Best suburb to raise kids with best schools and quality of life? (Chicago: best suburbs, sales)

[earlyretirement]

My wife and I and 2 small children (both under 2 years of age right now) are looking for possible places to move to with excellent schools, good cost of living and relatively affordable housing.

We are flying to Chicago to look at some various areas but can some of the local experts post on what some of the best suburbs are for quality of life, excellent public schools and nice houses under $500,000.

I've heard good things about Highland Park there. But houses there still seem on the pricey side. We are looking for a fairly good sized yard and at least 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[nanannie]

I am no expert, but have been on here long enough to give you a brief fill in of what is usally the sought after areas. The best schools/quality of life are usually in the more desirable/more expensive areas, but in this market,there are some good bargains.
You mention Highland Park-Glenco,Wilmette,Winnetka and theNorth Shore-all beautiful with nice villages,schools and the lake/beaches. But expensive and
not as much in your price range. So,
I would check out some of the usual favorites, St Charles,Geneva,Elmhurst,Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, or Lombard. The towns/schools family life/activities are all desirable in these Western burbs.
Some nice towns in the NW burbs are Arlington Hts,Lake Zurich,Barrington,and further out Crystal Lake and Cary. You can do a "SEARCH" on these forums for these towns at the top of this page for loads of info on any of these towns,then check Realtor.com etc to see whats on the market for your price.
As I said, Under 500,00 is not high end in these parts, but its worth checking out.

You dont mention where you will be working, and that should be a determining factor as well, as far as what part of the areas, or how far out to look as you dont want to spend your day commuting,but all these mentioned towns have access to Metra trains to the city.
Good Luck with the move.

[earlyretirement]

Great. Thanks. I'll check out these other areas.

Actually I won't be working. Or at least that is one of the possibilities. I am a workaholic so not sure I can actually retire this early but that is one possibility. More realistically I probably will go work for a Fortune 500 company as an executive. I've toyed with the idea of early retirement but I'm in my mid 30's. We have enough to buy a house with cash without taking a mortgage and we own several rental properties that all generate income each month. All are paid off and we have no mortgages on them.

So basically we net at least 6 figures from our rental properties but I'm still not sure that is enough to really live a great life. We have 2 young kids. We have no debt whatsoever and a fairly decent amount of savings so our goal is to live in a great area with great schools, safe, great housing and decent cost of living.

The idea is in case we decide we never want to work again, we want a good foundation for living a good life and for our kids to go to great schools without having to enroll them in private schools and burn through all our savings.

[cubssoxfan]

Arlington Heights with Elementary District 25 or 23 and Hersey or Prospect High School. Parts of Prospect Heights and Mt. Prospect also fall into these school boundaries.
Buffalo Grove that districts into Stevenson High School also.

[earlyretirement]

Great Cubssoxfan! Thanks. I'll check out Arlington Heights as well. I'll take a look at houses on realtor.com and see what they have. Thanks. Would you have any idea what zip codes those schools are in in District 25 and 23?

[Steve-o]

Here's my personal list of towns/cities I highly recommend. Be sure to spend some good time travelling these areas when youre in town, I think you'll (along with almost everyone else) find them very enjoyable. Good luck!

Wheaton
Glen Ellyn
Naperville
St. Charles
Geneva
Warrenville
Plainfield
Hinsdale
Arlington Heights
Wayne
Campton Hills
Elburn
Bartlett
South Elgin (along Randall Rd)

[earlyretirement]

Steve-O

Great. Thanks. I'll check out those areas. What do you think is a good or reasonable amount of time to stay in that area to hit all of these places? Is 7-10 days enough?

[Pete MUFC]

Originally Posted by earlyretirement

Great Cubssoxfan! Thanks. I'll check out Arlington Heights as well. I'll take a look at houses on realtor.com and see what they have. Thanks. Would you have any idea what zip codes those schools are in in District 25 and 23?

