Confused about NE Columbia (Irmo, Lexington: sales, rental, crime rate)

[PalmettoGuy]

ncst8fan,

We moved to Longcreek last summer, and we've really liked it here. We have not seen many problems with crime in our neighborhood. I say "not many" just because there have been some incidents with graffiti on street signs, and sometimes teenagers sneak into the community park after hours to drink beer and hang out. These seem to have been isolated incidents that were the work of a small number of kids and could happen anywhere. I would encourage you to at least look at Longcreek if you're interested because it really is a nice community. It's relatively upscale and we have never felt unsafe here.

As for the Village at Sandhill, it's always seemed like a normal mall to me. I take my wife and kids there all the time with no worries. Like any other mall, if you go there at night on the weekend there will be a fairly large number of teenagers out socializing. But I've never seen anything that looked like gang activity.

[NewYorkBorn]

Originally Posted by ncst8fan

First of all, thanks for all of the responses so quickly. I really appreciate your thoughts.

Second, let me apologize for muddying the water with the realtor comments. My realtor really is quite good. They are knowledgeable, kind, and very helpful. They are just reacting to the criteria I gave them; two of the biggest being a safe place for my family and a place where re-sell has held up well during the recession. As much as I have been able to research the second criteria, Lexington and close in Columbia have won over the NE or some of the other area towns (purely looking head to head at particular neighborhoods on various websites that track those statistics, realize it is a big generalization.) A big part of that, I think, is a national phenomenon...close in real estate has held its value better than that which is far away. It could be that my realtor is directing purely based on the re-sell component. They have never said a bad word about the NE on any other dimension.

One could argue that means there are better deals (with more long term upside) and you get more house for your money further out. The last bit is definitely true, the upside depends on what you believe about the economy etc. going forward. That said, I keep seeing houses pop up in the NE areas (through MLS) that I like and seem to be more house for the money. So what I am trying to discern is whether those houses are purely a financial bet or whether there is some other factor, namely deteriorating safety, that should factor into a decision about that area. I wouldn't have thought much of it except for some of the comments I saw on here and the lady at the mall (and a few other random people I talked to while in the Columbia area). It is a strange phenomenon: people either think it is the greatest place in the world, or an area to be avoided at all cost. Maybe it would be the same if you asked 100 people about any area in the country, but it has left me a bit confused. Thanks again for all of your thoughts, and I would appreciate any more. I hope y'all have a great day.

Maybe you should not rush into purchasing a home the minute you relocate to SC. I did the same thing....transferred my job, a few months after I moved to SC purchased a home. Looking back on that decision I feel that it would have been better for me to simply spend the first year or so renting an apartment. Give yourself time to relocate, get settled in and get a first hand feel for your new location.....then once you get a feel for your new city make the purchase of a home in 1-1 1/2 years....by that point you will know the areas a lot better. IMO not a good idea to make a big commitment like a home purchase based on others opinion of certain areas.....better for you to make your own decision based on your own first hand observations after you have lived there a while.

The other reason I think it is a good idea not to commit to a home purchase so quickly is because you never know what surprises life is going to throw your way......better to wait and see how things work out there before making a purchase, this way if things do not work out the way you expect then all you will have to do is pack your family up and move.

Example: Laid off from my job 2 years after my relocation to SC......found SC's (job market) economy to be lagging.....back living in NYC....housing market has been so bad during the recession that I could not sell the house......the house is now empty in SC and used for vacations!

I'm just sayin!

[ncst8fan]

NewYorkBorn,

That may be very sage advice.

[crmorgan7]

I go to Sandhills to shop alone during the week and weekend during evening hours and I've never felt unsafe at all. Sure, there are teenagers hanging out, but it's a movie theatre. I think a lot of people shy away from the NE because in the past it was considered a bad area, mostly because of the end of Two Notch closest to downtown. That area has pretty much been abandoned since they started building down on the Sandhills end. Some of the nicest neighborhoods in Columbia are in the NE. In the past when we were looking to buy our next home I noticed that there were more newer and reasonably priced houses in the NE compared to Lexington/Irmo. Personally, I would move there in a heartbeat if my husband and I were staying in SC. I hope this helps!

[Chi2Midlands]

Let me share a few thoughts as a Northeast resident of 5 years (I'm originally from Chicago and relocated here via DC/Northern Virginia).

The "Northeast" is a fairly large and diverse area, so you could say there is "more than one" Northeast, at least as much as there is variation in the areas of Irmo/St. Andrews, Lexington/West Columbia, etc.:

- There is what I would call the "old/inner" Northeast - the areas around Decker and Two Notch near Columbia Place Mall (which was the original big mall in the Columbia area, and later for mainly the Northeast after Columbiana opened in Irmo), out towards about Alpine Rd., which unfortunately has declined as middle class families have moved out from older-stock housing (mostly 60s/70s ranches), leaving a more struggling population behind. BTW, this is not really the "suburban white flight" of the 70s/80s, but a multi-racial middle class flight. Just about any middle class person with reasonable means has moved away. You probably will not find many folks relocating from out of state to this area, except perhaps for a few Army folks posted at Fort Jackson. It is squeezed between the established, good urban/suburban areas of Columbia, Forest Acres, and Arcadia Lakes, and the newer, shinier suburban areas further northeast. This is an aging, "grayfield" suburbia with lots of semi-filled strip centers and has been awaiting revitalization/redevelopment for some time. Many retail outlets that are normally found in stable suburban areas, such as Target, have pulled out and relocated to newer areas in the Northeast, further out. If all your experience of the Northeast is around this area, then you might get the impression this is an area to avoid.

