To New Castle or not to New Castle, that is the question?!! (good schools, living)

[Shenandoah]

Your commute into Pittsburgh will be quite lengthy. Have you checked Ellwood City, PA? Just a bit south of New Castle, closer to Pittsburgh, nice small town, nice cheap homes, too. Good proximity to Cranberry, 20 miles (where Google is based). Also, the taxes in Lawrence County are nice and cheap.

I don't know if you're looking for something right in town, or out in the country, but there's a nice small 2 bedroom, 1 bath just outside of Ellwood City, in a very good area for $21,900. I know, double the price of the others in New Castle.
Single Family Home - North Sewickley Twp, PA, 16117 - Realtor.com


I don't know what your price range is either, but you'll get some nice ones in good areas, closer to Pittsburgh in Ellwood City zip code: 16117.

Single Family Home - Ellwood City - LAW, PA, 16117 - Realtor.com

Blessings to you and the best of luck on your move!

Shenandoah

[Shenandoah]

Sorry I wasn't reading the entire thread - you need the commuter bus. The New Castle Transit bus comes thru Ellwood City.

When I worked in Pittsburgh, I considered taking the NCT bus into town, but it's hours just didn't work for me. That 6 pm ending totally mystified me, too. So, I drove into Cranberry, and took the PAT bus into Pittsburgh.

I read also, that you are used to the longer commute times - one other consideration is that your wife can 'car-pool' into Pittsburgh. In other words, ride with other people in someone's car, just contribute to the gas and parking. The hours maybe more convenient for her and you. There's a website somewhere for local car-poolers.

New Castle is a nice town, with a great history. Hopefully, it'll come back. I hope you find your home there.
My advice to you would be to rent first, and see if the area and transportation system work out for you, before buying.

Blessings and the best of luck to you,

Shenandoah

[valleygal]

Hello Irish8,

Lots of good advice. Here is my two cents worth. Ambridge, PA. It is located 15 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh (on the way to New Castle). By public transportation, about a 35 minute commute.

This is small town, similar to Ellwood and New Castle in that its roots are ethnic, (mostly Central European and Italian) mill town. It si considered a "front-porch, walkable community." It was recently name a Preserve America community. It is home to a beautiful historical site, Old Economy Village, 23 churches, and a ministry school.
There is a 19 block business district, but there is not a lot of retail. Some restaurtants, some bars, drug stores, doctors, etc. and a nice little park in the center of town. Like many of the communities in this corridor, its' glory days are over. However, that being said, there is a new development in town that will bring more retail, housing, etc. There has been a lot of property movemetn in teh busines district in teh last year or so. All of the schools are new; the newly built high school just opened this past January, with all of the new bells and whistles. The grade school was rebuilt and opened about three years ago.

The people are friendly, they are community oriented, and property is cheap compared to most of Pittsburgh. It is well worth considering.

Property is very reasonable here. You could find something as low as 35,000, but I would not necessarily recomment it. You can find a single family home - something nice in the 50-80,000 range. Becasue of the Seminary, it is asy to rent properties in teh areas close to the school. I can check on this further for you next week, if you like. Here is an opportunity to consider: a storefront property, on a "good block" in decent, not great shape. Storefront unit has a tenant paying $400 per month and pays his own utilities. Upstairs, two-bedroom apartment - could easily be left vacant, or you could easily rent it. Downpayments usually 10 - 20% and your tenants would be carrying your mortgage. There are several such opportunities available.

[irish8]

Hello, I'm sorry for not having been able to reply to posts for such a long time but we have been reconsidering buying a house in the States. There seem to be lotsa great towns and cities with pretty decent neighbourhoods and homes at a very affordable level but we think we may not be buying in the US after all. To buy now and simply visit once or twice a year would not make too much sense...perhaps when we graduate, that'd prob be a better time to purchase.

Thanks to everyone who offered their two cents, and all the info and help....much appreciated!

Who knows we may change our minds but for now we've decided not to buy.

Thanks again to everyone.....

