Moving from Maryland to Illinois (Chicago, Waukegan: real estate, buying a house, neighborhood)

[lydiepete]

Hello! We are currently in the process of moving to Illinois for my husbands career; however, I cannot seem to find any information about things we should be wary about in Illinois. The only person I've been able to talk to has been a real estate agent associated with my husbands company and I just don't feel like their giving us the best advice. We are currently thinking of the Vernon Hills area and surrounding zip codes. If anyone could help me out and give me some pointers from experience, I would love to hear them! I would love to know what are some areas to avoid, what are some things to be on the look out for, and what kind of cultural differences are we walking into coming from the east coast that it would be helpful to know before hand? I appreciate it!

Thanks in advance!
-Lydia

[nana053]

Where is work? You probably need to give that info to get a decent feel for where to live.

[r0lf3cbn]

What part of Maryland are you coming from? DC metro, Baltimore, Cumberland, Eastern Shore? That would help answer the cultural differences question.

On areas to avoid, I would say there are no places like that in or near Vernon Hills. Mundelein maybe, but in a "lock your car" way, not a "buy body armor" way.

[r0lf3cbn]

And I just thought of something. Did you learn to drive in Maryland? If so, watch out for traffic cops.

[PrairieGirl]

I moved here from DC metro area many years ago. One thing I was not prepared for was the racial segregation. Chitown is the most racially divided city, even compared to DC. We live in the south suburbs where people still get upset over blacks moving into "their" neighborhood. I don't think this is a problem in the affluent north suburbs, where there is more tolerance. Pretty sure there would be little chance of the same quality of direct interactions. This may affect perceptions, still startling after living in DC. Also much less to do here unless you're near the city. I used to enjoy Rock Creek trails, where I live now in Thornton we have woods all around but trails are still works in progress. Lake Wampum has improved access for fishing, no boating allowed. Live music scene is pretty dead out here.

[Lookout Kid]

Residential segregation between black and whtie residents, as measured by "dissimilarity index", is a serious issue in the Chicago metro area. To give you an idea of how we compare to other metro areas, here is where we rank nationally among large metro areas:

4. New York, NY 84.3
5. Chicago, IL 83.6
18. Philadelphia, PA-NJ 76.9
52. Los Angeles, Long Beach, CA 70.6
68. Boston, MA-NH 68.8
88. DC-MD-VA-VW 66.2

Is there a noticeable difference between an 83.6 index and a 66.2 index to actual residents of the area? I guess it depends on where you live. The interesting thing about the South Suburbs that PrairieGirl mentions is that they are perhaps the most diverse area in greater Chicagoland, but they also have a reputation for being more rough, more working class, and yes, more racist. I've only lived on the North Side of the city and in the Western Suburbs, and I have never run in to anyone who was openly racist (with the exception of some anonymous internet posters on this forum, and I have no idea who they are or where they live). It's typically more subtle, like "oh, well that town is changing, so you don't want to move there". I don't think this is different in most of America, though.

[r0lf3cbn]

Originally Posted by r0lf3cbn

What part of Maryland are you coming from? DC metro, Baltimore, Cumberland, Eastern Shore? That would help answer the cultural differences question.

It's too bad the OP never came back, because I really did want to answer the culture shock question. I've been living Maryland-adjacent for two years and I lived Vernon Hills-adjacent for twelve years before that.

I'll answer the question anyway, in case she's still reading or someone else is ever interested.

If you're moving to Vernon Hills from one of the non-rural areas of Montgomery County and Howard County, you won't experience much culture shock. Even if you're coming from some other part of Maryland, you're probably familiar with what Montgomery and Howard Counties are like, so that should give you an idea of what to expect. Politically, that part of Illinois has historically been more conservative - it tends to elect Republicans and DINOs to national offices, though that may be gradually changing a little bit. But it's not the Bible Belt by any means.

I think if you've never lived anywhere else but Maryland, you'll miss the bay and ocean the most (or the mountains, again depending on where you're coming from).

