Owings Mills area and others...opinions needed!

[carebear1970]

Owings Mills is nasty. Used to be nice but not now. I say the only safe place in maryland anymore is way up in the mountains in Garrett County. Frederick is overpopulated. The crime in this state is unreal for as small as it is. To many people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[emsgoof]

Parts of Pikesville are ok, then go a block over and it's horrible. Lutherville, Timonium, Cockeysville are all decent areas. I was never impressed by Carney or Parkville, but that's just driving through, no real experience in the areas.

[kaleyy]

Your perception of safety probably has pretty little to do with how safe you statistically are. If you come from a tiny town where you only have had 2 murders in the past year, it doesnt mean you are less likely necessarily to get murdered than if you live in baltimore county. Look up per capita crime rates and compare them with where you live now if you really want to look at how safe you actually are.

That said, there are things other than safety per se that you need to take into account here. Owings mills is not a nice area, not really because youll get murdered or robbed if you live there (though of course those things happen sometimes), but it just isn't nice. The mall, the stores, and i hate to be a jerk but the people, are all things you want to think about when deciding if a place is somewhere you want to live. The schools arent very good over there and just from experience you want to stay away from owings mills, white marsh, and probably pikesville too. Carney and parkville are definite places to avoid. Again, it isnt safety so much in the way of violent crimes that I would worry about there, just ruder and/or more uneducated people, lower quality stores and housing, etc. Ive had people drive by and yell nasty stuff at me in white marsh. Thats the kind of thing i'm talking about here, not really feeling unsafe to the point where you fear murder.

Timonium, cockeysville, and hunt valley are slightly nicer, with the quality generally of the area generally increasing as you go farther north. I don't know if public schools are an issue for you but there are decent schools in these areas, as well as many good private schools in close proximity. I lived in Timonium for a while in a house that was in a suburban neighborhood. We had some periodic vandallism, which i suspect was the work of neighborhood kids. There are also homeless people who drift through periodically. The royal farm store on timonium road has been robbed several times, though its hard for me to imagine anywhere in balt. county that does not have those problems.

Housing is mediocre in timonium and cockeysville, with a mixture of apartments and modest single family homes. If you go farther north to parkton (not parkville), monkton, sparks, etc. the houses are nicer and you can have one built or look at new ones in developments that are always springing up, although I think public schools are worse up there (if this is an issue).

Towson is basically comparable to timonium, and is similar in quality (although the mall is downright scary at night, and there was a recent murder in the parking garage there that was a little shocking). There are fewer houses in towson I think, because more of it is taken up with commercial real estate than in timonium.

[JessicaGM08]

Kaleyy,
Thanks! That makes a lot of sense to me as I am from the Battle Creek area in Michigan if you know anything about it...(look on any Kellogg's cereal box!)basically I wouldn't tell anyone to live in downtown Battle Creek.

Towson makes sense for us I think because we will be newlyweds and will need an apartment...can't afford a house yet!

Thanks again to EVERYONE!

[koofie]

If you do look in Owings Mills, I like the area along Reiserstown (695 - Painters Mill) as opposed to New Town. New Town seems so... cookie cutter. There doesn't seem to be trees over 8 ft high in most places.

[JessicaGM08]

So I was looking over this post again... and I think we have decided that Owings Mills...even though it may not be really nice... may be one of the best choices for us. We are both teachers who are actually willing to make a difference and with better education comes better communities...

Jess

[koofie]

Glad to hear it! Sadly, we will be moving soon (hopefully) to the fixer-upper of our dreams in NE Balt co.