Hyde Park, Mariemont or *Gasp* Bond Hill? (Cincinnati, Green: middle-class, real estate)

[Trainwreck]

My fiancee and I will be moving to Cincy in June. We are both Black. I'm 29 and from Greensboro, NC and she is 26 and from Atlanta, GA. She is a doctor and will be working at Christ Hospital and at a clinic in Forest Park (50/50 split). I will be working in marketing at P&G in their Winton Hill facility. My fiancee will be on call so we need to live within a 15 minute drive from Christ Hospital and a 30 minute drive from the clinic. We only plan to make Cincy home for 3-4 years and we still have medical school and MBA school loans to repay so we only wanted to spend between $200K-$250K on a 3-4 BR/2 BA home or condo. We plan to have a child while in Cincy, but we intend to leave before he/she reaches school age. Our main priority is to not lose value in this market. We have narrowed our search down to 4 areas (in order) 1-house in Pleasant Ridge, 2-Hyde Park/Oakley Condo, 3-Mariemont Condo, 4-house in Villages of Daybreak in Bond Hill. While Hyde Park, Oakley, and Mariemont are expensive and not racially diverse, they seem to be a safe bet for home values. We both work a lot and we have little time to be social, hence we don't have time to worry about whether people of other races will accept us if we move into their community. Pleasant Ridge seems like a community on the rise where we can get a 4BR/2BA home with solid 1930's construction and some modern updates without the inflation or atmosphere of Hyde Park/Oakley/Mariemont. The story behind the Bond Hill development forced us to take a look at it. The partnership between churches and the city to revitalize a neighborhood by attracting professionals struck a cord with us since we both came from modest means and were raised in religious families. We can get the biggest house in Bond Hill, it is the only new construction option and we get a 10 year tax abatement. Bond Hill is a risky bet and we are weighing the odds that the area can improve. We are not from Cincy and we don't believe that it is our job to revitalize it. We would like feedback from the readers of this forum. Have we missed any neighborhoods? What are the chances that Bond Hill can improve? Are Hyde Park/Oakley/Mariemont really "can't lose" real estate bets in condos? Thanks for reading this really long post!

[cincylifer]

Black professional, been here my entire life, 40 yrs.....
I would do the hyde park/oakley condo, or mariemont...I am very familiar with the new development in Bond Hill, and you wont get decent resale...I actually dont think they will appreciate much at all...the problem is, they are surrounded by crappy areas, and if you have that much to spend, you can go out to Mason or West Chester with good schools...Properties in/near Hyde Park Oakley tend to keep value, yes they are overpriced, but you have an easier time selling.

[Ohiogirl81]

The best part about the Bond Hill development is that the new owner also gets the remainder of the abatement if you do leave before 10 years is up. I think any risk is minimal.

I'd pick any of those other areas before Mariemont. You're right that Mariemont is not known for its diversity; neither is it known for its tolerance, to put it bluntly. Also, Mariemont being a 30-minute drive to Forest Park might be stretching it a bit.

Good luck!

[wastina]

Do you know about Glendale? It sounds like a good location for you (right next to Forest Park), and there are properties which fit your budget. Glendale is a village which has an interesting history and does have an ethnic mix. The schools are its biggest downfall, which is why prices aren't great. If you haven't already checked it out, do so. There are properties listed on the MLS, and the village's website will show you more (The Village of Glendale, Ohio).

You might also want to consider Wyoming. It's a comparable neighborhood nearby, in terms of prestige, but because of the better schools, there's an income tax.

Of the places you list, the commute to both locations will be daunting. Both Glendale and Wyoming are on I-75. Christ hospital is 15 minutes away (albeit not at rush hour!)

Alternatively, have you found Northside yet?

[Exrvi]

Trainwreck,

I'd like to second the Wyoming reco. We lived there for 18 years and found it to be a remarkable community. Diverse (at least compared to most), great schools, lovely neighborhoods, and convenient to Forest Park (10 mins), WHTC (10 mins), and Christ Hospital (15 mins). Housing values there should also be stable as well. My wife (who still tracks these things) tells me there is a lot on the market, and you should be able to find something in your price range.

I'm a retired P&Ger who had a very nice four years in Greensboro in the late 70's/early 80's when the P&G Swing Road plant was the Vicks plant. We have many fond memories from our time there.

Welcome to P&G. It's a great place to start (and end, if you choose to do so) a career.

Jeff in (now) East Tennessee

[goyguy]

Have you browsed any of the local realtors' Web sites? Moderator cut: linking to real estate sites is not allowedare two of the good ones. You don't need to set up an account on either site before visiting. There are settings on the home pages which enable you to narrow down your search by building type, number of bedrooms, price range, etc etc. I should also mention that P & G's HR office ought to have relocation assistance available - have you considered utilizing them?

I grew up during Bond Hill's post-traumatic stress from blockbusting, decline of school quality, urban unrest, etc, your basic late '60s nasty stuff. What "Villages of Daybreak" is replacing was a sprawling community of brick apartment buildings, too large to be termed a complex. Once owned by none other than Donald Trump, Swifton Village had steeply declined from a home for a diverse mix of working- and middle-class folks into essentially a privately managed "project." No one cried to see it die. I don't think that restabilization of the area will happen any time soon, because it'd been in a skid for the past forty years. Cincinnatians tend to be risk-averse, and picturing a significant number of people saying they're ready to gamble on the turnaround of a "bad" area is a stretch. Given your plan of being in town for only a few years, my advice is to rule out "Daybreak." Its locale consists in significant part of check-cashing places, fast food joints, sketchy nightclubs, and such. A main landmark is Woodward High School, aka "The Jail," "The Factory," you get the picture. None of that's going to go away before 2015.

Confession: I'm an urban dweller at heart and in reality, and am heavily biased in favor of that (so sue me, LOL.) My Cincinnati neighborhood reco's are Kennedy Heights, North Avondale/Paddock Hills, College Hill, Oakley, Northside, Pleasant Ridge, Winton Place, and Clifton. All of these areas are generally safe, emphasis on "generally," and have a fairly broad-ranged selection of housing styles. More hit-or-miss are Roselawn, Westwood, and Bond Hill "proper": close-knit and tranquil on one block, shootings and gang graffiti on the next. You might want to Google the Web site for Stetson Place, a big and brand-new condo/apartment complex near UC and the medical area, also. In suburbia, I'd go with Wyoming, Glendale, Finneytown, Woodlawn, or even Forest Park itself.

A secret known to few (few White folks anyway, LOL) is that the suburb called Lincoln Heights, established in the early 20th Century as a Jim Crow town, now has its own upscale development in place. Called Lindy's Repose, not so odd when you realize it's on an extension of Lindy St, it offers everything from townhouses to Jacuzzi-equipped McMansions. "The Heights" is close to, in fact part of it's right adjacent to, I-75. Both Mt Auburn (Christ Hospital's neighborhood) and Forest Park could be reached within a half-hour from there. Know, though, that much like "Villages of Daybreak" this community is cheek-by-jowl with a majorly downscale area and so would be susceptible to all the social problems that brings.

On to an entirely different subject: church! You'll not get homesick for the South in this regard. Cincy has "scads" of Southern Baptist, AME, AMEZ, Nazarene, etc congregations to join. As in any major city, Black churches here run the gamut from tiny inner-city storefront "tabernacles" to big modern places of worship. Your church search would bear the most fruit if you were to concentrate on the sections of town traversed by Reading and Montgomery Roads, and farther out from the city along Anthony Wayne Ave. The Cincinnati Enquirer runs several pages of listings every Saturday.

If all this isn't TMI, feel free to ask for more