[Katiana]

Thanks for the update. Good luck with everything!

[jadegirl416]

I grew up a short commute from Johnstown and can say that the area has gone down hill. Any house you find for under $30,000 is most likely going to either be in a bad area of town, or it is a shack that can need as much money if not more to fix it as what you have paid for it. Surrounding areas of Johnstown that are a few miles away are a better bet but you will be paying a higher price for them, possibly $50,000, but with fewer repairs needed and much higher quality in the community you would be living in.

As for New Castle, I just bought a house there myself for $11,000. I've looked at a lot of the houses under $25,000 in and surrounding New Castle and can say with certainty that most are going to need quite a bit of work due to the ages of the homes. But many of these homes are structurely sound and the work is cosmetic, but still a lot of it. Also many of these homes need updated wiring and plumbing. If you can do a lot of the work yourselves then the cost should be kept down some, but expect to be putting a lot of investment in time and money into any home priced so low. If you raise the price you are willing to pay for a home in the New Castle area to about $40,000 to $60,000 then you should be able to find a house that is move in ready with very few or no repairs needed.
Also in the New Castle area the local government is trying to keep the town from becoming run down by requiring an inspection and demanding that the problems found with the house be corrected before moving in, I found this out when I purchased my home.
As with most other areas, there are areas of New Castle that are not desirable, but there are many other areas that are very quaint and friendly. It would be difficult to know where to buy unless you actually visited the area, especially if you are looking for a much lower price on your house.
I hope this was helpfull.

[tryshesq]

Is anyone familiar with an extremely large home [12 bedroom] on East Moody St. [221 I believe] or the East Moody street area? Thanks.

[Bideshi]

I see this thread is a bit old now, but I hope it's not too late to ask a couple of questions. How much is the property tax rate in New Castle? Is NC anywhere near the Amish communities? Thanks!

[dugdogmaster]

Originally Posted by Bideshi

I see this thread is a bit old now, but I hope it's not too late to ask a couple of questions. How much is the property tax rate in New Castle? Is NC anywhere near the Amish communities? Thanks!

Lawrence county property taxes Assessor Taxrates

Yes, New Castle is close to Amish communities, New Wilmington, Pulaski and Mercer.

[katr]

Originally Posted by Sheryl_Recc

Hi Irish8:

New Castle's North Hill --as someone else mentioned, this is the safest and most desirable area in town in terms of local elementary school--something very important for a home's re-sale value, whether or not you ever decide to have kids here. My husband is also in Information Technology and works as an I.T. Project Manager in downtown Pittsburgh, almost to the "Point"--where the 3 rivers come together.

By car, to get to the Point-area companies in eastern-most downtown Pitt. might be around 45 minutes or so. I must confess I don't know exactly, but as a fellow Software Developer myself, you may well find that you'd prefer not to go to downtown anyway. You need not pay for parking anywhere else in the townships surrounding. There are many Office Parks outside of the city, to the west in Moon Township near the Intl. Airport. (easy commute from New Castle), a LOT are in Butler County just over the Allegheny (Pittsburgh) County line to the north-west of Pitt., some to the north in the North Hills, etc. Many Business Parks are located in Butler County's town of Cranberry as the business taxes are considerably lower there than in Allegheny (Pitt.) County to the south.

Consequently, because of the plethora of jobs there in Cranberry, Butler County, comparable houses are a LOT more expensive than in New Castle--even though from New Castle, it's SUCH an easy commute. Why are Cranberry houses a lot more expensive? Cranberry is a newer-type, yuppier (young-urban professional), and less originally blue-collar area. New Castle in the 1950s was growing at a rate faster than New York City due to immigrants from as far away as Italy and Poland to work in its steel and tin mills, then the tin mill jobs either dried up or went elsewhere, leaving a too-large infrastructure for the now less-employed or not-employed blue collar workers. As a non-blue collar worker, however, I'm not sure why it would matter to you. My husband and I decided that this didn't really matter to us, anyway really.

