Columbia - Lexington area (Irmo, Forest Acres: apartments, condos, homes)

[Akhenaton06]

Remember, Columbia's downtown consists of much more than just Main Street, and when people speak of downtown Greenville, for the most part they're referencing their Main Street. Columbia's downtown is district-oriented (Vista, Five Points), so the effect isn't quite as concentrated and doesn't make as much of an impact as Greenville's corridor-oriented downtown (Main Street). However, there's just as much to see and do in downtown Columbia--it's just spread out over a larger area.

[needachange]

Which areas are the best to live in in Columbia, Lexington?

[Akhenaton06]

The areas of Columbia most popular right now would be northeast and the Irmo area. Forest Acres isn't bad either.

[anonymous]

There are other options closer to town that are nice, as well.

Shandon is sort of your more expensive, liberal, college neighborhood downtown. Forest Acres is big, with good schools and a fairly wide range of home prices. If I was moving back to Columbia, I'd probably want to live in Forest Acres. But, the 'southeast' area around the V.A. Hospital/Hammond School is nice too. I don't know much about the schools, though.

[bkje18]

Don't move to an area of Richland Couty that sends your kids to Lower Richland or St. Andrews area! The best schools in town are Rosewood Elementary, Hand Middle School, and rebuilt Dreher High School. Avoid Lower Richland with Hopkins area. Though Sandhills has a lot to offer in new schools and shopping, the traffic is still HORRIFIC! First they built the schools and homes and then forgot about road building. Lexington School District #1 is growing great and is considered once as the bedroom community for doctors, lawyers, and businessmen with traffic NO WHERE as bad as Sandhills. Our family loves Lake Murray on the Lexington side! It's so beautiful. Zipcodes 29210 and 29212 are not as nice as they use to be. Chapin is a growing area but slower and more land for your money if building a home. My advice would be to rent an apartment for a year to check out what area fits better for you. Our schools are rated lowest in the country, so many parents end up homeschooling or private school education.

[joemorrisbuilders]

Originally Posted by salatheel

Also I like that Columbia like Charleston has that tropical feel you don't get in the upstate. Love to see those palm trees!

that would probably be more palmetto trees!

i love columbia... people always say bad things about it, but like every city it has it's good and it's bad...

as far as schools go, lexington district 5 is one of the best in the state. irmo, dutch fork, lake murray, and chapin are great schools. they have won all kinds of awards. the housing around in that area is good too... lake murray is beautiful (i said this already on another thread) and harbison has lots of shopping, columbiana centre (the mall), taget, walmart and the like...

i went to leaphart elem, irmo middle school and irmo high... the teachers were wonderful and i had a great education. lots of fond memories too!

[bikeraunt]

Columbia is a pretty fair place to live, I do call it home. As far as jobs are concerned, if you are a doctor, lawyer or in politics it's a good town. If you're in engineering, try Greenville or Spartanburg.

[CityGirl52]

It'll be 2 years in December that I drove some good friends of mine down to Lexington, SC. to live and they really like it there so far, we're all keeping our fingers crossed for them. They don't have kids though, so I can't comment on the schools or anything like that. They're in zip code 29072, so look through there for some places to live. I can't believe there home they found there! It's SO nice for the $$ compared to the northeast prices that we're all seeing up in this neck of the woods in New England! These friends of mine aren't too far from Lake Murray and when I was there helping them move, we took a drive to Irmo's shopping Mall. WHAT a nice mall it was too. I think it was called the Columbiana Center Mall in Irmo. It had every single store imaginable all along this road, you name it and it was here! I thought it was absolutely awesome, I was in my glory here! I couldn't believe all those stores they had, and to this day, I don't think I was ever in such a huge complex as that and trust me, we have our malls in New England, but NOT like this one!

The weather has been pretty hot for them in the last several weeks in Lexington, really really hot and from what they're saying, it's a drought too, which they haven't had in a long time! They loved being down there in the last year through the winter months though, they keep saying they don't miss our New England weather at ALL (so far!). They're really enjoying it all as much as they can in that part of the country. With them, they don't realize that it's been just as hot in New England these days for us too. When I talk to them today, they'll find out! Like today? It's close to 100 degree's in the shade, and here we are, at the end of August. With them, they told us it's so hot that they can't even go in their community pool. SO hot that you have to stay in air conditioned buildings. Well, guess what? It's SO hot in New England right now that we're all in air conditioned buildings too all day long, so they're not alone!

On the down side? Here's some things they told us....One thing that her husband misses like crazy? Believe it or not it's coffee shops! They don't have one single solitary Dunkin Donuts or anything like that there, ANYWHERE down there. He scouted the place out good for months and looked everywhere for one. He misses them like you wouldn't believe too! They drove up in the middle of May and the first place he hit was our coffee shop in town, he couldn't wait! It's things like that, that he's not that crazy about! Sub/Sandwich shops? Forget about it, they're no where to be found. Hey, they're losing weight, but at least they look and feel better! It's a GOOD, positive thing for them both! When we saw them, we all thought the sun and new life style was doing them a world of good!

Since they moved there they had one thing happen to them while they were living there and guess what it was? It was a tornado watch. They were freaking out over it too, but there neighbors were wonderful and telling them what to do and there town people were all great in explaining it all with the sounds in town and on the radio and TV. Well, through it all they said they didn't like the fact that they didn't have a basement to run to. A ton of homes in the south don't have basements built under their foundations like up in the north part of the country, with them they have crawl spaces and that's about it for under your foundation. So neither of them were too thrilled when they had the tornado watch signal going off and they didn't have that basement to run down to during it. They got over that though quick and that was the end of their hair raising incident for the two of them!

If they make it through another year there then they'll be staying there regardless! Since moving there? They've been able to check out SO many beautiful areas of our country and that's the part that they really enjoy, which is the bottom line for them.

[waccamatt]

There are Dunkin' Donuts all over Columbia! I don't know why they can't find them. There may not be any in Lexington, but they're in the rest of the metro. I have a Dunkin' Donuts less than 5 minutes from my house and they've recently announced they will be building 25 more locations in Columbia.

Sub shops? Also all over Columbia - Jersey Mike's, Quiznos, Blimpie, Subway, Beezers, etc. They need to venture out of Lexington a bit more.

[CityGirl52]

I'll have to make sure to tell them there's Dunkin Donuts in Columbia. They probably already know by now that they're there though, that was in the last year that they told us about that. He was used to going to a coffee shop in the early morning near his house up here, I guess where they live in Lexington, there's not one single coffee shop near them. I'm sure they've ventured out further by now. I told him he should probably open a coffee shop right in Lexington along that Rte 1, he'd definitely love that, it would be right up his alley! So may be he will, we'll see!