Smith Mt Lake (Roanoke, Williamsburg, Franklin: for sale, day care, house prices)

[leavinjersey]

On Our Way Home From A Dissapointing Trip To Seek Out Homes In The Tri-cites Are, We Took A Tour Of The Sml Area....loved It!

Im A Little Confused On The Schooling. What Areas Have What School....what Are The Class/grade Sizes. How Many Schools Merge Into The Middles School, & What Are The High School Choices.

The House Prices Seem Average. A Lot Of Land For Sale.

What Side Of The Lake Is More Family Less Retirees....

What Are Your Thoughts On The Bedford/franklin Counties....

We Have 3 Boys, This Seems Like An Area We Would Want To Raise Them,

If You Have Raised Children In The Area, What Are The Pros & Cons.

Thanks

[seanpecor]

I live 30 minutes from SML, in Franklin County.

Do you want to live on the lake or very close to it? I ask because the answer to that question affects what I might suggest to you. Franklin County has a large number of elementary schools, but MAY have one middle school and it definitely has one large high school (over 2,000 students). If you settled in Westlake on SML you'd be about 20 minutes from the high school and middle schools. The high school is highly regarded and set up very well in Rocky Mount.

Our girls go to North Cross school in Roanoke (North Cross School). It's a secular private school and we really, really, really love it. We're in the Boones Mill zip code and 25 minutes from North Cross in Roanoke. If you were living at Westlake on the Franklin County side, I believe North Cross would be at least a 45 minute drive. Despite this, I know of at least one child who travels from SML to attend North Cross. If you were able to find property on the NW side of the lake in the Hardy zip code you'd be within 25 minutes of North Cross. They are currently planning a new elementary school - Windy Gap Elementary - that would complement Boones Mill elementary. The latter is a great school with a great community of parents and teachers. It's hard to find a bad public school in Franklin County. We opted for North Cross in Roanoke after touring the school in 2005. After that even the best public school was hard to settle on, provided you've got the extra money to invest in your children. Coming from up north as we did, you might have a different expectation of private school tuition fees. North Cross is currently less than $10,000 a year for high school age kids and less than $8,000 if memory serves for lower school children. That's cheaper than day care in some cases.

A Franklin County high school senior has been our farm help (we own a horse farm) for the past two years and she has enjoyed FCHS. She is leaving this summer for Clemson in SC. I think the benefit of one large high school in Franklin County is exposure to more diversity and LOTS of social circles. At some point in the future, a new high school will be constructed, and if I had to guess, it would be in the Boones Mill area.

Growth at lake front is substantial but it's primarily retirees or weekenders at this point. But I believe the Franklin County side of the lake would have fewer retirees. That's been my experience so far. Reason is, the Franklin County side is closer in general to more family friendly amenities. Like the brand new massive YMCA in Rocky Mount, etc. Plus people with children are still working, and the lion's share of jobs are in the Roanoke area, which is closer to the Franklin County side.

Hope this helps. As always, if you have more questions then just ask.

Cheers,

Sean

[leavinjersey]

thanks i appreciate the feed back, there dosent seem to be to much about sml. we would probably be off the lake as we would want more house & property with having 3 kids. we first stumbled across the union hall side of the lake. i saw a lot of property on dove rd for sale, that is actually alot like where we live in nj, believe it or not, it now takes me 25-30 mintues to get to the grocery store.

what are the taxes like there for example our property tax here is about 5500 a year.


i read some commetns about nuclear plants somewhere in va, is there anything in the area that we would want to learn more about?

i think we are going to pack up & going camping down there in a few weeks, i saw a campground on the lake. this way we can spend more time checking out the area.

also, my husband is in construction there defintelty seems to be a lot of development going on, could you recommend a sunday newspaper, so we can check out the classifieds?


Thank you som much for your time

[seanpecor]

In Franklin County, your property would have to be worth over one million dollars to require a $5,500/year property tax payment. My house in Boones Mill (not the town, the zip code, we're actually in the Blackwater District) is a custom home, 7,000 finished square feet, on 16 acres. It has 5 bedrooms, 3 full and 2 half baths. The basement is unfinished and is over 2,400 square feet. The building materials are all high grade, wood moulded brick exterior, massive retaining walls, w/ full interior Williamsburg colonial style trim, hallway half paneling, wide plank Oak flooring and 3/4" tile. It has an unbelievable view of Cahas Mountain. Franklin County assesses the house at $535,000. My taxes are $2,800 a year. Yes, you read that right. If this house were in Vermont it would be assessed at $2M and I'd be paying $40,000 a year in property taxes.

The nuclear plant you read about is at Lake Anna, in a different part of the state.

There is the Smith Mountain Lake state park which offers camping. My in-laws have camped there with our girls, and they enjoyed it.

The best newspaper bar none for jobs is The Roanoke Times. You can also view the paper at The Roanoke Times and roanoke.com: News, sports and entertainment stories and information for Roanoke and Southwest Virginia - Roanoke.com. And jobs, more specifically, at jobs.roanoke.com.

Union Hall is a nice area, but if you wanted to be within 15 minutes of the lake and a bit closer to south Roanoke (where much of the commercial development is taking place) you might consider the Wirtz of Hardy area. Both close to the lake and < 30 minutes to Roanoke.

Cheers,

Sean

Sean

[delphin]

Hi,
I'm a newbie to this forum and have anxiously monitored all the great info being shared on this site for weeks before entering the discussions. I am leaving Hunterdon Cty in NJ for Franklin or Bedford as soon as we locate the 100+ acres we've got our hearts set on. We need easy access to Roanoke (for husbands work) and want same access to the lake since we sail, so somewhere in between would be perfect. Most of our time will be spent rescuing horses (and anything else that limps by us) from slaughterhouses and raising them up for adoption ...or maybe just to keep them all! We are winding down our lifetime careers and trying to start up the post-retirement work with the rescue farm.
We can spend up to 400K for the land (it'll be tight), we will build the long-dreamed of log home. We'd like scenic, rolling hills property (just like what Sean posts all the time!), with a stream, off the beaten path, not on any major highway or roads as we are hearing that the SML area is so targeted for development, we fear we may be headed for another NJ-style sprawl (and all the bad that comes with overdevelopment) and wish to avoid clogged roads, traffic, noise, etc.
We are actually having difficulty locating property. We'd like to relocate before another winter up here and I have a lead on an upcoming job opening that won't last past the summer, so anyone with a lead or some info on available land (we've driven down past several weekends and have had no luck so far) would be most welcome. Realtors so far are not real aggressive, or productive. We would be willling to compensate w/ finders fee as we would not expect this help for free. Thanks!

[seanpecor]

400K for 100 acres would be real tricky. I know of 96 acres on Route 220 south of Boones Mill, listed for $850K. It's listed by Tom Wolfe (go on google and search for boones mill united country). He also has a 90 acre tract in Wirtz one mile from the lake for $600K.

You could manage $400K for 100 acres but it wouldn't be horse friendly. I think you'd find some 40-50 acre parcels for $400K, which would still give you some room for horses. There is already the roanoke valley horse rescue (Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue, Inc.) in Hardy so I'd suggest getting in touch with them. Maybe you could buy their place

Sean