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Id say research the demographics, amenities, educational stats of adult population, median house price, median family income, general amenities close at hand, school stats, prevailing occupational stats, etc and one can decide for themselves where is a nice place to locate. Of course keeping in mind that we are talking family and oppurtunities etc for the children, not where a couple retirees for example might find it appealing. The family aspect brings many more factors to the table than what an individual might want.
Me personally, I want my kids raised in the highest socioeconomic environement i can possibly afford for a variety of reasons. Oh, and i myself was raised in a very working class, blue collar border line depressed economic area, so Ive seen both ends of the spectrum and like it or not, there are difference in oppurtunities for children the different environements afford.
Too much discussion for the simple question, where should one with a family who likes woods be looking for a home ...lol
The point is oppurtunity and exposure gained from the environment where you live. Not happy and well adjusted. Happy and adjusted has more to do with parents than area. i know kids that are happy and well adjusted with loving parents on welfare in the barrio, that doesnt mean I would raise my faily there. Not that bastrop is a barrior by any stretch, point is ..AGAIN..weres the most oppurtunity and exposure given the parents ability to afford it. Why do you think westlake and eanes isd are so desirable?? Its because of the socioeconmoics and what that brings.
I live out in Granada Hills on .75 acre and the way the Live Oaks are positioned, I don't see much of my neighbors. Hanging out in my front yard I see people out walking and jogging -- so it's nice that I have privacy or can hang with neighbors. We have a voluntary HOA. Public schools are good. The Waldorf is right there too. There are some other little neighborhoods around Oak Hill that you may want to check out. We're a little closer in than Dripping Springs so that's a bonus if you do drive into Austin.
I concur with the other posters who said to check out The Woodlands just north of Houston. Also over there is Kingwood, and Memorial. If you're not tied to Austin by your job or family. There's a reason The Woodlands is so popular; there's no similar community elsewhere in the state. You said you won't consider Houston, but I wonder if that is based on legit issues or just misconceptions.
I concur with the other posters who said to check out The Woodlands just north of Houston. Also over there is Kingwood, and Memorial. If you're not tied to Austin by your job or family. There's a reason The Woodlands is so popular; there's no similar community elsewhere in the state. You said you won't consider Houston, but I wonder if that is based on legit issues or just misconceptions.
Personally I think Kingwood is the most gorgeous of all the Texas cities I visited. If I had a family, I might have chosen that place. But being a young married person, I chose Austin. But gosh. Kingwood was amazing. Good job pointing that one out.
I live in Steiner, and coming from the Northeast, I can say that wooded is about the last word I would use to descibe it. Don't get me wrong, I love it, and it's a great community, but in order to have woods, you need to have trees - like tall, towering trees.
And it sounds as though some of the pps have some chips on their shoulders regarding HOAs. We have one and I have never been forced to buy anything nor have I ever had a lien on my property. And actually they are pretty heavily regulated. I actually like having an HOA - our subdivision is always nice, clean, quiet, and generally pleasant.
I hope Minier is not as ignorant as this poster who does in fact have a perpetual lien on their property for collection of assessments if they live in Steiner Ranch. You will find that many of the posters are real estate professionals who might be quick to divert attention away from or casually dismiss the HOA issue. It's easy to "see" the house. It is much more difficult to visualize the impact that the HOA will have on your life and your property.
Also contrary to the quoted poster's comments, HOAs and management companies have virtually no regulation at all. It doesn't help that we have a state senator that has the largest empire of HOA management companies in the nation and you can bet that he and the rest of the organizations profiting from this work hard to protect these business practices to the detriment of Texas homeowners.
For example, were you aware that you can be denied the right to vote in your HOA or that such denial is a common tactic used by boards anxious to preserve their power base? In many neighborhoods that are still run by developers, you may never get the right to vote.
There are no open records or open meetings requirements for HOAs in this state (with the exception of the Woodlands and Clear Lake). Wanting to know why your mandatory assessments are increasing? Want to be able to verify the representations made by your board members and management company? Good luck.
Real estate professionals will tell you to get involved if you don't like it - except that in declarant-controlled communities you don't have a choice and in other communities you can easily be disenfranchised from voting by the existing board. In short, a board can easily maintain a power base for a very long time by effectively disenfranchising members through a variety of means including tossing votes, disallowing votes, declaring members to be ineligible to run, ignoring votes, proxy voting, etc.
Look at a subdivision like Westcave Estates. A nice subdivision until one of these professional management companies comes along. Suddenly, residents are subjected to threats of fines in a subdivision with restrictive covenants that did not provide for fining powers. Now the residents are constantly accused of being in "violation" by a management company that profits from the fining process. Did the residents have any say in this matter at all? No.
Due to the lack of open records and the involuntary membership (i.e., funding) obligation, many residents have no idea where their funds are going. This is guaranteed to generate disputes. Boards and management companies often provoke disputes by deliberately withholding the information to cover up their financial dealings with your mandatory assessments.