In terms of real-estate pricing, what this means is that New Castle could use some cosmetic help in certain sections--especially other than the North Hill, there was one abandoned building downtown that was vacant since my husband was a kid in the 70s--but recently a company called InfoCision went in there and they're hiring local workers. But then neither will you find any former steel or tin town in Western PA to be the prettiest town in Pennsylvania. To some extent, you have to pick your poison, I guess. If you want to have a chance to have one of you stay home with your kids and put them first while still earning a great I.T. salary close to Pittsburgh, it's absolutely fantastic. That's what we've been doing the past few years and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything in the world. My children will only be that young once.

Something that you may find interesting is that there is an Information Technology Research Business Park going into Marshall Township just minutes south of Cranberry and that this is VERY commutable from New Castle, a similar 15-20 minute easy drive down no-stop highways. Even if you never worked there, you may find that investing in real estate in a place like New Castle, so cheap and so close to a place where such good-paying jobs are going, is a good deal.

However, it isn't necessary to live in Cranberry to work there, as from New Castle, Cranberry's bustling business area is an easy, 15 minute commute down a major no-stop highway. My husband would've taken a job there in a heartbeat, he just took the first job that was offered to him as at the time we were moving all the way from eastern PA--Philadelphia. Every time he went to interview in this area, he had to drive 12 hours round-trip--not something he wanted to do a lot.

To get downtown to near the Point, my husband parks at a Parking Lot here in New Castle, and takes a bus into Pitt. The advantage is that we've been living in a house for which, no exagerration, we would pay more than twice as much for in Cranberry or closer. Just yesterday, we were depressed to see an Open House in Cranberry where the houses were much smaller and nearly as close together. Of course, it was much newer, but a smallish cookie-cutter home whose model you've seen 20 times before starts to lose its appeal after awhile when you realize how much decorating it still needs because it hasn't been lived in long enough to acquire those nice little touches that you take for granted in a more lived-in home. Nor do these newer homes have much character that my husband and I prefer.

I wanted to stay home with my children before they were school age, and living in cheap New Castle has been a blessing that way because I don't have to work here. Now that my kids are both in school full-time, I'll be returning to work as a software developer soon. Yes, we're selling our house to get a little closer in to the city as my husband works on the east-side & and New Castle is on the outer fringe of what's acceptable to us (an hour & 10 min. by stop-&-go bus ), but as I said, he just happens to have taken a job on the eastern-most side of downtown Pitt., it is by no means the only area where one can find software jobs in Pitt.--they're all over the place---western downtown Pitt. near Carnegie Mellon University (one of the top Tech. & I.T. schools in the country, I think 2nd to M.I.T.? Correct me if I'm wrong---anyone--where does Carnegie Mellon U. fall?), and the University of Pittsburgh, to the west, north-west, and north there are I.T. jobs. All of these ARE what we would consider to be either a very easy commute from New Castle in the case of Moon Twp, West Allegheny, Cranberry, or North Allegheny and many sections of downtown Pittsburgh west of the Point would've been OK with us too. My husband just prefers to take the commuter bus in the winter so he can sleep on the way there , but he has driven hundreds of times to work in downtown Pittsburgh from New Castle.

If he worked at any of these areas, we would definately NOT be moving, as now we have to take a loan out in order to get closer in, and the houses we're looking at are much smaller, sometimes without much storage space at all, even into the $250,000 range.

Although I do have a home up for sale here in New Castle, it's important that you get a home that's right for YOU--so I'm being as honest as I can with you. I'll still try to give you some honest info. & advice about the whole general area and other area homes, as I know you're a foreigner and I'm a transplant to this area who lived her whole life elsewhere too, so I know what it feels like to feel a little "foreign". I also have started to start back up my software developer career and we could perhaps share what we find on that score. It's not like I know everything because I'm from Philly. What programming language do you use? How long have you been a software developer? Wouldn't you miss Ireland?