Schools in District 25 are under zip codes 60004 and 60005, Arlington Hts.
Schools in District 23 (Betsy Ross Elementary, Eisenhower Elementary, Sulivan Elementary and MacArthur Middle) are in Prospect Heights (zip 60070) but includes parts of Arlington Heights (zip 60004) also. I live in the area of Arlington Hts that belongs to SD 23 and it is excelent place to live in.
Here is the link for all the schools in SD 23, 25 and 214 (Hersey HS).
Interactive Illinois Report Card

[chisub]

We currently live in Aurora on the border of Naperville (Dist. 204) and really like the area. We might be moving closer to the city at some point since my husband has a biz and will be getting an office very soon. Anyways, I'm a stay at home mom of a 15 month old and there is never a shortage of things to do, the schools are great and the Naperville area has enough going on that you don't need to go to Chicago (although it's not that far either). There are a lot of areas that would fit your criteria, but Naperville is definitely one that would work in that price range and has great schools. It's a bigger city, which may or may not be your thing. We lived in NYC and Chicago so while living in a smaller town sounds charming, we do kind of like the fact that a bigger city brings more activities and people to meet.

[chet everett]

I think Steve-O's list has some towns on it that are not particularly well regarded for their schools. Further several towns that DO have quite commendable schools AND nice quality of life (generally there are NO towns that have good schools that don't have some nice QofL features...) are not on SteveO's list -- I suspect that is simply because of the bias toward test / NW burbs of the the list he created. There are several town near HP (like Deerfield, Lincolnshire, Libertyville, Lake Bluff and others) that be worth looking at north. Other towns in western Cook Co / eastern DuPage Co (like Western Springs, LaGrange, Clarendon Hills and a few others) are every bit as desirable as Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Hinsdale...
I would recommend sticking with areas that have high schools that rate at least silver on the US News rankings. Best High Schools Search - US News and World Report

I would further caution that your work location will make some of the those towns FAR MORE desirable than others, as some are definitely inconvenient to downtown / lack commuter rail access. Basically every town I would consider has to have a decent Metra situation, becuase even if you are NOT currently moving to the region for a job in downtown Chicago, the lack of such access is a signficatnt enough negative that you would be foolish to overlook the downside...

If you are seeking a town where $500k is the norm you might want to consider that there are different ways of measuring that -- Highland Park has a large enough percentage of sales of condos and other non-single family detached housing that tends to blunt the effective price. http://www.city-data.com/city/Highla...-Illinois.html Really you will find that many $500K homes in desirable area of the Chicago region are basically the land price...

That said it is possible to find a perfectly habitable home with at least 3 bedroom and the 2+ baths for the amount you are looking for IF you are willing to include homes of various ages / configurations. In some towns a lot size around 1/3 of acre is pretty generous, and with walkable schools / parks the pluses are definately present.

I also would stress that in my experience one THE biggest factor that make folks happy or unhappy with the town they live in is how the COMMUTE fits into the picture. While almost every desirable town has some ways to make the more affordable cost worth the good schools (like settling for a house that has a small yard but is adjacent to a nice park...) a tow hour slog to / from work is awful given our climate and traffic...


Finally, as to the OP's question regardlng an appropriate "time on the ground" I would STRONGLY recommend first narrowing your choice to basically ONE OR TWO regions of about FIVE or more that are currently mentioned in this thread. Highland Park is in (1) Eastern Lake Co, as would be Lake Bluff. Due south of that would be the towns of (2)NE Cook Co.
West of there you'd have "(3)near NW Cook Co / Central-Souther Lake Co.".

Along the BNSF you'd have (4)West Cook/Eastern DuPage, eventually getting to Central Naperville

Along the UP West line you'd have (5)Central DuPage moving into (6)Eastern Kane.

If you leave Plainfield on the list that be a (7)"SW Suburb".

I can say that if you are serious about looking at homes with an intent to buy it would be fool hardy to think you could tackle more than two or three sub-regions on much less than 10 days...