One big difference between Maryland and Illinois is in local government. In Maryland, things like schools, parks, libraries, and police are usually governed at the county level. In Illinois, there are lots more sub-county government entities: towns and villages, townships, school districts, park districts, etc. If you don't care about schools, this won't affect your daily life very much. If you do care about schools, keep in mind that just because your mailing address says Town X, it doesn't always mean your kids will go to Town X schools, because school districts have their own boundary lines.

[mattywo85]

Originally Posted by PrairieGirl

I moved here from DC metro area many years ago. One thing I was not prepared for was the racial segregation. Chitown is the most racially divided city, even compared to DC. We live in the south suburbs where people still get upset over blacks moving into "their" neighborhood. I don't think this is a problem in the affluent north suburbs, where there is more tolerance. Pretty sure there would be little chance of the same quality of direct interactions. This may affect perceptions, still startling after living in DC. Also much less to do here unless you're near the city. I used to enjoy Rock Creek trails, where I live now in Thornton we have woods all around but trails are still works in progress. Lake Wampum has improved access for fishing, no boating allowed. Live music scene is pretty dead out here.

Chicago is very racially segregated I will give you that. The suburbs can be too, just depends on where. One thing I don't get to say often to people that want to move here is the winters will probably be LESS brutal in Chicago than Maryland. It seems every time we get some snow, you get double what we get. The live music scene is very strong in Chicago as well as nightlife in general....you can find tons to do at pretty much any time of the day and if you don't want to be in Chicago there are tons of suburbs to choose from. If you don't want to be in Chicagoland you can drive to Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, or even Milwaukee, Madison, Indianapolis, and St. Louis all within 4 hours or so.

As far as Vernon Hills area, thats Lake county. There is a wide spectrum of good-bad in Lake. The ones to avoid would probably be Waukegan, parts of Zion, North Chicago, and the Round Lakes can vary but seem to be getting better. Lake County has pretty high property taxes but incomes are high(depending on the job of course).

Any ideas on house size, price, schools, nightlife, proximity to city, etc?

[Sunduri]

I was raised in Baltimore, spent most of my adult life in South Jersey and the Philly Suburbs and currently live in Vernon Hills. It does seem more racially segregated here than back home. The suburbs here are kinda unexciting as far as restaurants and shopping goes. Depending on traffic, driving into the city can be a nightmare and just isn't worth it to me, so I tend to stay in the general vacinity of where I reside. That wasn't the case so much in Philly/S. Jersey where I could quickly and easily drive to the shore, Poconos, DC or New York. As far as the weather goes: winter starts earlier, is consistently colder and ends later than in the East Coast region. I still miss the east coast but since I'm entrenched here with my job and now buying a house, hopefully the area will grow on me. Its not bad, just blandly vanilla.

[chet everett]

In fairness suburbs like Vernon Hills which was developed around a giant indoor mall and a maze of satellite strip centers and office parks are notorious for their "blandness" in pretty much any part of the country. There are suburbs that have a more traditional core, often centered around a rail station, that tend to be MUCH more interesting.

Adjacent to Vernon Hills the town of Libertyville is one such example -- a wide variety of and bars flourishes in their well developed core. East of Vernon Hills lies Waukegan, a city with an industrial past. The population has shifted from working class Caucasions to Hispanic but there are large number of ethnic resturants. Access to the Lake Michigan waterfront is quite easy from Waukegan though the transformation of the industrial areas into more recreation oriented spaces is not fully complete. North of Waukegan there is very large Illinois State Park that has some beaches but financial mismanagement of our State's finances leaves large parts of this park closed.

South of Waukegan the lovely North Shore communities do have wonderful municipal beaches however some make access to out-of-town residents a challenge.

In southern Wisconsin, about a 30 minute drive from Vernon Hills, several well run ski areas offer the opportunity for winter sports. While certainly not as challenging as the most developed runs at Lake Placid or Killington they do compare to some of the smaller east coast facilities.