A noob looking for info on where to live in the western / northwestern burbs

[chitown85]

If you go to West Dundee, be careful of the school district. If you are in the part of town that has Carpentersville, it isn't a great school system and lots of gang problems. Make sure you are in the part of town that has Dundee- Crown HS.

[brschoppe]

I would recommend Wauconda, but only parts of it. We recently moved out of the Arlington Heights/Palatine area to the Liberty Lake Subdivision. Like many towns, Wauconda has its nice and bad areas. The areas around Bangs Lake and to the east of town don't offer as nice of choices in houses. However, to the West and North of the Lake, many of houses are new and nicer and fall in the Fremont school district.

Wauconda is slowly transforming itself and is in need of an identity other than the Lake. Hopefully the new mayor will assit this. The town has the opportunity to develop into a really nice community right now if the proper steps are taken. Steps forward in this are the renovated resturants in their downtown area. In their downtown district there are few nice restruants in Lindy's Landing, Docs, and the Lake Side Inn.

One thing to watch for in Lake and Mchenry counties are SSA or Special Services Areas. They are taxes for providing special services which are tacked on to your tax bill. SSA are often used in new developments to bring in the plumbing and roads. When we were looking at houses, the SSA was always reflected in the tax bill. You need to visit the Lake County website and bring up the tax bill for the house to determine if their is an SSA on the house. This will often add more than $1000 or more to your tax bill.

[chitown85]

For someone new to the area, I wouldn't recommend Wauconda. Wauconda is far from Hoffman Estates and the roads in the western portion of Lake County (where Wauconda is) are horrid. Wauconda is also a lake community and although there are nice areas, they are not used to newcomers. A lot of the people who live there have been in that part of Lake County their whole life.

The schools are so so.

[Sunday1]

Burneedog,

Middle-aged Mom has given you some great advice.

We've moved in many corporate relocations for our jobs, and the most valuable thing we've learned is that renting for awhile before you settle into any new area is a great strategy. We've lived in seven states and had we rented first, we would have bought a different house in a different neighborhood or town EVERY time!
We're in the process of moving again, and this time -- we will rent first!