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Quite a few years ago my husband and I thought we may move to the triangle area. It never quite worked out then, but there is now another chance that we may be moving to the area. We currently live in Virginia.
We are looking for an area where our children (ages 14 and 10) would be able to go to a good school within the area they live. We also are looking for a school that follows a traditional school calendar. The 14 year old will start high school next year and the 10 almost 11 year old will be starting middle school next year.
We would like to live in a neighborhood where there are other families and neighbors are very friendly. Low crime area is also important. My two girls are involved in dance and swimming. A very good dance studio and competitive swimming is something we would like to have available for our girls.
My husband is possibly looking at a job in and around the Durham area. He would be willing to drive no more than an hour to work. The main area we were looking at before and are still looking at is the Clayton area. I am just checking back to see how the area has grown and how any other areas may have changed since we originally looked a few years back. I have been trying to read as much as I can about the area but any updated information would be appreciated.
We would be looking for a house no more than the $325,000 range ($200,000 to $325,000).
My husband is also wondering what commutes are like from around Clayton up to Durham. He thought he remembered someone saying something years ago about some new roads going in that may make it quicker and easier to commute as well as using back roads.
Clayton to Durham is a LONG commute, and one thing you cannot ignore is the MAJOR amount of road work that will be going on, on the Southern Beltline (40/440) for the next several years, causing traffic to be a big fat mess. I would suggest Googling "40/440 construction" or similar.
For a job in Durham, look in Durham or Orange county, or NW Raleigh.
Quite a few years ago my husband and I thought we may move to the triangle area. It never quite worked out then, but there is now another chance that we may be moving to the area. We currently live in Virginia.
We are looking for an area where our children (ages 14 and 10) would be able to go to a good school within the area they live. We also are looking for a school that follows a traditional school calendar. The 14 year old will start high school next year and the 10 almost 11 year old will be starting middle school next year.
We would like to live in a neighborhood where there are other families and neighbors are very friendly. Low crime area is also important. My two girls are involved in dance and swimming. A very good dance studio and competitive swimming is something we would like to have available for our girls.
My husband is possibly looking at a job in and around the Durham area. He would be willing to drive no more than an hour to work. The main area we were looking at before and are still looking at is the Clayton area. I am just checking back to see how the area has grown and how any other areas may have changed since we originally looked a few years back. I have been trying to read as much as I can about the area but any updated information would be appreciated.
We would be looking for a house no more than the $325,000 range ($200,000 to $325,000).
My husband is also wondering what commutes are like from around Clayton up to Durham. He thought he remembered someone saying something years ago about some new roads going in that may make it quicker and easier to commute as well as using back roads.
Thanks!
Is there a particular reason why you'd like to live in Clayton? I love Clayton but I wouldn't want the commute from there to RTP. Is it that you want Johnston County schools over Wake County schools? Or, is it that you want a larger lot?
There are some really nice new neighborhoods in the Apex/Cary are that may appeal to you in the $250,000 to $325,000 price range. The commute to Durham would be closer to 30 minutes, especially with the new portion of 540 open, although this is a toll road.
When we originally were looking years ago we thought my husband might be having to work in the durham area as well as the wilson area. Clayton seemed like a nice area that would work for a durham/wilson commute. From what we had read the Flower Plantation and other similar developments seemed nice.
I have researched the Wake County area and the only thing holding us back from that is the stuff going on with the schools. We researched the Cary, Apex and NW Raleigh area and liked it. The only thing holding us back were the school issues. I believe our children would receive a wonderful education in Wake County but with all of the unknowns with where the kids will go to school and the all year/track it kind of scared us off. It appears that all high schools are traditional but then we may have one child in all year/track and one in traditional. We would like to keep them on the same calendar. We researched private schools but will not be able to afford it.
When I searched Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Durham the crime was what was keeping us from those areas. Chapel Hill seemed to have good schools but I'm not sure about the Orange County School District.
