Well, I'm snowed in and bored so I'll give what information I can.
First of all, check out the maps at
City of Shaker Heights - Maps and the neighborhoods page at
City of Shaker Heights - Shaker Neighborhoods to get an idea of the neighborhoods.
Second of all, I hate to poop on anyone's neighborhood so forgive me (and correct me) if I'm wrong about what any of these areas are like. I've not lived in Shaker that long and I don't know all of the neighborhoods all that well.
The areas I would avoid are the Ludlow and Moreland neighborhoods. I would also avoid buying a house in the north-western most region of the Boulevard neighborhood (this is more of a rental/business area). Some of the homes in Ludlow are actually very nice but the nearby area of Cleveland is not nice.
I'm not real sure about the Lomond and Sussex neighborhoods but, while I would proceed with caution, I don't think I would flat-out avoid these areas. I've got a co-worker who lives down there and when I visited them, I thought their road looked like a nice young family-type area but it might vary from street to street. I would not want to be too close to Chagrin Blvd though.
Onaway and the south-west corner of Boulevard look like nice reasonably priced areas with some pretty good architecture (albiet on small lots). I don't know much at all about the Fernway neighborhood. I imagine you might want to avoid being too close to Van Aken Blvd if possible (I would not buy anything directly on Van Aken even though there are some nice homes practically being given away right now).
The Boulevard neighborhood east of Coventry and the Malvern neighborhood are very nice areas with fantastic architecture. The properties north of Shaker Blvd tend to have more land than those south of the Blvd but there are exceptions. The only area I'd 'avoid' in Malvern would be Fairmount Blvd just because it sees more through traffic than most of the other streets (I guess I'd avoid Shaker and Woodland for the same reason).
Mercer tends to be a bit more of a mix. I find the architecture in this area to be weaker on the whole than in Boulevard or Malvern. Mercer south of Shaker Blvd seems like a fairly affordable area. Some of the homes here appear to be from the 50's or maybe 60's and lack the charm of the older homes in other areas of Shaker. I don't know much about Mercer north of Shaker Blvd since I rarely ever venture through there (and I get lost when I try; very confusing streets there). From what I've seen while driving along west-bound Shaker blvd, the architecture in the northern half of Mercer is better than the southern half. The only areas I might avoid in Mercer would be Fairmount, Shaker and Woodland Blvds since these roads are a bit busy at times (also Warrensville Center and Green Rds).
We live in Malvern and love it (well, we would like a larger yard but otherwise we love it). The neighborhood to focus on will largely depend on your budget.
Two of our nearby neighbors send their kids to private schools but I believe the parents are alumni of the same private schools so I don't think they even considered the public system. We don't have any kids just yet so we're still trying to figure out what our plan will be when the time comes to decide on a school but we'd prefer to use the public schools.
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Neighborhoods in Shaker Heights
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