Relocating to the Manchester Area; Help please. (Nashua, Derry: for sale, apartments)

[Prevarications]

Okay, I have been reading posts on this site daily for about 2 months now in hopes of finding any information that I can to help assist in my search for information, but have been very unlucky with my searches, so finally I have decided to ask for some help.

My husband will be transferring his job from the Rochester, NY area, to an office in Londonderry, NH. This is a huge but exciting move for our family. Our girls (9, and 6) are especially worried about the upcoming move. We now reside in a brand new house that we had built by a local builder about 5 years ago for about $180,000, and we love the area; however we are alone out here. My family resides in northern Maine, and my husband's family live in NYC, so the commute to visit is a killer! We want to move closer, and this is our best option. My husband works for a tech company, and needs to be close to the jobs in case anything where to happen with his current position.

My dilemma... We would like to relocate to a town near Londonderry that is family friendly, affordable, and not to small, I don't want to be in a big city atmosphere either! I am finding it hard to strike a balance from afar. It is hard when I cannot be there to do the searching myself. So all of my searching is being done from home online. We need to find a town with amenities (good shopping, parks, amusements for the kids, etc...) Our girls are very outgoing, they compete yearly in soccer, and baseball leagues, and our youngest goes to a great ballet school with a great recital that we very much look forward to every year! So is there even a place like this in the Londonderry area? I feel like we have been spoiled, and that I may be asking to much, but I am hopeful of our search.

We will be putting our house up for sale this month in hopes of selling it to get the girls enrolled in New Hampshire in the fall. I know that this seems quick, but the Rochester NY housing market, is not like any other market around. The houses are still selling cheap, and quick here! Once our house sells we will be looking for apartments in the area. Does anyone know of any great apartment/town home area's that are family and, small pet (cat) friendly that we should check out??? We are mostly interested in having a playground on site for our girls. I would love to have a town house so that we could have some sort of outdoor space for ourselves as well.

Okay I know that this seems like a huge list of needs, and I appreciate any help that anyone can provide us with.

[jthibodeau]

Welcome to the forum...

Your in luck also. A number of our posters reside in that area and I'm sure they will be along in no time to fill you in on the Londonderry, and surrounding areas.

Good Luck....

[yinduffy]

Perhaps the companies Human Resource Dept. can help. Start subscribing to the Manchester Union Leader newspaper (Online you won't see all the ads for local businesses which will give you the flavor of an area) or the Londonderry Times (a free paper with a website).

[yinduffy]

By the way, the company wouldn't have the initials VMI would it?

[RockinghamNative]

Londonderry itself is actually just what you might be looking for. It has plenty of shopping amenities along NH Route 102, but most of the town has pleasant woods, apple orchards, and old farms off of the major roads. The schools are excellent, easy highway access along I-93 to Boston (1 hour away) and the White Mountains (a little over 1 hour away), and along NH-101 to Portsmouth and the Seacoast (a little below 1 hour away). Housing prices and taxes are not low, but are moderate by Southern NH standards. You get good bang for your buck in Londonderry. Effective police force and extremely low crime rates, too.

[Prevarications]

Yinduffy, thanks for the tip, I will hop online, and see what I can find out about the two local papers, and my husband actually works for Sprint. He used to work for Nextel Partners until Sprint bought them out last year. The Boston metro seems great for tech companies like this!

Rockinghamnative, my main concern about Londonderry is the housing costs. We will be moving into an apartment/townhouse rental so that we can get to know the area better before purchasing a house, however Londonderry seemed kind of pricey for us. Like I mentioned we have been living in a housing bubble out here. It seems like none of the skyrocketing housing costs seemed to affect the Rochester area, so we were able to build a 4 bedroom 1900sq. ft. house for less than 200,000 out here. I cannot even imaging what our house would have cost us to build out there!

So far we have narrowed down the following towns, by using data from this forum, great schools.net, and sperling's best places to live;

Candia
Auburn
Derry
Goffstown
Merrimack
Londonderry

Can anyone tell me anything good/bad about these towns??? Mostly we are interested in shopping, restaurants, entertainment, things for the kids (museums, indoor sports complexes, etc...) Do any of these towns have malls in them? Any Chuck E Cheese's in the area, etc... Also does anyone know about the local sports, dance programs for younger children in these towns???

Sorry about all of the questions.

[jthibodeau]

Over all, you will find the towns of Candia, Auburn and Goffstown to be slightly more rural then Merrimack. Although most of what your looking for will be located within a 20 to 30 min. drive. Goffstown does have a walkable town center and close by food outlets. Londonderry and Derry have more shopping and restaurants available, however, the larger outlets and amusements will be located in Manchester and Nashua.

And, by the way, Chuck E Cheese is located in the shopping plaza directly across South Willow Street from the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester.

[RockinghamNative]

As mentioned, Candia is a very rural community, with the closest shopping centers in two clusters-- Manchester is about 15-25 minutes to the west of Candia, depending on where you are, and it has the state's largest mall (the Mall of New Hampshire), the airport (where Southwest Airlines operates), and a number of movie theatres, restaurants, etc. along South Willow Street. Raymond, a fairly small town, is about 15 minutes east of Candia, and has a Wal-Mart, and some other chain stores.

Candia has the advantage of being less expensive than all of those other towns, but still may be more expensive than what you are used to in Rochester. The only areas that are as cheap as Upstate NY in NH are north of the White Mountains, in old paper mill towns like Berlin and Lancaster. (Sorry to be the bearer of bad news). Candia is a fine community, I have friends that live there, it is a very quiet town with zero "bustle,"-- you'd have to drive to suburban Manchester for that. For rural living near the major centers in NH, Candia is hard to beat.

A note about Goffstown. It is what is known as a "mill town", developed in the 19th century because of Goff's Falls, which provided water power for local industries. Houses in the heart of town have smaller lots and are of 19th century vintage, which may be a plus for you. There is also the NH Women's Prison in the heart of town. Goffstown is an example of a solid, working-class NH community that isn't picture-postcard, but has a lot of local civic involvement and pride.

[RockinghamNative]

BTW, Londonderry and Derry are known as something of high school sports powers in NH, so there are a lot of youth league feeder programs there. Goffstown is similar. Also, many towns in Southern New Hampshire offers what is know as "rec", a summer program for school kids during the summer, run by town recreation departments, that are low-cost day camps. When you come to NH for a visit, just stop by the town halls of the towns you're interested in and ask about their youth sports and summer recreation programs.

[Prevarications]

Wow, thank you both. You have given me some great information. At first Candia sounded perfect for us, my husband was a bit skeptical when we did the research on the median incomes in the area, and he figured that it might not be a good fit for us, but it sounds perfect. I cannot wait to visit the town to get a feel for it.

I come from a small "paper-mill town" in northern Maine, and when the mill closed down it virtually became a ghost town. I think that I would feel at home in Goffstown, but my husband who is from Manhattan may feel a bit out of place in a town like this. I think that I will give more time into researching Candia, and Londonderry in the coming days!!!