PCSing to Wright Patt..where to live??? (Akron, Dayton: for sale, real estate)

[Loggie01]

Hello all! We are very excited to be PCSing to Wright Patt! Hubby is leaving next month so have a lot to do in little time! We are currently in Louisiana but can't wait to move to Ohio. I am originally from Akron, & my hubby is from Iowa so it will be nice to be near family. We are also an interracial family so would like "some" diversity. Our daughter considers herself neither White nor Black as to not "exclude" either side of the family. Would just like to be a place where she wouldn't be ostracized or looked at as a novelty.

I'll post the answers to the requested questions ....

-Where you are working?
Hubby will be @ Wright Patt Area C (over by flightline & lake)

-How much you are willing to spend on housing?
Around $150,000 (Maybe a little lower as property taxes seem to be 2 - 5 times what we pay here)

-How long of a commute you're willing to tolerate
Prefer up to 15 -20 mins...We figure the winter could possibly double the commute & don't want to have a 1 hr commute in the snow We have lived in the south for about 15 yrs & the weather will be a lot to get used to again!

-If you have kids: Private school or public school?
We have a 10 yr daughter who will be in 6th grade. She is homeschooled now so if the schools aren't the "best", homeschooling is an option. But we would like her to go back to regular school.

-What type of neighborhood environment you are looking for: small town feeling? small city excitement? suburbia delight?

We like quiet, friendly suburban areas. Not rural. Safety is our #1 concern. Would like to have our daughter be able to ride her bike around the neighborhood, ya know? (But then again, is that even possible anywhere anymore? Gone are the days of "come back home when the street lights come on"..sad, but true...)

-Community amenities important to you?
We would like a nice recreational sports program for our daughter. She loves basketball & soccer and saw that the YWCAs seem to have nice programs. Would like short drives to restaurants, movies, grocery stores, etc. But everything looks so spread out, it wouldn't be a deal breaker to have to drive further...

-Pie or cake?
Cake!! lol

Thank you for input. It will be nice to be back to Big 10 land & Buckeye Country....glad to be away from SEC area hearing about LSU! lol

PS. Just saw a houses (online, of course) in Forest Ridge & Vandalia...how are those areas?

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[JefferyT]

Both are good. Forest Ridge is popular with base people, as it is fairly close to the base. Vandalia is a bit further but a solid older suburb which would be an easy commute down I-70 to Route 4 and then down to the base.

You might want to consider the northern parts of Huber Heights.

[tightline]

I agree with Jeffery T , Huber Hts would be a good place to start your search. You will have a nice selection of homes in your price range, the schools are good with plenty of sports activities, and you will find the diversity there you are looking for. Bethel Twshp is just north of huber, would also be nice, but may be a little more rural than you are looking for.

[wrightflyer]

I third the recommendations of Northern Huber Heights, Vandalia, or Forest Ridge. Vandalia would be the best on the school front. There is more diversity in the Huber Schools though. With Forest Ridge, there's also Mad River Schools, which is also somewhat diverse. Try to stay in the area of Forest Ridge that goes either to Mad River Schools or Huber Heights. Some pockets go to Fairborn, which isn't horrible, but it isn't at Mad River or Huber standards either. All of these districts have many families who work on the base, so your daughter shouldn't feel too out of place in the military child regard.

One other possibility is Beavercreek. Again, really excellent schools. There are a number of community rec programs. The base is less than 10 minutes away and there is a large number of shopping destinations within Beavercreek. The biggest hassle is the price. $130K-150K will get you a smallish 1960's or 1970's ranch. The trade off is larger lots though. So if you want newer, or lower taxes, I'd choose Forest Ridge or Northern Huber, but if you don't mind an older or smaller home, Vandalia or Beavercreek are good options.

[Loggie01]

Thank you guys so much for the responses. It's difficult to get to know the area when you can't drive thru it & see for yourself.

We would like to be somewhere diverse but know that's not always an option. We don't place a lot of emphasis on race & would like to be where people basically feel the same way, ya know? I guess living in the south for so long has made us aware of those who definitely think differently.

Hmmmm...smaller home in Beavercreek or larger in Forest Ridge? lol Do you know what areas of Forest Ridge/Qual Hollow go to Mad River/Huber schools? I would like higher expectations & standards. Looking at the map, it's hard to believe that Beavercreek is only 10 mins away...I guess google maps needs to update their driving times!

Thanks again..

[tightline]

Wherever you decide to locate (WELCOME TO THE MIAMI VALLEY) you will find that because of the base/industry/colleges/location,etc we are a great melting pot of races/religions/political views , an intresting and fun place to live. And our winters here in southern Ohio arent that bad, not as bad as the northern portion of the state, but on the bright side we have really great spring and fall weather.

[wrightflyer]

Well, I should say Beavercreek's northern side is only 10 minutes away. When you get down towards US35 and south of it, it becomes more like 15 minutes drive time, maybe a little more in rush hour or bad weather. One thing about the Dayton metro is that it is really easy to get from one side to the other in 30 minutes, even at rush hour. Now, if there's an accident, it may take a little longer, or if you take I-75 because of its endless construction. I-675, though is pretty easy to use and makes getting anywhere from Miamisburg to Fairborn easy and quick (say +/-25 mins).

