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I'm having a hard time believing that people would willingly move to PB if they had, say $100k - $150k to put into a home. I guarantee that 9 out of 10 people would choose to live somewhere else in the county. PB is an area you HAVE to live in, not one you CHOOSE to live in. The other areas mentioned (Sarno, Aurora, Eau Gallie ....) are equally trashy, but it seems like PB has a greater density of it - two descent houses, one trashy, one descent, three trashy ones .....
Fifteen years ago we decided to honeymoon to Florida. "Palm Bay" had sounded so nice and tropical that we rented a room at the former Ramada on PB road. During our first two days here we saw a homeless man get run over and pinned under a car, confronted at least four times by people asking for money or handouts while out walking, chased out of a local tavern by a woman crying hysterically that I was her long lost son and asked at a restaurant by a flirty waitress to attend a swinger party at her house after her shift. To put it bluntly, nothing has changed since our initial visit to PB fifteen years ago, hence why we moved north and live in Grand Haven.
I have many friends and co-workers (15+) who live in PB and every single one of them talk endlessly about moving out of there. The crime, crummy schools, speeders, pedophiles, egg shell well water, lack of sidewalks, trashy neighbors, slumlord rental market, corrupt mayor and lack of community pride are always mentioned, among other things no matter what conversation I have. Just watch the local evening news, PB is always in there for something bad. Hell, the city wont even pick up your trash if you are behind on your property taxes, they'll let it sit out by the road and pile up and rot.
It's not about being "snotty" or believing that someone else is below you for where they live. The facts are what they are and it's about providing a quality of life for your family. If being snotty means working hard to provide your children with a quality education, live in a more desirable area that is safer, kept up and surrounded by like minded hard working families that show pride in themselves then yes I am snotty and proud to be so. Sorry if I have aspired to do more in life than just "survive" or do the minimum. I would never subject my family to the above quality of life issues with living in PB (or the other areas mentioned), unless like I said before we HAD to live there.
There are plenty of good people in PB, but for the price I would take south Rockledge, Merritt Island or West Melbourne before living in PB. Just be forewarned - talk with people, compare notes and decide if the cheaper price of a home or rental is worth all of the extra head aches for you and your family. Good luck!
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Originally Posted by Rabflmom
We are just going to have to agree to disagree if this is truly what you believe about Palm Bay.....I chose Palm Bay 4 times now.....once as a single young teacher, once as a young married, once as a parent of 2 kids( now an engineer writing a novel and a business manager ), and now as a young retiree. Must be something here to keep us here when we could move anywhere .
PB doesn't seem that bad from what I've seen. A lot of new stuff on PB road, including the new outdoor strip all with target, Panera, Michaels. Starbucks not far away.
PB seems to have pockets of everything, as it's the LARGEST city in the space coast (Melbourne/palm bay metro). It has 100K people. Melbourne has ~70K.
PB doesn't seem that bad from what I've seen. A lot of new stuff on PB road, including the new outdoor strip all with target, Panera, Michaels. Starbucks not far away.
PB seems to have pockets of everything, as it's the LARGEST city in the space coast (Melbourne/palm bay metro). It has 100K people. Melbourne has ~70K.
Yep, that plaza is at the corner of Minton & PB Road. Minton Rd is the dividing line between East/West and Malabar Rd is the dividing line between North/South. So the intersection of Minton & Malabar has NE, NW, SE, SW Palm Bay on all 4 corners. Each of those quadrants have nice areas & some not so nice areas.
The worst areas (imo) are the extreme North & East of the NE section (basically north of PB Rd & East of Babcock St). Its not that there aren't good people there but there are a lot of low income apartments, older rundown neighborhoods, etc. over there. If thats the 1st (or only) area of PB that somebody looks at, then they will undoubtedly not leave with a good impression.
I think there are a number of posts on this forum detailing the sections of Palm Bay. In general, NW & SW tend to be mostly newer & mostly good areas. SE & NE tend to have the highest end neighborhoods (with the earlier noted lesser section of NE). But in any given section of PB (NE, for instance), there is so much distance between a good area & bad area that you can't (or shouldn't) write off an entire quadrant based on a bad section. PB is 68 sq miles of township...thats a lot of area.
But to the OP's search. There are options at $70k in Rockledge, just less of them. If commute to the Cape area is of concern, then maybe its worth starting the search there but keeping other options open if you dont find what you're looking for.
My suggestion is to stay as south of 520 as possible, preferably off of Murrell Rd.
