Moving to Jax, working at Blount Island, need advice on where NOT to live (Jacksonville: to rent)

[keash]

Hi everyone! We're a military family and we're getting ready to move down to Jacksonville in July. There's myself, my wife, and our 4 kids all under the age of 10 with 2 in elementary school. I'm going to be working at Blount Island and I don't mind a 20-40 minute drive. My wife stays at home with the kids and obviously wants a safe place to live.

I do mind a neighborhood with high crime and lots of noise. From what I've read it seems that mostly the Mandarin, Riverside, Avondale, Southwest, West, and the beaches are good places to live. We don't mind the country but we do need to be somewhat (30 minutes or so) close to hospitals and shopping. We both small town people and have never lived in a large city other than Allentown PA and it's not really large I suppose. Everything else for us has been small but we can get along with anyone and everyone as long as they're good people who just want to work and raise a family. I want my kids to be able to play outside the house somewhat without us constantly watching and not worry about them getting hit by a speeding teenager all the time or getting hurt/abducted. Normal parent worries I suppose.

I like working on my cars in my own garage and I do quite a bit of work on motorcycles as well. I also do carpentry and metalworking and I wouldn't want to move into a place where the neighbors are going crazy because I stay up late on a friday or saturday night working in the garage or I'm up early in the morning doing my thing outside. We don't know anything about HOA's but from some of the nightmare stories we've heard, we not too keen on getting into a place like that if we can help it. We are sociable but we like to be able to live without someone telling us how we can or can't live when we're paying our money to live there.

Anyway, we're looking online and have seen several 4+ bedroom and 2+ bath homes to rent for $1100 or less (or buy for 150k or thereabouts) but we're just not sure about the neighborhoods that we're seeing them in. Any and all help is appreciated. We hope that we like Jacksonville as much as any other place we've lived. Again, thanks for all the help in advance.

[LA-VA-FL]

For your situation, as far as working on your cars and stuff late at night, I do Not recommend a "typical" neighborhood where you are right next door to your neighbors.

As far as places to avoid: avoid northside (just north of downtown), Westside (just north of Orange park, and west of the neighborhoods surrounding the river), and maybe avoid certain neighborhoods in the heart of arlington (around university).

For your situation I would recommend some of th newer devlopments north of Blount Island where the homes have larger lots and spaces between the houses. You may want to consider south Nassau county (yulee, fernandina area). This may put you a little further from your job than you would like, but there are plenty of safe places to live in a more "rural" setting. The same goes for north St Johns county (rural and safe, plus better schools).

It may be tough finding a home with larger lot size in jacksonville with your price range (but fortunately it is a buyers market right now).

Some others on this forum prob have better advice regarding the locations around blount island and northeast jax neighborhoods/developments.

Also search someother threads on here regarding those areas and BI.
Here is on thread for starters about the BI area:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/jacks...land-area.html