Any desirable areas in South Scranton? (Pittston: where to stay, sales, real estate)

[sheena12]

I know that the topic of S. Scranton has been covered quite a bit on this forum but I am still wondering if there are any areas that are OK and are convenient to downtown Scranton?
Are any areas more or less likely to hold their value?
Recently we were sent a photo of a house on Cedar which appears to be in "North" South Scranton
Anyway, we were wondering if anyone could give us some general boundaries -where to stay away from and where we might get a very large decent home for a bargain price.
Thanks !

[Boris]

I was an out-of-town buyer and I did look at some houses in South Scranton. I was new to the area so I didn't know what was what, and the real estate agent, a nice lady, wasn't about to tell me any inconvenient truths. (And another agent told me they'd get in trouble for that.) I saw one nice block at the foot of Brook St. and another place, a total dump, on Pittston St. next to a dive bar that had St. Patrick's decorations up on March 31st.
The best people to ask are the taxi drivers, and sometimes they don't even need to be asked, they just shoot their mouths off. However they told me which neighborhoods were going downhill by having more renters move in and they complimented my eventual choice. One or two trips with an older taxi driver will give you lots of good info. They cut through the sales BS and represent an unpretentious "grass roots" view. This is important as I find there is a lot of class bias in Scranton.