Good family community commutable to I-10/Beltway 8 area school?

[Mr. Football]

Crescent, you may check out Longwood, Coles Crossing, Northlake Forest, Bridgeland, Cypress Creek Lakes, Blackhorse Ranch, Lakewood Forest, and dozens of other good choices.

Here are some of my pics from Longwood:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/longwoo...7594383900219/

[descovy]

to omar about safe, cheap neighborhoods... if you like suburbs, cypress is a great deal, quiet, safe, good schools. The area I live in 290/Huffmeister (oak cliff place, bonaire, meisterwood) you can get a good house for 110k or less and we have been so happy with our elem school (millsap)

To the original poster, I have to say the only big problem with cypress is the commute on 290 is absolutely awful! My dh works near bw8 and Richmond (on the west) and takes 45min-hour during rush hour. In fact we are putting our house on the market in the spring, and moving to south katy for good schools AND easy commuting

[crescentcitygal]

Mr. Football, thanks for the names of the Cypress neighborhoods. Longwood, Bridgeland, and Northlake Forest look really nice, but I didn't see any homes priced below $230 K while doing a quick search on HAR. We want to stay under $200 K ($180K will probably be our target). Lakewood Forest looked to be a little more in our price range. Being above Hwy. 290, would that make for a difficult commute to the school near the I-10 and Beltway 8 (the school is ABOVE I-10 and OUTSIDE the Beltway)? I have heard that 290 is very congested. What about 249?

When I did a search on Spring Branch, most of the homes that came up are inside the beltway (although on a map, it looks like Spring Branch encompasses a good sized area outside the beltway). Anyone have any thoughts about living inside the beltway, above I-10? Traffic? Crime? Schools (I hear SBISD is good)?

Paula