I'd look at Grand Haven in North Melbourne. It's towards the end of the Pineda Causeway heading west towards 95, about a 5 mile straight drive from Patricks. You can rent a home there for @ $1000 per month, save up and buy a 1500sq ft home in there for @ $125k. You'll be sorry in Palm Bay, the cheaper prices are for a reason - high crime (no matter where you are) and no pride of ownership in most areas. You'll rent a modest home for $900 per month or buy for $70k just to find out in two weeks your new neighbors have six beat up cars parked around the house, 4 pit bulls, 8 children and use rebel flags for curtains. Don't believe me, take a drive for yourself. And how do I know this? I work for a utility company and covered the Palm Bay area for 5 years, hence the reason why I live in Grand Haven.
I was just there about a month ago looking at Bayside Lakes community. I did not like some areas of Palm bay either. I have a 6 year old and I would like to know how is the area of Bayside lakes and bayside High school. I did think some areas of palm bay look like ghetto to me. I do not want to live in a bad area any advice?
How do you feel about bayside lakes area in PB and the bayside lakes high school. I am looking into purchasing a home in that community of bayside lakes. I have a 6 year old and I do not want to be in a bad area. Have any advice?
I really would not recommend Palm Bay. Some parts of it don't seem bad and the prices are good, but you have a child. We passed on an unbelievable deal on a beautiful home because of the area/schools. Your particular area might be good, but you have to think about the overall "clientel" of the schools your child will be attending. We moved to Suntree because of the schools and the children with whom our kids will interact on a daily basis. Yes, of course there will be problems in all nieghborhoods (drugs are everywhere) but I want our kids to go to school with others who have/will have similar lifestyles as we do.
I really would not recommend Palm Bay. Some parts of it don't seem bad and the prices are good, but you have a child. We passed on an unbelievable deal on a beautiful home because of the area/schools. Your particular area might be good, but you have to think about the overall "clientel" of the schools your child will be attending. We moved to Suntree because of the schools and the children with whom our kids will interact on a daily basis. Yes, of course there will be problems in all nieghborhoods (drugs are everywhere) but I want our kids to go to school with others who have/will have similar lifestyles as we do.
ive heard similar. Go to melbourne/beachside or Viera/suntree if you have kids and public schools are important to you
How do you feel about bayside lakes area in PB and the bayside lakes high school. I am looking into purchasing a home in that community of bayside lakes. I have a 6 year old and I do not want to be in a bad area. Have any advice?
We have a 3, 7 and 10 year old and live in Suntree and are in the process of building a home in Viera. Put it this way - we can sit out front and watch them ride their bikes on the sidewalk. We can walk at night on the same sidewalks, under the street lights and not worry about stray animals and dogs chasing us and don't have to worry about being hit by a speeding teenager. We can be at the beach in under ten minutes and to brand new shopping / restaurants in the same amount of time. Our schools are rated very high and the crime rate is low. We are pretty much a straight shot and less than an hour to all the Disney and Orlando attractions without the traffic. When we put our roots down in Viera, the only thing that will change is less time (5 minutes) to shopping / restaurants and 10 additional minutes to the beach. The Viera area (http://www.denisesabol.com/wp-conten...MasterPlan.pdf) is about to build its town center and the Viera West and South expansion to Pineda and eventually to the Palm Bay area (http://ww3.brevardcounty.us/zoning/d...ectSummary.pdf) are about to be started with more schools, villages and shopping. Not to knock Palm Bay but virtually none of this can be said of living there.
We have a 3, 7 and 10 year old and live in Suntree and are in the process of building a home in Viera. Put it this way - we can sit out front and watch them ride their bikes on the sidewalk. We can walk at night on the same sidewalks, under the street lights and not worry about stray animals and dogs chasing us and don't have to worry about being hit by a speeding teenager. We can be at the beach in under ten minutes and to brand new shopping / restaurants in the same amount of time. Our schools are rated very high and the crime rate is low. We are pretty much a straight shot and less than an hour to all the Disney and Orlando attractions without the traffic. When we put our roots down in Viera, the only thing that will change is less time (5 minutes) to shopping / restaurants and 10 additional minutes to the beach. The Viera area (http://www.denisesabol.com/wp-conten...MasterPlan.pdf) is about to build its town center and the Viera West and South expansion to Pineda and eventually to the Palm Bay area (http://ww3.brevardcounty.us/zoning/d...ectSummary.pdf) are about to be started with more schools, villages and shopping. Not to knock Palm Bay but virtually none of this can be said of living there.
Well, we live in Palm Bay the city rated safest in Brevard county per 100,000 residents in 2010 and I don't think the statistics are in for 2011 yet but crime here has gone down again. If something does happen the police department has a pretty good record in arresting the culprits. We actually don't have a sidewalk on our street but it is only 1 block long with 7 houses on it. As for the sidewalks being safe-not always. Check Viera's history... unfortunately in front of the elem school a child was hit and killed while riding bike on the sidewalk and it was not a teenager driving too fast so be sure to keep a watch even on a street with sidewalks.
