Are family neighborhoods generally friendly or have we just been lucky? (St. Charles: fit in, real estate)

[vesta75]

We are thinking about leaving Wilmette for a further out suburb with more room to roam. We are considering the Barrington area but are pretty flexible. The problem is (despite other threads indicating how risky wilmette is ) we love our neighbors and community in general. I know people talk about the north shore being snooty, but that has not been our experience at all. It really is a lovely welcoming place. There is no "keeping up with the Jones'" that we have seen at all. It seems like everyone is generally happy with their lot in life and is just trying to raise nice kids and be a good neighbor.

We just keep getting hung up on the general lack of nature in the area (apart from Lake Michigan in the summer which we would miss) and what we could get for our money. We want forest preserves and a big yard for the kids to play in and perhaps even a bedroom for each of our kids. We aren't too concerned about the schools either way as we send the kids to parochial schools and they don't really seem to vary that much. Commute isn't currently a factor as we just work from home and need to be able to get to the airport in a reasonable amount of time.

We wonder if we are we crazy for leaving somewhere we like the people? If we moved out to somewhere like Barrington would we most likely find other decent hard-working family-oriented people? Is there generally a good community vibe in suburbs with a lot of families? Is it just hit or miss? We moved here from out of state before we had kids so have nothing to compare it to.

I know this is all subjective but I would love to hear what people say about this.

[chet everett]

Well I think that there is a big differnce between some suburbs that have features that encourage some contact between like-minded residents and other that were laid out with all maximum builder profit in mind...

That said the overwhelming anti-suburban bias that many on these boards exhibit it pretty misplaced in my experince -- the majority of people that live in the well developed suburbs of the region do not exhibit the hostility that some of the malcontents here do. It is telling how many of the most vocal suburb haters on these boards did not grow up in a nice walkable train-centric town but instead many relocated here from states where suburbia meant a complete lack of anything walkable.

I have friends that live in Barrington or St. Charles or Libertyville or Geneva and their money does go further / they get better access to nature areas than friends in North Shore or closer in towns like Hinsdale. The trade-offs probably mae sense if work is not a factor.
I also have a handful of friends / coworkers that live in towns that are not known for academically challenging schools and even for those that do "homeschool" or rely on private schools they have expressed concerns about a variety things that are partially influenced by school quality -- property values do not stand up, local businesses are less well staffed, neighbors are not focused on the behaviors of their children...

The various trade-offs that play into any real estate decision are influenced by things that include work, schools, housing value, family, ability to find like-minded neighbors and a long list of very personal decisions. I would encourage anyone contemplating an intra-regional move like the OP to think long and hard about the real upside of moving vs the potential downsides...

[TempesT68]

Neighbors are one of those big factors that are often very hard to figure out which are good or bad when purchasing a home, it can often take a bit of time living there and getting to know them before you actually figure it out, and that is almost always after you have moved in.

It's really a crapshoot as I've had friends that lived in "questionable" areas that had great neighbors, and others in more high end areas with neighbors they couldn't stand.