I'm not even sure where the lines are for Huber, Fairborn, and Mad River schools are in the Forest Ridge area. The best thing to do on that case is ask a licensed realtor. Also, you can probably call that district to double check if the address resides inside their attendance zones. Also, Coldwell Banker's website list all homes in the areas MLS and does so by school district, so that could be a useful resource. Coldwell Banker Heritage Realtors, Dayton Ohio Real Estate Company - 10,000+ Homes For Sale in the Dayton area Available for Searching - Dayton's #1 Real Estate Company

Beavercreek, while still pretty white in terms of diversity, does have a small Asian population and when I went there only a few years ago, I had a few African American and mixed friends. Also, there is school demographic information buried within the 8-10 pages of the PDF's for the different schools' report cards. This also provides rankings of schools based on Proficency and OGT (Ohio Graduation Test) scores and whether they are meeting NCLB requirements. Just be cautious of the overall ranking as that can be murky in how or why it was assigned. In other words, the school could be fine but because of one small problem in one little demographic, the district gets bumped down a notch (or two). All of this information can be found by district and county here: Ohio Department of Education Interactive Local Report Card

[Loggie01]

Thanks tightline! It will be nice to no longer have to count consecutive days of over 100 degrees in the summer! My family still lives in Akron so I've been hearing about the winter up there...not fun But I'm looking forward to seeing snow...now driving in it is another thing ;-) Four seasons will be great...

Thank you so much for the info Wrightflyer! I have been using the Coldwell Bank website to look @ houses..But I've been reading another older thread ( http://www.city-data.com/forum/dayto...r-heights.html ), and it is giving me pause about Huber Heights. Is it really called Hubertucky? I've been in the south for over 15 yrs so I'm looking to get away from that And the areas that the posters were talking about -- is Forest Ridge/Pheasant Hill/Quail Hollow in those "run down" areas? Not as safe as they used to be...schools over-crowded...etc.

We are looking to settle - not just stay a few years & transfer out. We're finally close to home & want to stay in the area.

I really appreciate everyone's input

[wrightflyer]

For the most part, Forest Ridge/Pheasant Hill/Quail Hollow should be clear of the more redneckish feeling some parts of Huber Heights may or may not have. I personally think things like that are more perception based and not as big a problem as some imagine, or it comes from an old, out-of-date point of view. Still, there are pockets of what some would call rednecks in some suburbs (Huber Heights is large and so this is in certain, more poverty stricken areas). Most of this comes from Dayton's booming industrial times when Appalachian (sp?) families migrated here for jobs, but is the whole place like that? Frankly, no.

If you have a chance, visit the place first, or look at the house before the purchase and see if you like the street and even the surrounding streets. That's my advice if you are trying to avoid more "southern" elements.

[JefferyT]

But I've been reading another older thread ( http://www.city-data.com/forum/dayto...r-heights.html ), and it is giving me pause about Huber Heights. Is it really called Hubertucky? I've been in the south for over 15 yrs so I'm looking to get away from that And the areas that the posters were talking about -- is Forest Ridge/Pheasant Hill/Quail Hollow in those "run down" areas? Not as safe as they used to be...schools over-crowded...etc.

About that Southern Thang:

Dayton is jokingly called the Northermost City in Kentucky (the joke being that there really is a Dayton, KY, and it really is the northernmost city in that state), because of the high population of folks with Appalachian antecedents. There was a mass migration to this area from West Virginia, western Virginia, and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee to the Dayton area starting in the very late 1930s through the early 1970s, so there is a veneer of “southerness” to the local scene. The local term for these migrants and their descendents are “briars”, at first a negative term, but one that has been adopted by the briars themselves.

Certain suburbs or parts of suburbs apparently became associated with this “briar” immigration, one being the southern part of Huber Heights, which was called Huber-tucky. In reality it is just huge subdivision of 1950s ranch houses, with a lot of nice mature landscaping. It probably looked pretty raw and uniform in the 1950s but it doesn’t look so bad today.

The issue with this older Huber Heights area is there are a lot of vacancies here due to the foreclosure crisis and pretty tired retail stuff on the busy streets. A discussion of the impact of the foreclosure crisis on Huber Heights can be found here (which has images of the older houses of Huber, so you can see what it all looks like).

As you head north in Huber Heights the houses become larger and more varied as subdivision architecture changed as the decades passed. I’d guess the areas north of Chambersburg Road are probably better. The newest parts of Huber Heights are north of I-75 and north off the map in Miami County (you are very close to the county line here).

The shopping has also clustered at the two exits off I-75 as it passes through Huber Heights.

Here is a map showing some of this. The back gate to the base is shown, which is the one you will be using. As you can see Chambersburg Road is a straight shot to this gate, making Huber an easy commute.



“Huber-tucky” (where I think it is) is also labled.

I also outlined in red the Forest Ridge area, since you were interested in that. There is, I think, new home construction going on north of Kitridge Road, just north of Forest Ridge. The boundary between the Mad River and Huber Heights school districts is in blue…

Here is another map showing the Forest Ridge area and the school district.



If you want to look closer at Huber Heights here is a good website, run by a real estate agent who knows the area (she might be worth contacting via e-mail)

The Brick Ranch

As for schools, I couldn’t say,Here is a list comparing scores for the Dayton suburban school districts

Comparing ACT & SAT Scores
…so you can compare districts. Ideally you should buy in the areas with the best-rated schools as these districts are usually desirable areas where houses will hold value.