We have fire hydrants in 2 places on our street, no one lives behind us so we have a lovely treed lot. We love sitting out at night and seeing stars. Our neighbors kids play outside all the time. Most homes have pools and well kept lawns. We know each other and actually interact with each other. 3 of our homes were built since 2004 and the other 4 were built in the 80s and 90s. All of the older homes have been remodeled. We are still finishing ours. We have 1 house for sale on the street but it is still well kept. We are on city water. It takes us 10 minutes to get to the grocery store and we have choices.etc. We don't have an HOA here so we don't have a park within walking distance but there is a nice one within a couple miles.
Our public schools are excellent with a multi cultural atmosphere. When I was teaching we had kids that spoke at least 5 different languages at home at the school because we do get FIT foreign students' kids at our schools. Scores this year are screwed up because of changing things and I am one that hopes they throw out the test and go back to old testing from the 90s that more accurately tested the curriculum learned and didn't require teaching for the test. Many of the parents that volunteer in our schools are former teachers like me, engineers and their wives from the tech industry in town etc. and we even took off work using vacation days to volunteer for trips out of state etc. . And if a parent chooses, we have several great charter schools that are also rated A that the kids can attend. Bayside High like Palm Bay high in Melbourne where kids from the NE side of Palm Bay go are large schools with over 1500 kids; but many many of the kids graduate HS and from BCC with an AA on the same day. PBHS even has a law program...BSHS has a sports medicine program. There is also the new Heritage High which is in the Western Sector and has less students attending ..This year they will graduate their first class. The thing about any school anywhere is if parents stay actively involved their kids will get excellent educations. Palm Bay Schools are high on math and science . My sons took Algebra 3 as 9th graders and one graduated in engineering with a math and creative writing major. The other was business minded and he was in advanced classes and even had 1 class where he was the only student so the schools are well rounded and kids do well when they get to colleges anywhere in the states. To put it kind of bluntly if your kids study and get good grades they basically don't even see the kids who struggle or the ones who tend to be troublemakers at school except for in extracurricular activities. Our campuses are closed campuses throughout the county and all county schools have officers on campus to make sure kids are safe. The curriculum is the same to graduate from any school in the county and the teachers in Brevard are usually the best because parents are active in the schools.
Palm Bay is also one of the newer towns in Brevard. It was incorporated in 1969 so everything here basically was built since then-most since 1990 just like Viera with many of the same builders. Houses have a larger range here from the 1000sq foot of the 80s to the 3000+ of the 2000s. Population grew quickly from 18,000 when I arrived here in 1976 to over 100,000 about 15 yerars later. Show me a city that grows that fast who can keep up with amenities. Most cities grow much slower and have time and taxes to put in water and sewer. Unfortunately they left it to the developers so only areas with HOAs added the city water and sewer back in the 80s and 90s. The city adds areas each year. Every year a new school was built to accommodate the kids moving in. Unlike Viera we had to fight to get a jr and senior high school. Now we have 2 in the city with kids in some areas still going to schools in Melbourne like Palm Bay High and Melbourne High. Viera is a little unincorporated area that is partially Rockledge where about 7,000 of its people live and Melbourne where the other 6 or 7000 live that uses the sheriffs department as law encforcement and county for fire while PB has their own police and fire department If there are any problems in a neighborhood(like the loud music which Vince mentioned ) it can and will be handled if you call it in. Response time is really pretty good even for a suspicious car etc. .
Our codes have changed over the years from anything goes in house building so much that even Habitat for Humanity had to petition to build homes because all homes built require a 2 car garage etc. Even businesses had to have front porches so basically our Walmart is a one of a kind with its front porch entrances. No matter where you go some people just don't keep their places up-even on the beach but code enforcement is out there working on it.....all you have to do is call or they get caught in drive bys via land or air. .We did for having a half pike ramp on our driveway even though our 90 year old neighbor loved watching all the neighborhood kids using it and staying out of trouble.
To the poster asking about Basyside. Bayside area is one of our nicest areas built on the Majors Golf Club which is semi-private and a fun place to play golf. . There are some gated and some not gated areas but no one needs to be afraid to live there. It is comparable to Viera or beach side communities. The town homes seem to not have a lot of kids but across the street is a new sub that has a community pool and playground that has gone up during the building slump and is thriving.
Florida Vince....even though you can't understand why....some of us do choose Palm Bay and love it here even though in my case the rest of our Florida family lives in Naples. Too snooty over there for my husband who likes to wear jeans and cut offs. Our kids do succeed and some even go to Harvard etc. There definitely is a different atmosphere between Viera and Palm Bay, but Palm Bay is more laid back-even though we have more people and traffic. We are a little more Florida living than Viera which could be a suburb in any Northern City except instead of maples there are palm trees in your yard. Down here many areas have bigger yards and since the whole 100 sq miles is not built up yet, we have space without neighbors always being 10 feet away from our house.
