Taking a trip (Independence, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs: lease, HOA, movers)

[TxMommy]

Hello everyone Im hoping someone can steer me in the right direction and give me some tips. Well I've lived in texas since i was born recently got offered a job in kansas city that i have been seriously considering. I am making a trip in mid january with my husband and was hoping if someone can please give me a few areas to look into for a family of four. What are good safe areas worst? We would have to look into living in an apt for the first few months until our house sells in texas. What elementary schools should i check out? As far a texas it 's either hot or somewhat not so hot lol so i know i should be prepared for different weather but how prepared should i be? Our price range for a house would be about 275k would that get us into a decent area. If we have to commute then we will but would like to keep within 30 minutes.

[brianjb]

You can get a nice house in some areas for that price, and a really nice house in other areas for that price.

Where is your job located? There are a lot of suburbs, and country towns not far from any of the suburbs.

It sounds like you want to be in a suburb with good schools with easy access to your job which may be in the city.

It is easy to have a half hour commute, but you want to be close to work. You wouldn't want to live in Lee's Summit if you work near the airport, for example.

Give us some more details, and we will help.

[lifelongMOgal]

Weather in KC can be anywhere from below zero to a balmy 50+ degrees on any given day in January. Be prepared for the worst (snow/ice) and hope for the best.

Check both sides of the state line (KS & MO) and both North & South of the river. Stay away from the KCMO school district if you can help it.

If you choose "close-in" neighborhoods you will have "front yard" neighbors, older but charming homes on smaller lots with LOTS of trees. The further out one goes the larger (newer) the homes, the more suburban (back-yard neighbors), the fewer the trees, and the less "charm".

On the KS side "close-in" Prairie Village & Leawood have outstanding elementary schools... . Further out: Olathe KS, Western Shawnee KS, Lee's Summit MO, Parkville MO, Liberty MO.

Close-in MO neighborhoods along Ward Parkway and the Brookside area are within your price range and charming relatively "safe" neighborhoods. The drawback is that the schools are not good and families who can afford to do so send their children to private non-parochial and Catholic schools.

With the housing market being what it is I would precaution against buying into any "newer" development that is less than 40% complete. What may appear to be a real "deal" may not be if the ammenities are not complete or if fewer are paying into the HOA to keep up the neigborhood pool, etc...

[Stuart1126]

Olathe or Lee's Summit.

[famusdarlin]

Olathe and Lee's Summit are great suggestions. Lifelong Mogal gave a great summary of the city.

I would add Liberty, specifically Franklin Elementary if you are looking for a great school in your price range. Liberty is a small bedroom community, closer to their downtown is a walkable neighborhood.

Also up north are Park Hill schools, they are also top in the state. There are tons of newer homes and cute suberbs.

Western Shawnee would also be in your price range and I hear good things about their schools. There are alot of young families in the area and I hear good thing about the areas mom support groups.

Blue Springs is an older suburb, but has some newer homes. They historically have good schools and homes in all price ranges.

[RJDBLues]

We just moved here from Georgia last week. We are renting a house in north Overland Park one block from Mission. So far we are happy with the area and school.

I strongly suggest that if you decide to rent a house you go through a realtor. We had rented from an homeowner first. Had a signed lease, paid first months and deposit. We had been in contact with this owner for over two months.

My husband drove the Uhal with his truck in tow. I followed in my car with our child and two large dogs. We took three days to make the drive. I arrived at the house around 11 a.m. of the morning we were to move in. My husband was about 35min. behind me.

The owner was there cleaning out the refrig and stove. However, he still had half of the household items in there. Every room still had furniture and nic-nacks. The kitchen wasn't packed, the closets still had clothes. There was a non-working car in the garage along with tons of boxes and such. The basement was full of junk. I was freaked out. I kept my cool and offered to help him pack.

When my husband arrived I had him go with me to get some lunch so we could talk. Decided that the best thing to do was to offer to help the owner pack the house and help him move it all to the den until he could get it removed from the house.

Got back to the house and told the owner that we would help him pack the house up but that he had to get an Uhal to move everything by the next morning because we had movers coming to unload ours. The owner became upset and said no one was going to pack his things but him and that he would get the things out of the house when he wanted to. My husband told him that it wouldn't work. The house needed to be empty or at least 2/3's empty. The owner said no and that we would just need to find some where else to live!

Here we were; we had just driven for three days. We are standing outside our house with lease in hand with our young child and two dogs. The Uhal is parked ready to be unloaded. I was in shock! My husband demanded that the owner return all of our money for the depost and first month rent. After he received the check we loaded up and headed to find a hotel.

After some frantic calls and rapid realty searches we found a house that is nicer and in a better school district. Oh, and our second stop after the hotel was to the owners bank to cash that check. LOL Better to find out he was crazy then than after we had moved in.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by famusdarlin

Blue Springs is an older suburb, but has some newer homes. They historically have good schools and homes in all price ranges.