Yes, you do need to stay away from a $10,000 house even in New Castle--as someone else mentioned. Basically, this is going to be one loser of a house that you'd have a devil of time ever getting rid of due to bad location, probably the South Side. It would probably also be an eyesore.
I have found the North Side to be pretty safe--we use only standard precautions, my family and I, we lock and deadbolt our doors at night, but we've never owned a security system. You can do that for peace of mind, we just haven't, and I feel no particular pressing need to. My car I've accidently left unlocked several times at night and while I don't recommend it just because I wouldn't recommend it anywhere at all, I haven't had a problem with anything stolen.

Let me tell you just a little about housing prices here on north-side, just so as an Irishman, you can put into perspective why ours is a little more than some others here. It has to do with the school system being the best reputed for it's reading program in the entire area, not just in New Castle, it's a Johns Hopkins University-researched, national standards-based school-reading re-structuring program called Success for All (SFA), where students are given a standardized test every 9 weeks. Those that are reading above-average can move on to the next-level reading teacher who specializes in that level of reading-teaching. They're allowed to be in a reading class with students a grade ahead of them. Those that are determined to not be reading up to grade-level are assigned a special teacher and given tutoring until hopefully, they are at least reading up to grade level, or if there's a learning problem, up to their own best level. This is school re-structuring, not a different set of basal textbooks, where gifted students such as my 1st grader can be reading with other students that are in the 2nd grade--she is. Sounds like I'm bragging, right??? I know, I know....and I DO apologize for that, I really don't mean to, it's just that New Castle's school system is so maligned by word-of-mouth---it HAS in the past affected property values, and I feel that at least at the elementary-level, if it were ever fair, it is now definately completely NOT fair. Reading is fundamental to all other disciplines--science and math included, and S.F.A. has been shown to have studies that it positively impacts students into the middle school years.
Also, my husband graduated from New Castle High School in '86, went on to graduate from Penn State, a good college, with a degree in Electrical Engineering, later switched to I.T. after being a programmer, and is now an I.T. Project Manager at the Bank of New York Mellon downtown and a member of the National Project Managers of America organization. Is he smart? Yes, but so too did not New Castle's schools system NOT hold him back in whatever he wanted to do later on in life. His best friend became a county commisioner, etc. Another girl he graduated with has her Doctorate in Education. Don't ever let word of mouth be a replacement for your OWN research when buying a house. Having a licensed Realtor is not a replacement for doing your own research, either, a lesson I've had to learn the hard way.

Our house is priced is a little higher than some in N.C. due to it's size relative to the other homes due to 2 additions--it's bigger than it looks because it's much deeper than wide, and the fact that we own a double-lot as opposed to a single lot. Too, we have a full bathroom on the first floor which is very unusual among any New Castle homes at our price and below--in fact, it's unusual to find even a powder room on the first floor in New Castle at the lower price range, something that we found very problematic with 2 young children and ultimately why we decided we just HAD to go above our initial $65-$80,000 price-looking-range--almost none of the ones we saw had first floor bathrooms of any sort. Those that had had one later added on had other problems. Some in the upper price range here have a powder room while others may have a full bathroom--you'd have to look into that. We never looked at homes listed for more than $150,000 here in New Castle.

At first, coming from Philadelphia where our last home was $280,000 an hour and a half into the country from the city, my husband and I were awestruck to start looking at $60,000-$80,000 homes on the north side. We had a little equity built up, and thought it would be cool to go as cheap as possible. We thought we could find something acceptable in that price range, but then a certain familiar pattern began to set in. The standard borough lot was just a little too small for us when we realized that from several houses we looked at, basically, if you like seeing your neighbor's bedroom and having them potentially see yours, then the standard city lot is the way to go. That same lot-size is NEARLY all over the north-side, not quite, but nearly--but there is one place where the standard 1-lot gives way to double-lots and wider spaces between houses and that is only on the Upper North Hill past Edgewood Avenue--where we rented prior to moving north one block to the first street that has double-lots--that is Hazelcroft Avenue.

