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Could you give us a little more information so we can help you figure out what area of town might work best for you? Specifically, where would your potential job(s) be located? What is your housing budget? Both of these questions are important to consider in recommending an area of town.
Based on your criteria of good schools and low crime, and your seeming comfort with a suburban feel, I would recommend that you look into two areas of town:
NE heights. Look at school boundary maps to identify the parts of the NE heights that fall into the La Cueva high school, desert ridge middle school, and north star or double eagle elementary schools. Those are the statistically highest performing/ranked schools in the area, but please know that none of the public schools in the ABQ metro are amazing by national standards (I don't know what your frame of reference is, but you may be a little disappointed). This area tends to also have relatively low crime, especially violent crime. There are online crime maps that you can take a look at to get details. The main downside to this area of town is that it is relatively pricey compared to the rest of this area. This is where your budget comes in -- you may be easily able to afford this area, or not. You can look online for listings in these areas to get a sense of the prices, but for a house that will comfortably fit a family of four in this area, you are looking at probably at least $300k for a house, and there are plenty that are much much higher than that.
The other part of town I would recommend you consider is Rio Rancho, especially if you are not comfortable with the price range of the homes you find in the NE heights. You get a lot more house and land for the price in Rio Rancho, and you get crime and schools that are somewhat comparable to the NE heights. The tradeoff is the commute, assuming you will be working on the east side of the river in Albuquerque. Rio Rancho is on the other side of the river and you can get a lot of rush hour traffic commuting into Albuquerque. Depending on where your work and house is located, the commute could be far (30-50 minutes), whereas you could get to downtown/base from the NE heights in 15-25 minutes.
Depending on how you are defining 'suburban' about 90% of Albuquerque itself is suburban in its residential development. The city is overwhelmingly dominated by single family houses on small to medium sized plots.
If you are simply trying to stay out of the political boundaries of Albuquerque for some reason, Rio Rancho is popular and has good schools. It has a longer commute (complicated by bottlenecks over the bridges) as a tradeoff, though.
There are also the Rio communities of Los Lunas, Belen, and Bosque Farms. Not sure of the school reputations down there, though. Some of the developments are ghetto and have gang problems, others are nice. Mostly tract housing and getting a bit rural in areas.
Otherwise you are getting into exurban/rural areas such as the East Mountain communities like Tijeras, Cedar Crest, and Edgewood. These areas are beautiful, but you have to come to Albuquerque for much of your shopping, the commute can be as long as from Rio Rancho or longer, and you will have to deal with road closures due to ice and snow.
Albuquerque is not ringed by suburbs like other cities. Albuquerque is its own urban sprawl.
We would probably want to work in albuquerque. My husband is a mechanic and I do paralegal/secretarial work.
Housing budget to rent, probably around $1000, a little more would be fine.
I'm not against living in albuquerque, but would like a quiet neighborhood for our home.
Location: In my cat's house, until she finds a better human servant
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you may have trouble finding a suitable place for $1k (taking into account 4 people, good schools and safe neighborhood) the rental market in ABQ is pretty tough right now, I'd suggest reading some of the recent home search threads for more info. I was pretty shocked how much a decent rental costs now. Hope you have good luck and find a good home!
Looking to possibly relocate to albuquerque area. We are a young family of 4. Two elementary school aged kids.
While albuquerque seems great, we were wondering if a nearby suburb to live and work in albuquerque might be better?
Schools and low crime are important. I
Thanks in advance
We have had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who have attended school from Kindergarten to College in Rio Rancho. Everyone has been happy. Check some of the school rating sites like www.greatschools.org.
We have lived in Rio Rancho since 1999.
My wife worked and commuted to Kirtland Air Force base for about 10 years (I'm guessing, she is not here right now).
Rio Rancho has a low crime rate.
Last edited by Poncho_NM; 08-07-2017 at 05:39 PM..
In Albuquerque proper, at ~$1000-$1300, you are looking at a starter home sized home/townhouse (1-2 bdrm) in a good, quiet neighborhood. That is the price of an easy <20 minute commute.
If you search well, you can actually find some nice, big mid-century houses rented by owner in popular areas like Nob Hill, Ridgecrest, or the Uptown/Mossman area which have variable school options, mostly decent to good.
In Albuquerque, unless you are right off of a major street, most of Albuquerque is pretty quiet. If you are expecting city living with dense apartment buildings and constant traffic/sirens/honking outside your bedroom window, it hardly exists. True high density urban living exists only in a tiny pocket of a large spread out city like this.
If you don't mind the commute, I'll concur with others that Rio Rancho will give you the most options at your price range. Since you plan to rent anyway, time and exploration of the metro area will allow you to change your mind later if you plan to stay in the area for multiple years.
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