We all have to find our comfort zone and for some it is Viera and for others it is Palm Bay or Melbourne. Personally I would never live in Viera the same as you would never choose Palm Bay. I could have lived in Viera up in Chicago, but there is nothing like PB up there. It is hard to find a city that has survived a mass murder, 2 horrible fires, floods, an elephant attack, and 4 hurricanes in 30 years and still be thought so highly of by many of the people who call it home. It is a friendly town with neighbors who come together to help in bad times and cheer in the good times. So yes some of us do choose Palm Bay and like it here.
Florida Vince....even though you can't understand why....some of us do choose Palm Bay and love it here even though in my case the rest of our Florida family lives in Naples. Too snooty over there for my husband who likes to wear jeans and cut offs. Our kids do succeed and some even go to Harvard etc. There definitely is a different atmosphere between Viera and Palm Bay, but Palm Bay is more laid back-even though we have more people and traffic. We are a little more Florida living than Viera which could be a suburb in any Northern City except instead of maples there are palm trees in your yard. Down here many areas have bigger yards and since the whole 100 sq miles is not built up yet, we have space without neighbors always being 10 feet away from our house.
We all have to find our comfort zone and for some it is Viera and for others it is Palm Bay or Melbourne. Personally I would never live in Viera the same as you would never choose Palm Bay. I could have lived in Viera up in Chicago, but there is nothing like PB up there. It is hard to find a city that has survived a mass murder, 2 horrible fires, floods, an elephant attack, and 4 hurricanes in 30 years and still be thought so highly of by many of the people who call it home. It is a friendly town with neighbors who come together to help in bad times and cheer in the good times. So yes some of us do choose Palm Bay and like it here.
Rabflmom - I'm not doubting your love of Palm Bay and have said that many good people live there. I think I can speak from experience about the Palm Bay area and the people who live there as well as any. If anything, I have been in more PB homes and yards than anyone on this forum over the last ten years due to the type of position that I have with my employer. You mention that there are a few homes on your street - I bet I have been in at least one of them and thousands across PB over the years. I now work in the North Melbourne, Suntree, Viera, Rockledge and Cocoa areas and without a doubt, I have never seen as many dirty homes and homeowners than what is in PB.
Maybe your perspective is right but if you spent a month along my side I bet your views would change. How about walking up to a well kept home from the front to see four pit bulls out back - no grass and a two year old playing in the dirt unsupervised? What about the countless feces stained carpets, trashed houses, people stoned and drunk ten o'clock in the morning, trash everywhere in the yard (mostly behind the fence so Code Enforcement doesn't see it right away) and people just living in their own filth??? Why would a close friend of mine (who is a PB police officer) say things have gotten worse there over the last five years? Yes, these types of things happen everywhere - even in Cocoa, Rockledge, Viera, Suntree, Melbourne..... What I can tell you without a doubt is that it happens three times more in PB than all of these cities combined and its not due to its size.
You mention that the Viera area is just like a suburb of a big city up north - far from the truth. I grew up in a suburb 20 minutes north of the Baltimore / Washington DC area and Viera is nothing close to a "suburb" - I'm not even sure how you came up with that. Another thing is how can you say a lot in PB is bigger than one in Viera? They are both virtually the same size - say 75' x 125'? I have a 1.4 acre piece of residential raw property in Suntree thats bigger than five PB lots combined so I guess Suntree lots are bigger than PB lots?. The only reason that your neighbors are not right next to you in PB is that there are an unlimited number of lots to choose from at $5K - $7K each - but theres a reason for that. Theres no value in them or they would have been bought up by investors long ago. I could go down there tomorrow and find fifty lots for sale that will still be there next year.
We are also living the true Florida lifestyle - close to the beach, palm trees, warm weather, neighborhood parties, A rated schools, low crime, new shopping and good restaurants. We also say hello to our neighbors, volunteer at schools, churches, charities and earn honest livings. The reason we will call Viera home and not PB, Rockledge, Cocoa or Melbourne is that I have seen too many of the same "qualities" - if you want to call it that, working in those areas than I have personally seen in Viera - and yes I am willing to pay the extra price to keep my family as far away from it as possible.
I'll try to add something to this discussion, and hopefully not go OT from what the OP wanted. If I do, make me start my own thread
We're late 50's, and very familiar with the ins and outs of Palm Bay up through Vierra, and Rockledge. No problem with any of those areas. We want to be more central, near the Cape, and great access to 528. We love to golf, walk the ocean,and will still need to work. The work part is pretty well underway and under control now.
After visiting and driving around Cocoa Beach area quite a bit, I became more interested in Cape Canaveral. Not wanting to rent now, nor get involved in a single-family, we started to look at Condos in CC. I liked the look of the town better than CB, and now we're exploring that area.
Since CC is not that far north of PAFB, I thought maybe this discussion could be linked.
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