I will definitely do more research on the suggested areas. We are thinking of coming down sometime soon to check out the area again. I believe the last time we were there we looked at the NW area of Raleigh. When we were in Durham for an overnight stay one time we had a very bad experience. It may have just been where we were and not being familiar with the area. We went to check into a hotel and found the room had blood on the floor and wasn't very clean. We mentioned it to the front desk and they said "What do you want a Hilton? We are no Hilton." We just wanted a clean, safe and comfortable place to stay. We ended up having to search for another hotel.
Thanks for the information and keep the suggestions coming. I will keep doing more research.
1) All public high schools in Wake County are on the traditional calendar.
2) Here is a list of all the middle schools in the county - there are areas that are more likely to be zoned for a year-round school and areas that are less likely to have year-round. This might help guide you a little.
3) At the moment, school assignment seems to be moving back to an address-based assignment with some choice built in.
4) Chapel Hill/Carrboro school district is separate from the Orange County School District and is one of the most highly regarded systems in the state. You WILL pay for that, though, with your property taxes.
5) Typically Durham is the only place in the Triangle that gets a blanket bad rap for crime. I have not heard about high rates of crime in Hillsborough or Chapel Hill although some amount of crime (e.g. burglary) will happen anywhere. And the truth of Durham is that there are particular parts with high crime, just as there are parts of Raleigh with more crime.
6) You should definitely take the commute into account. Commuting on 40/400 will be bad through 2016. And the way the area is growing, a 30 minute commute now may turn into longer as time goes on. And remember that Cary is quite large so some parts of Cary are 20 minutes from Durham, other parts can be twice that.
When I searched Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Durham the crime was what was keeping us from those areas. Chapel Hill seemed to have good schools but I'm not sure about the Orange County School District.
Sounds like a scary hotel experience in Durham, but you would be hard pressed to repeat that in Chapel Hill. Much of Durham is very vibrant and arts/food/culture oriented and fun, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
Chapel Hill and Hillsborough don't have crime issues—not sure if you purposefully lumped them in with Durham in that sentence or did it by accident, but Chapel Hill is one of the safest places in the Triangle. Chapel Hill also has the best school system in the state. Orange county schools are good, too.
Sounds like a scary hotel experience in Durham, but you would be hard pressed to repeat that in Chapel Hill. Much of Durham is very vibrant and arts/food/culture oriented and fun, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.
Chapel Hill and Hillsborough don't have crime issues—not sure if you purposefully lumped them in with Durham in that sentence or did it by accident, but Chapel Hill is one of the safest places in the Triangle. Chapel Hill also has the best school system in the state. Orange county schools are good, too.
Would the job be in the city of Durham or in RTP?
I was going by the crime index on city-data. Hillsborough is listed above the national average. Chapel Hill had a few years close to and above national average but the last few years were below. Are the indexes not accurate? The schools in Chapel Hill seem to be excellent.
If a transfer were to happen it would be in the northern part of Durham.
I was going by the crime index on city-data. Hillsborough is listed above the national average. Chapel Hill had a few years close to and above national average but the last few years were below. Are the indexes not accurate? The schools in Chapel Hill seem to be excellent.
If a transfer were to happen it would be in the northern part of Durham.
A commute from Clayton to north Durham would be particularly nightmarish, I think. I'd definitely be looking at Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Durham, or NW Raleigh. Parts of Cary would also be doable. Anything south of downtown Durham, though, will probably involve a commute through the city on surface streets until the East End Connector is built in a few years to connect NC 147 with US 70.
As a statistician, I'm dubious about "index" numbers that attempt to capture something as variable as crime in a single value, especially when it's not at all clear how that value is derived. Plus, the US average has certainly not remained static across years, so there's no way to know how any city compared to the national average over time from the tables you see here on CD.
As others have said, Chapel Hill is a pretty safe place. In looking at the crime table on Chapel Hill's page here on CD, it looks like those higher index values you mentioned for CH were likely driven by large numbers of thefts in those years. That's not surprising since CH is a university town - lots of minor thefts happen on and around the UNC campus, and that probably doesn't reflect much about the overall "safety" of the town in general.
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