Waltham: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Boston, Newton: apartment complexes, rental)

[divehpu]

We are considering moving to Waltham to eliminate a long commute, but don't know much about the town. We are a couple in our mid-thirties with a four year old and two dogs. Any information you can give us about the community and the schools is appreciated.

[scarletfire]

Schools there aren't considered very good in Waltham compared with many neighboring communities. For excellent schools & an easy commute to Waltham you could consider Wayland. You can read about the town at about Wayland, MA; best Massachusetts public school systems (http://www.positiverelocation.com/pages/comm_Wayland - broken link) and Wayland - The Boston Globe

[miu]

Your child is only four. You could always rent an apartment in Waltham for a year and take a little more time to find the best place for you to live at. It will be a buyers market for a while. I love all the ethnic restaurants on Moody St.

[jayrandom]

Waltham is a nice city, with great restaurants, a fair amount of shopping, and reasonable transportation in to the city. It has two colleges--Bentley and Brandeis, a number of apartment complexes, and about 60,000 people. My wife and I lived in a complex for about a year before the length of the commute got to us and we moved closer in to the city. There are some rougher patches to Waltham, but nothing that ever made me feel uncomfortable. There are also some very nice areas and a few very pretty parks. Our neighbors really liked some of the rec programs in Waltham, as well.

The schools are decent, but everyone on here thinks that anything short of the absolute best school system is letting your child down and there are a lot of really great school districts right around Waltham. You'll probably here people tell you to stay away from Waltham and instead go to Newton, Lexington, Belmont, or Weston--basically all of the "rich" towns that border Waltham. Wayland and Arlington are good towns, too, but further away (Arlington east and Wayland west). As a general rule more expensive towns will have better schools (with notable exceptions, of course), so I wouldn't rule out Waltham just because it doesn't have the best schools in the area.

If you're looking to rent, Belmont and to a lesser extent Lexington have some reasonable options. We moved from a complex in Waltham to a private rental in Belmont and our rent went down about $400/month. Arlington, a bit further away still, also has good rental options.

Weston median home price: $1,297,700
Belmont median home price: $790,000
Wayland median home price: $686,600
Newton median home price: $680,700
Arlington median home price: $498,200
Waltham median home price: $440,300

I