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Oakhurst is a great neighborhood and is close to town. Starmount might be a good choice. Windsor Park is in demand but crime is still a little iffy for my liking. Check out Grove Park and Ravenwood. Both have nice, large lots and older (well built) homes. If you want to be closer to town you might find a fixer-upper in your price range.
If you are concerned about resale stay away from the mass produced, vinyl siding/slab construction homes in cookie cutter neighborhoods.
Crime should be very important to you. Be sure to check out the crimemapping site for Mecklenburg County before you buy.
You really should consider Davis Lake, which is where I've lived for the past 2 years. I think it meets all of your criteria and is only 5 minutes from 485 and 77 interchange, 20 minutes from Uptown.
Oakhurst is a very nice older neighborhood. Crime is not bad (AFAIK). I haven't watched the crime reports for that area as I have for Windsor Park.
In Windsor Park within the area bounded by Central Avenue, North Sharon Amity, Shamrock, and Eastway is virtually crimeless within those boundaries. 99% of the crime in that area is committed on the streets mentioned. Inside that perimeter, there's almost no crime, and it has been that way for the past few years. I have been watching it studiously through SpotCrime (look it up and type in an address and zip code to follow the crime in a given area). CMPD clamped down hard on Central Avenue and down Albemarle Road. CMPD has helped that area to turn around. I've noticed a few renovations in recent months. That's usually a good indication that a neighborhood is on the upswing.
I owned two rental houses in the middle of that area that I sold a couple or three years ago that appreciated in value quite nicely since the 2008 crash. I'm hanging onto the third to see what the new overpass at Sharon Amity and Independence will do to property values. This area of Windsor Park is about 2.5 miles from uptown and about 8 miles from SouthPark. The traffic up WT Harris at morning rush hour isn't too bad, though the traffic on Central straight to the central business district may be sluggish at times. I don't know for sure because I don't travel that area often.
Upscale apartment complexes are being built on Central Avenue from the Independence overpass down to Briarcreek. It's just a matter of time before the apartment complexes on the lower part of Central Avenue are renovated and turned into upscale condos. Charlotte is running out of room!
One thing that I've noticed about this area is that houses don't stay on the market long. I sold two houses in less than a month.
No matter which neighborhood you settle upon, subscribe to SpotCrime and ignore the crime stats on Trulia. Everything on Trulia and Zillow is 75% right about 10% of the time. That includes property values.
Yeah I think I missed the OP's age initially. My recos were more "family" neighborhoods, although technically OP didn't say what other things he liked to do for fun.
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