You will find yourself being forced to pay "architectural committee" fees that can be set at arbitrary amounts to be able to build anything on your property. Do you really want to be asking someone for permission to put up a swingset, a treehouse, or a birdhouse on your property? Perhaps the biggest problem with the HOAs is the power of an unaccountable board to be able to inflict tremendous economic harm on you and your investment.
These HOAs can foreclose on your home due to this perpetual lien. Many HOA Boards approve "resolutions" that allow them to create other "fees" and then recharacterize your assessment payments to be applied to these other fees - thus leaving you in the hole on your assessments and therefore subject to foreclosure. The power to foreclose for assessments thus becomes the mechanism to extort all sorts of things from homeowners once assessments are entangled with other fees at the discretion of the board or management company.
I'll give just one example of the forced vendor situation. Propane is for the most part economically unregulated. Sounds great as long as you have a choice of source. What these places do is 1) remove your choice, and 2) mandate consumption. Deregulation is good as long as the consumer has choices. The HOAs in these places have become tools for vendors to ensure unregulated monopolies. You might find restrictive covenants in several subdivisions that require you to install gas-fired furnaces, water heaters, range hookups, etc. If you buy in one of the every 5th home is the same master planned communities, you may not even realize that some of these appliances were required because the submittal/approval process is hidden from view or totally under the control of the developer. Your choice about whether or not to use gas has just been eliminated so you can't "opt out" of this scheme. Now there will be clauses here and there within the restrictive covenants that effectively require you to purchase gas from a central propane system. These clauses could range from outright mandating that you purchase the gas from a designated vendor to requiring to you get Architectural Committee approval for an alternative. If there are monies being paid by the propane vendor to the developer, the HOA, etc. you can rest assured that will not get approval. You can guess where this goes since the price is unilaterally set by the owner of the propane gas system.
Finally these types of situations guarantee litigation which will eat up reserve accounts and result in increased assessments. Your home is the security for collection of these assessments. You should also be aware that your home is effectively the security for any loan that the HOA would take out. These HOA Boards have the power to borrow on behalf of the HOA and your home becomes the ultimate security for such borrowing. Keep in mind that the HOA may not be controlled by the homeowners but rather a developer seeking sources of revenue to build out more phases or complete existing ones. In these economic times you should be particularly concerned about buying into HOA property.
These problems are not isolated instances in HOA-land, they are the standard operating procedure. One final note. Although many will suggest that you "read the CCRs", that really doesn't help much. For one, there is nothing to prevent a board from imposing greater restrictions on your property, from interpreting restrictions as they see fit, or from developing "rules" regarding your property.
Property values are really more related to location and other factors - not an HOA. You will find that HOA proponents want to credit an HOA when the economy is good and then blame the economy rather than the HOA when prices fall. The reality is that HOAs have not been shown to "preserve or increase" property values. HOA creation was driven largely by developers, municipalities, and the federal government which gave buyers easier access to mortgage financing if they purchased homes in HOAs.
Last edited by IC_deLight; 01-15-2009 at 09:15 AM..
Have you tried The Woodlands? It is literally a Woodland with plenty of people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Minier
Ok, our trip is set for mid-February. So we have to get serious about what we want ... we want so many things and they contradict each other, so we keep going back and forth (as probably has been obvious by my posts in the last year ).
We're stranded on a mountain in the woods. We LOVE the feel (woodsy, airy, etc), privacy and lots of elbow room. But we're stranded ... going for a nature walk is all we can do (and is nice but we need more). It's so steep, only a sportsman can ride a bike around here (and would still have a hard time) and anything we need to buy requires a 15-30 minute drive one way. We don't have any community things (pool, clubhouse, playground). And the city (NYC) is a whole hour away, which to parents of small children is like another country.
So we thought when we move to Austin, we'd go for some of those family friendly subdivisions with the community pool, playgrounds, lots of kids, etc. But, everytime I see one, they are so barren ... the trees, where are the trees? They are a quarter acre at most so we would have people RIGHT THERE (claustrophobia kicks in for me! LOL) and I'd rather no neighbors than bad, nosey neighbors. And yet, we want our kids to be able to run around a neighborhood with other kids and to know the people and know they are safe. We want the neighborhood BBQ's and "block parties". And we are still holding out hope that someday, sometime we will be able to go to the "city" to act like grown-ups (and would love for it to be close enough, 30 minutes?)
How to reconcile? Must we choose? Can we have both?
FYI: other details ... looking for 4-5 bdrm, 2500-3000sq ft, $300k-$450 price range. Work from home so commute doesn't matter. Schools do matter.
Oh, and we've considered the Barton Hills/ Zilker park area, but I can't seem to find anything within our price rance and acreage requirement.
Try River Place (where I live) or even Steiner Ranch. They are both great spots in NW Austin. Send me a PM if you want to hear more.
CJ
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