Moving to Utah (Salt Lake City, Provo, Sandy: house prices, neighborhood, best school)

[yjuliao]

We live in So.California. Looking for recommendations as to which county, cities offers best school (4thgrader), best job possibilities, not so so rural, more suburban, but not like L.A., good choice of restaurants, activities, entertainment, etc. Safer area. Don't like too hot or too snowy areas. Please advise.

[chazcrew]

The best job possibilities will be along the Wasatch Front, basically stretching from Ogden to Provo. Salt Lake City will have the highest concentration of jobs. There are good districts in all of these counties; Davis, Granite, Jordan, and Alpine School Districts all have good schools.

Salt Lake also has the most to offer for entertainment, dining, etc. But you can easily live out in the suburbs and drive into the city for whatever you need. It's not like L.A. at ALL. I really like Sandy and Draper, and northern Utah County, as well as Farmington. But they're all family-friendly places, heavy on the kids and light on the action. So it depends which is more important to you, schools/safety, night life/dining, quiet or active, etc.

Southern Utah gets very, very hot. Parts of Northern Utah get very, very cold. The Wasatch Front tends to be more temperate; it will get hot in the summer, and cold in the winter, but not to the extremes that the other areas do.

[kwm03160]

The further south you go from Salt Lake (into the suburbs, such as Murray, Sandy, Draper, West Jordan, etc) there are not a lot of unique, locally owned stores. I like to call it "chain store city." I've known a couple of people that were quite shocked at this. There is plenty of shopping options, however, and the largest mall (currently) in the state is located in Sandy.

[BuhByeCalifornia]

Don't know where you're from in Southern California but we moved from the Santa Clarita Valley (20 miles north of downtown LA).

We wanted to find an area similar to the Santa Clarita Valley. We are going to move into our custom built home in North Salt Lake / Bountiful (Davis) in a few weeks. This particular neighborhood is newer (like parts of SCV) and has a similar feel to where we came from (only the homes are much larger for the same $). We're only 10 minutes away from downtown SLC which is awesome. We're in Davis County which has an excellent school district.

My daughter is finishing up 4th grade, loves it here, and has a lot of friends. Her social life is better than mine!

Draper and Sandy have more of the big box shops but you'll find some great boutiques near Salt Lake - particularly in nearby Gardner Village.

It's definitely NOT at all like Los Angeles!

[pennywise1031]

I would look into the Bountiful, Layton area (Davis County). The schools are great, house prices are reasonable and its not too CITYish, its near the City but far enough away. If I can help email me at < Send Direct Message Instead> Thanks and good luck.