- Then you have what I would term the "middle" Northeast, which includes a range of neighborhoods from working/middle class to upper middle class. Spring Valley is probably the most upscale neighborhood in the area, and it has a semi-established feel in that it is newer than comparable areas in Forest Acres to the southwest and older than comparable areas further out, such as Wildewood or Longcreek. It is more residential in character and the portion of Two Notch in this area has more neighborhood-oriented retail strips like supermarkets, gas stations, fast food places, banks, etc. rather than an intense, region-wide mall or shopping center area. It is in this area where you will notice there is some "patchiness" to neighborhoods and areas, which frankly is common in many parts of the Columbia area, in that certain neighborhoods will at least feel "better" or "safer" than others. In other words, it will be hard to characterize large swaths of areas as uniformly "good' or "bad"; you will need to be more fine-grained in your research to find a neighborhood you like (e.g., asking what are the "good zip codes" in the Columbia area, and certainly the Northeast, is not generally going to give you enough information to make a good decision).

- Finally, there is what I term the "new" or "outer" Northeast, beginning around The Village at Sandhill and Wildewood (itself a very nice, upscale upper-middle-class neighborhood, basically a newer version of Spring Valley), out towards an arc stretching from Blythewood to Elgin, which loosely marks the exurban/rural fringe. It has the newest homes/neighborhoods and probably contributed to the locating of the Village at Sandhill where it is. There are many 1990s/2000s vintage developments like Wildewood, Lake Carolina, The Summit, Woodcreek Farms, Longcreek, Wood Lake, etc. There is still a range of homes here, from middle class to nearly multi-million dollar lakefront homes. This area is home to what are often considered the best Richland School District 2 elementary schools. As this is the newest area, with new homes being built at the height of a national housing bubble in the mid-2000s, there has been some softening of prices but overall Columbia has been fairly immune to drastic drops in values (another factor is that there are much fewer transplants than can easily sell their homes elsewhere, such as in formerly high-flying markets in Florida and the Boston-Washington Corridor, and buy a home here; the Northeast is the most transplant-oriented of Columbia's suburban regions).

A word on gangs/malls - the Village at Sandhill has a curfew they enforce with their private security folks, whereby teenagers after 9pm have to be with an adult (I think that's what it says, not sure). Of course, you will have rowdy bunches of teens at just about any mall, so Sandhill is not unique in that sense. Most of the teenager activity clusters around the cinema at certain hours. I take my wife and 4-year-old son there all the time and have never felt uncomfortable - outside the cinema area there is almost no real rowdiness in general. Even Columbia Place Mall has the County Sheriff located in a branch inside the mall, and although stores have left and is in a declining market, it is reasonably clean compared to some other declining malls I've seen in other cities.

There is also, unforunately, ignorance on the part of some Columbia-area residents who don't live in the Northeast in terms of what their impressions are. Perhaps they see the evening news and perceive crime associated with "Two Notch Road" and "Richland County", not realizing that both of those terms refer to very large areas that contain the both the poorest and the richest, the most dangerous and the safest areas of the Columbia area. There is a big difference in the quality of life, for example, between what you see at 5000 Two Notch Road and 10000 Two Notch Road.

[ncst8fan]

Chi2Midlands,

Thanks for the information. That kind of detail is insightful and very helpful.

[steelblue]

they gave u the wrong advise. columbia mall around two notch is where u need to avoid. Sand hills is a newer trendier area recently built and designed like some of the shopping centers in florida. Less of a mall and more of a spread out shopping/dining area. U will be fine in the neighborhoods close to sandhills off of clemson road like the summit area or between two notch and clemson near spring valley high.

[Scots]

Steve Spurier, the new mayor, and a famous NFL football player live in NE Columbia near Sandhills shopping center. Several of the neighborhoods are the most upscale in the city. There are excellent restaurants and very good shopping. I have not seen any gang activity of any sort.

[T L Edwards]

Chi2Midlands,
That was an excellent post. You have learned a lot about the area in 5 years.

[jkwing]

Well I will chime in about the NE, I moved in The Summit in 2006, after 3.5 years of living there, I wished I had a real estate agent direct me towards Lexington. Check the demographics, NE zip code 29229 is almost 50% black, and if you look at what happens to the areas that are that heavily populated with black, there are more gangs, more graffiti, and more trouble.
I could not wait to get out of the NE. I sold my house in January this year, and I took a $9200.00 loss, just to get my wife to an area she felt safe in. We now live in Lexington where the black ratio is around 20%. And it does make a difference. Don't get me wrong, not all blacks are gang members and trouble makes, it just seems the high concentration of blacks the more trouble you have and the faster a neighborhood will go down hill.