Morrisville (Philadelphia, Fairless Hills, Yardley: sale, apartments, rentals)

[cp8983]

Is there public transportation connecting Morrisville to Trenton or Philadelphia? Can anyone recommend apartments there? Looking on ApartmentRatings, nearly all the comments on local apts were negative: Colonial Gardens, Orchard Vine, Pennsbury Ct, etc.

[sheairs]

Morrisville has some of the lowest home sale prices in the area (compared to Yardley, etc.). You could probably pick up a home for less than $180K, and with mortgage rates the way they are, be paying the same as a rental.

Check on realtor.com and plug in 19067 for the zip.

I'm acutally selling my home in the area, so I'm a bit biased in my opinion above. 1206 Ohio Avenue.

[bubberflys]

Yes, there is Public Transportation From Morrisville to Trenton and Also to Philadelphia. It's called the Septa. You can find more information about it on the internet, however, when i did so, I found that the bus to Trenton runs very infrequently.

[Pat_in_Pa]

cp8983, folks who live in apts. and converted Victorians near the bridges walk over. From the 7-11 at Pennsylvania Ave and Bridge St (the one that takes you over the "Trenton Makes" bridge, it's a twelve-minute fast walk to the Trenton train station.

If you ride your bike, you have to walk it over the bridge.

[Bored2Day]

I can't really get a good feel for the area. Why are the prices so low? It used to be undesirable area (15 years ago) Have things changed?

[Pat_in_Pa]

Rut Ro. Now you're in for my dissertation on poor Morrisville.

As far as I know, Morrisville still has a bad reputation because of its closeness to Trenton, but I never see much crime in the newspaper - and I read the public safety log every time. Friends who own homes in Morrisville like it, but want to sell their houses because nobody else wants to live there.

We would never buy a house there with the current school situation. The cost of educating kids is high there, relative to the population, and the one high school is in disrepair. The test scores are way low for the amount paid to the teachers and the total costs. Private school is the only solution if you want the lower cost of a house in Morrisville.

The internal feud over building a new school versus not building a school went on for years. The "New School" camp burned a lot of money. Finally, the "No School" camp won. Now, the school board is attempting to find alternate solutions for the high cost of schooling - such as outsourcing kids to other districts. Of course, this is not the best solution for everyone.

My take? The town's too small to support a school system, and needs to be merged, because the town gets no compensation from the rest of lower Bucks for its role as gatekeeper . For years, Morrisville has been acting as gatekeeper (to Trenton) for the "good areas" like Yardley, Lower Makefield, Newtown, Fairless Hills and Langhorne. What does the gatekeeper function entail and why do the other towns have a free lunch on Morrisville's back?

1. Morrisville officials have to track kids for addresses. The "good towns" don't. Morrisville educates kids from families who pay no taxes, drive over the bridge with Jersey plates, and drop the kids off in front of the schools. Periodically, the town does a check, but not enough. The residents pay higher taxes and there are probably 15% more kids in the schools than there should be. I talk to a LOT of people. They keep PO boxes in PA, but have to keep their Jersey plates for various reasons and don't want their kids to go to school in Trenton. Not a problem, but Morrisville needs to be able to collect $4k per year for each of these kids from Trenton, and there's no way to do it. Many of these kids would "disappear" from the Pa system if they were suddenly required to get on a bus somewhere and go to Pennsbury or Council Rock schools.

2. Location, Location, Location. If Morrisville were not there, what would happen in Yardley, Lower Makefield, Fairless Hills, etc.? There's a value simply in having another town between you and the "dreaded Trenton." Real or imagined, the proximity to Trenton gives a negative hit to property values in Morrisville is a free ride for the other towns.

3. Because of the proximity to Trenton, Morrisville has an extremely high rental population, relative to the other towns. I remember reading on the bls site or here that at times, rental housing was at 60% of the total housing stock, and unemployment was higher. What does that do to the needs of police, fire and other services? Does anyone with a choice financially want to buy a house where most units are rentals?

Anybody else want to comment on this situation?