I must be getting old, Blue Springs barely existed pre 1985 and now it's over 60,000 people .

BTW, Blue Springs has some older areas (70's-80's), but it's also loaded with new areas on all sides (fringes).

Great comments though, I guess it would matter where you live and the type of area you want. All the outer suburbs in all directions from downtown are nice as are some of the inner suburbs and urban core.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by RJDBLues

We just moved here from Georgia last week. We are renting a house in north Overland Park one block from Mission. So far we are happy with the area and school.

I strongly suggest that if you decide to rent a house you go through a realtor. We had rented from an homeowner first. Had a signed lease, paid first months and deposit. We had been in contact with this owner for over two months.

My husband drove the Uhal with his truck in tow. I followed in my car with our child and two large dogs. We took three days to make the drive. I arrived at the house around 11 a.m. of the morning we were to move in. My husband was about 35min. behind me.

The owner was there cleaning out the refrig and stove. However, he still had half of the household items in there. Every room still had furniture and nic-nacks. The kitchen wasn't packed, the closets still had clothes. There was a non-working car in the garage along with tons of boxes and such. The basement was full of junk. I was freaked out. I kept my cool and offered to help him pack.

When my husband arrived I had him go with me to get some lunch so we could talk. Decided that the best thing to do was to offer to help the owner pack the house and help him move it all to the den until he could get it removed from the house.

Got back to the house and told the owner that we would help him pack the house up but that he had to get an Uhal to move everything by the next morning because we had movers coming to unload ours. The owner became upset and said no one was going to pack his things but him and that he would get the things out of the house when he wanted to. My husband told him that it wouldn't work. The house needed to be empty or at least 2/3's empty. The owner said no and that we would just need to find some where else to live!

Here we were; we had just driven for three days. We are standing outside our house with lease in hand with our young child and two dogs. The Uhal is parked ready to be unloaded. I was in shock! My husband demanded that the owner return all of our money for the depost and first month rent. After he received the check we loaded up and headed to find a hotel.

After some frantic calls and rapid realty searches we found a house that is nicer and in a better school district. Oh, and our second stop after the hotel was to the owners bank to cash that check. LOL Better to find out he was crazy then than after we had moved in.

I think it depends more on the owners than whether you use a realtor or not. We used a realtor and we had a very similar thing happen to us, only the owners were going through a divorce and one of them didn't want to move out in time for us to move in. We had a truck on the way and no place to put it.

We ended up in a much nicer home, in a nicer area with better schools and less rent in a very last minute rush to find another home. Go figure how things can work out in the end .

Why people would treat a potential tenant like they did you is beyond me. Good thing you got out while you could.

[famusdarlin]

Originally Posted by kcmo

I must be getting old, Blue Springs barely existed pre 1985 and now it's over 60,000 people .

BTW, Blue Springs has some older areas (70's-80's), but it's also loaded with new areas on all sides (fringes).

Great comments though, I guess it would matter where you live and the type of area you want. All the outer suburbs in all directions from downtown are nice as are some of the inner suburbs and urban core.

Yes, when I said older, I meant there aren't 2 or 3 new or planned high schools and miles of brand new subdivisions. I went to school in Blue Springs back in the early 80s and alot of the neighborhoods were well established.

[kcmo]

I wasn't really disagreeing with you as much as I was simply dating myself a bit. While growing up, Blue Springs was THE suburb most people were moving too. They were one of the fastest growing cities in the country in the 70's and 80's and that city was literally built in those two decades.

What's interesting about BS is all of the sudden they just stopped. In the early 90's, the city went from the top metro suburb to a city that had almost no housing permits for almost ten years. Just in the past few years has the city cracked back into the top ten (it got all the way up to the top five for a while) in metro housing permits.

I have always wondered why Blue Springs didn't grow into a massive sprawling outerbelt suburb like Olathe or St Charles being right on I-70.

The main reason is they are pretty landlocked by parkland and other suburbs, but they finally built sewers out south and opened the Adams Dairy Parkway corridor up and now they are growing and getting a much higher percentage of upper bracket homes which tended to go to Lees Summit or even Independence before BS.

It really seems like Blue Springs is getting a second wind though. Like I said, they are now building houses again at a decent clip and most of the Highway 7 corridor, which was really starting to have blight and decay problems, has been redeveloped and is now building new. Add in all the the new shopping centers along Adams Dairy and a rebuilt Woods Chapel corridor and the city one of the more active areas of the metro now.

They have some beautiful established housing stock there with mature trees, unique customized homes etc with good schools. Now they are getting their existing commercial areas cleaned up and are getting all kinds of new options to go along with the wide variety of housing options and price ranges.

If I were to move back to KC, I would strongly consider Blue Springs. 5-6 years ago, I wouldn't have said that.