Looking to Relocate In or near Winterville, NC (Greenville: crime, safe neighborhoods)

[rjchase812]

My family and I are looking to relocate in or near Winterville, NC. I am very confused though. I have read that Winterville is a great, safe, friendly place to live. But the schools in Pitt county are not that good. Also I have read that the closest place to do shopping, Greenville, has a huge crime rate. Schools and crime are very important to me and I want to make sure we don't move somewhere that we will regret within a year. I prefer to live in the country but close enough to a small city so that there are things to do. Any suggestions or comments?

[Lithuania]

Both towns have good and bad areas, with Winterville probably having lower crime. The two towns actually come pretty close to sharing a border in a few areas - they are that close together. Winterville's school district has a pretty good reputation.

The Firetower Road area has pretty high growth and lots of nice subdivisions in a variety of price ranges, but definitely does not qualify as country living anymore. If you look out in the eastern side of the area there are a lot of subdivisions outside of the city limits.

[rjchase812]

Thank you so much for your input! Can you recommend any places in particular that would be better than others? How about areas to stay away from?

[Lithuania]

I would say areas like Firetower Road, Evans/Old Tar Road, Portertown Road, etc. would have good safe neighborhoods. If I werer moving to the area, i'd look in the southeastern, eastern parts of town which is where you'll find many of the areas suburban locations. There are so many neighborhoods with varying price ranges that is tough to make a recommendation.

I shop in Greenville all the time...it's the only place to do shopping around here. Target, Best Buy, etc are all in town.

[Richard Martin]

The crime in Greenville/Winterville is no different than any other average metro with over 100,000 people living in it. If people are getting mugged outside of a bar at 2:00 AM you have to ask yourself why they're still up and outside at 2:00 AM next to a bar. You know what I mean?

A lot of the complaints about crime are coming from those people who remember back when Greenville was a sleepy little town with under 50,000 people living there. Back then the number of crimes was half of what it is now but guess what? There were only half as many people here then.

There are portions of Greenville I wouldn't go into after dark but those areas are readily apparent to even the most casual observer and are generally confined to northwest Greenville and north of the river.

As pointed out by Lithuania above, you can go from Greenville into Winterville and never even known that you've done it.