to get there too:

- Talk to the local Welcome Wagon, since they go to everyone's houses and see whose in them (kids, no kids, adult 'kids', etc)

- local message boards

- ask EVERYONE in your email address book...you never know who has an old friend or cousin or friend-of-the-ILs who lives right near where you want to be. A friend of a friend personally drove me around the town we ended up in, going neighborhood to neighborhood.

- while looking at a house, look out the windows instead of at the house. I looked out to see if there were toys/playthings in the yards around me that were in decent shape, of similar age range as my kids, if people were out in the yards with their kids, if neighbors were waving to each other, stopping to chat to someone in their front yard, etc

[Oakley]

I am in agreement with everyone about visiting if you can or doing a short-term lease. Don't feel pressured to buy ASAP. Good luck!

[TheFuture]

We relocated from San Diego to Phoenix in December 07.

Knowing that we were not going to have time to make house hunting a full time priority due to DH needing to take the Bar Exam and study for the first 3 months of being here we found a rental and signed a 6 month lease. That allowed us the opportunity to research the areas that we were interested in, school districts and commute times for DH.

We haven't really "move in" to the rental knowing that it was going to be a temporary situation. We have the fourth bebroom set up as our storage room with all of the boxes that we aren't unpacking. We also decided not to hang up our artwork or pictures on the walls (except for DDs room) and kept everything in boxes and packaging from the moving company for ease of moving into our permanent home.

We secured a realtor and started our home search in March - found "The House" within a week and entered escrow. We close in May and with the timing, we won't have any overlap in payments on the rental or new house.

I definitely agree with what everyone is saying about not rushing into the purchase of a home - you can make a home out of a temporary rental. The amount of stress that we saved by renting, especially with DH going throught the bar was tremendous. We would do it this way again, in a heart beat.

Good luck.