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My husband and I have a 1 year old son and love the area we live in now, but we're always thinking about living somewhere else for a change, too. We have some friends who moved to Charlotte, and I dismissed it early on, but now that I've learned more about it I'm warming up to the idea- I lived part of my life in Virginia, so I'm not completely new to that region.
I'd greatly appreciate it if people with knowledge of the Charlotte area could give us suggestions of where to look based on our list of wants and needs:
- Ideally 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, but if they were a good size we could do 3 beds
- Some kind of outdoor space- probably want a single family, but would consider a townhouse/multifamily house set up
- Good schools- it seems as if there are some really good and really bad schools in the Charlotte area. Good public schools are a big consideration for us. With myself working and my son learning in a Montessori school right now, the Charlotte public Montessori schools intrigue me.
- Living withing walking distance of some stores/library/schools/playgrounds- we really want to live in a walkable area. We're not looking to live in a subdivision where we have to drive to everything. A big plus would be having a walkable "downtown" type area, but I don't know if this exists in neighborhoods surrounding Charlotte?
- An area that has other young families- our neighborhood now is mostly much older than us.
- We would also like to have a short commute downtown- tired of long commutes! What's the public transportation like? Right now we have one car
- Being surrounded by art and music is a big plus as well
Our house now is barely 1400 sq. ft. and three small bedrooms, two bathrooms, so anything bigger than that under $450,000 would be great to consider. We're tired of the renovations with our 1920's home, so we'd like something newer or something that has been renovated. Probably the latter is what we would find in the type of neighborhood we are looking for, which would probably be an older neighborhood close to downtown.
Dilworth, Elizabeth, and Plaza Midwood would be the standard recommendations for what you're looking for -- close to uptown, as walkable as Charlotte has to offer, young families, nice environment. Dilworth and Elizabeth offer good schools but are probably out of your price range -- $450k in those neighborhoods probably doesn't get you anything renovated with 4br, maybe not even 3.
Plaza Midwood would have more in that price range & we love living there, but it doesn't offer good neighborhood schools. If you're interested in public Montessori, however, those are magnet schools. Because the local assignments in PM aren't very good, PM residents actually get priority placement in magnet schools under the CMS system, so that could work for you. We live in PM and are planning to go magnet route, although maybe not Montessori (except maybe for pre-K).
On your other metrics, PM does very well -- walk to nice branch library, grocery store, deli, restaurants and bars, and park. Fairly artsy neighborhood, in general area of town where most music venues are (NoDa/PM/Elizabeth). Lots of young families, we often walk by & hang out with neighbors in evenings while kids play. Car commute uptown is 10 minutes, bus service (streetcar maybe in future) is frequent & convenient as well. Also bikeable, approx 2 miles to uptown.
It sounds like you know what you want. Contact a realtor down here. We're moving from DC and most we talked to (including the guy we went with) have experience working with people moving from out of state. They know the areas best, so start there.
As someone else pointed out - lining up a job is important. That issue (luckily) did not affect us but there are a number of threads on here suggesting that its not always that easy to come here and find a new job right away.
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