Having lived on Edgewood Ave., south only one block first while we were renting and waiting to own a home, I had felt a little uncomfortable having my bedroom be just slightly too close for comfort to the one next door. Our Master Bedroom on Edgewood had been very small, about 12 x 11 perhaps, with a wee little closet. You can get a house here much cheaper than the same house would be in Neshannock Township, but one must be careful as the houses here often date to a time before women worked outside the home, and coming from a newer area in eastern PA with big closets, I was initially shocked to find master bedroom closets literally 3 inches deep with no bar across, only 2 hooks. Now I just shrug, whatever, I guess post-Victorians didn't mind that, but since the both of you work outside the home or even if one of you didn't, you might find it a little annoying to run up to the attic to get your work clothes in the morning--at least we got very annoyed with a lack of space to put our clothes, as all of our former 2nd floor closets were like that prior to moving.

We also found that many of the lower-end priced homes needed all-new kitchens or bathrooms, the entire house needed re-carpeting or to have scuffed wood floors cleaned up, these were certainly do-able, but it was just everything combined that led us to find the last several streets in New Castle to be MOST acceptable to us as parents of small children. There are several nice homes lower down the North Hill, and you SHOULD look at these as people without children. We wanted our children and ourselves to have a little more space, however, so we wound up in a house that was originally listed for $150,000 3 years ago that then came down to a price that was acceptable to us.

In the last 3 years, we've changed the original home's roof (the non-addition). My husband tore up ugly green carpeting in the kitchen and white vinyl tiled it, square by square. He replaced more green carpet with neutral ceramic tile in 2 areas. We've replaced the 70's shag that was in both daughters bedrooms, re-painted one of them completely, and re-painted 2 of the walls of the other daughter's BR. The other 2 walls have beautiful, thick solid-oak--not cheap 70s, panelling, so we left that. Since the house was originally 2 apartments, one on the first floor, another on the second, there is a kitchen on the 2nd floor that had a very 50s look when we bought the house and ugly flooring. We re-floored that with laminate Pergo-type flooring and re-painted the cabinets a neutral color to turn it into our daughters' playroom. Their toys are hidden in the kitchen-turned-playroom's cabinets there. Since there's a sink there, if they want to do artwork or painting they can rinse the brushes without leaving the playroom.

We ripped up the blue carpeting in the Dining Room to reveal original , old-growth white oak floors (more expensive than red oak), which we had sanded and buffed professionally. The carpenter told us that the floors had been mitered in a labor-intensive way that isn't done oftentimes today because people find it too expensive.

My husband installed shelving along all 3 sides of our Master Bedroom's walk-in closet to turn what had been a former nursery area into a usable closet for us. All 3 bedrooms upstairs have solid-oak, built-in bookcases--don't know what I'd do without those as they're stuffed, and I will have to do without them in our next house, apparently, as I haven't seen many at all in a higher price range closer to the city, let alone 4 oak built-in bookcases in 3 bedrooms plus more in the Living Room.

Some people have made the comment that our house is "too big". The only thing I can say about that is that we have 2 furnaces because it used to be 2 different apartments, one below and one above. So, utility bills can be kept down a little by lowering the heat or central air on the floor where you aren't.

In spite of this, if we sell our house for our current list price of $134,900, we will STILL be losing several thousands. I hope I don't sound bitter. Really I'm not, we really enjoy doing all these home projects. I'm sure we'll be doing them all again in the next house.

So the market is down, whatever. It's no one's fault that the market took a dip. I'll still visit this board and try to help you out with locations even if you decide that New Castle isn't a possibility. At the very least, maybe we can discuss programming jobs.
Godspeed to you.
Sincerely, Sheryl R.

Moderator cut: advertising in several spots removed

Hi - I can see that this whole question started months ago, however, I am just now looking into New Castle (PA in general) myself. I am wondering if Sheryl ever sold your home? Also, like all the others, am wondering specifically, where to stay away from. I am a single parent of an 8 year old, and will be retiring from the military in about a year and 1/2. Any info would be appreciated. Oh, and can you tell me what the possiblilty of opening a sucessful tea shoppe would be? Thanks