Best Suburbs with acreage and close proximity to O'Hare ? (Chicago: for sale, 2014)
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Oak Brook and Burr Ridge would be good options for you. They have homes with big lots and they're not far from O'hare at all. Oak Brook is only a 20 minute drive and Burr Ridge is a 25-30 minute drive from O'hare. Both towns are split among multiple school districts which are generally very good.
Most of Oak Brook is in the Butler school district (which is the best one out of all the school districts that serve Oak Brook. The Butler School District is a feeder district off Hinsdale Central HS which is a really good school. Other parts of Oak Brook worth considering are the parts in the Elmhurst school district, the parts in the Downers Grove school district, or the parts in the Hinsdale school district.
For Burr Ridge, the Cook County side goes to Lyons Township HS which is a good school and the Dupage County side goes to Hinsdale South HS which is also a good school. There's also a portion of Burr Ridge north of I-55 that's in the Hinsdale school district and goes to Hinsdale Central. There are 4 k-8 districts in Burr Ridge. The ones you should consider are Pleasantdale, Gower, and Hinsdale.
There are parts of West Chicago that feed into St. Charles and other schools. Similarly there are parts of Winfield and Warrenville that are served by the desirable schools too, the trick with any of the towns split between multple districts (or even towns where one attendance area is much better performing than another, as is the case in really quite a few places including Chicago...) is to understand that the price premium is almost certainly going to mean that the more desirable school attendance means you get "less house / land for your dollar"...
Even Oak Brook and Burr Ridge are similarly like this -- the portions of those towns that are served by the highest rated schools tend to be much more expensive than the the areas with schools even a fairly minor step down in the rankings. Oak Brook in particular also shows the tendancy for the most desirable parts of town to have the LOWEST effective property tax rates, though if you are looking for a LARGE parcel / home that may translate into a pricey annual tax bill...
I am not even sure the OP has school performance on their radar...
In my mind, once somebody focuses on "acreage" which is so NOT a mainstream request of families and even individual sthat understand what currently drives real estate values, school quality is not really an issue...
Chet, good schools are a must! We like our elbow room and have not had good luck with neighbors so the more land the better! Also want room for a pool and the dogs to roam...
Thanks for all the info, I'll take a closer look tonight and digest.
I am not a fan of the sort of "slicing and dicing" that some folks (cough, hworth, cough) seem to have skill at, but I suspect that if you did do this you would find that WeGo is not the worst school in the region, it just has a whole lot of folks that really are down at the lower end of the earnings ladder.
Heck with the shut down of the General Mills plant things may get worse in the short term but maybe better in the long run as either a new direction is found with better paying jobs or folks eventually move away from manufacturing altogether (it does not take a rocket scientist to notice the correlation between white collar work force and good schools -- not going to spend time explaining the less than postive results of that either...). Of course my inclination is that the pattern of towns in Illinois that have lost manufacturing jobs (everyplace from Waukegan to Broadview to Chicago itself...) is that replacement jobs are darned hard to come by...
How much of that dearth of job growth of ANY KIND is directly the result of dunderheaded policies of Illinois connected political class is similarly an open question, but there are some reasons to thing WeGo could have some positives to come: the access to good transportation is pretty solid. There is decent UP-W line service to the Loop. Rt 59 upgrades continue to make it less of a hassle to get into Naperville / Aurora. North Avenue is an amazingly well built arterial. The presence of DuPage Airport has to similarly be seen as a positive for the region, even though "personal jets" are not really something that the future seems likely to hold.
What does seem certain is the DOE will not mothball Fermilab even though the main accelerators have been surpassed by the energies of the Euro-consortium at CERN, there is still LOTS of interest in using high energy physics for healthcare and other advance purposes. That ought to be good for WeGo.
Overall I acknowledge that there are probably enough folks that have "non-mainstream" desires to have a bigger chunk of land that it may someday make a rebound and the thing with land that once was said and still remains true "they're making more of it" cannot be denied.
So far we've been looking at St. Charles and Barrington. Any other areas we should look at that have homes with a minimum 1 acre lot, good schools and relative close proximity to O'Hare Airport (less than 1 hour drive)? Prefer $600K or less in West to NW to North burb areas.
This one is easy. Long Grove. 1 acre minimum lots and Stevenson HS and District 96 K-8. Top of the top in schools in the suburban Chicago area. Checks all your boxes. I live about a half mile from Long Grove and travel nearly every week. Travel time to O'Hare is 30 to 35 minutes most days. Might be 45 minutes coming home in the evening rush due to congestion on the east/west roads (Deerfield, Lake Cook, Half Day).
I am not a fan of the sort of "slicing and dicing" that some folks (cough, hworth, cough) seem to have skill at, but I suspect that if you did do this you would find that WeGo is not the worst school in the region, it just has a whole lot of folks that really are down at the lower end of the earnings ladder.
Heck with the shut down of the General Mills plant things may get worse in the short term but maybe better in the long run as either a new direction is found with better paying jobs or folks eventually move away from manufacturing altogether (it does not take a rocket scientist to notice the correlation between white collar work force and good schools -- not going to spend time explaining the less than postive results of that either...). Of course my inclination is that the pattern of towns in Illinois that have lost manufacturing jobs (everyplace from Waukegan to Broadview to Chicago itself...) is that replacement jobs are darned hard to come by...
How much of that dearth of job growth of ANY KIND is directly the result of dunderheaded policies of Illinois connected political class is similarly an open question, but there are some reasons to thing WeGo could have some positives to come: the access to good transportation is pretty solid. There is decent UP-W line service to the Loop. Rt 59 upgrades continue to make it less of a hassle to get into Naperville / Aurora. North Avenue is an amazingly well built arterial. The presence of DuPage Airport has to similarly be seen as a positive for the region, even though "personal jets" are not really something that the future seems likely to hold.
What does seem certain is the DOE will not mothball Fermilab even though the main accelerators have been surpassed by the energies of the Euro-consortium at CERN, there is still LOTS of interest in using high energy physics for healthcare and other advance purposes. That ought to be good for WeGo.
Overall I acknowledge that there are probably enough folks that have "non-mainstream" desires to have a bigger chunk of land that it may someday make a rebound and the thing with land that once was said and still remains true "they're making more of it" cannot be denied.
Some folks (cough, chet, cough) need their data-fruit sliced before they can tell if they're comparing apples to oranges.
I am not a fan of the sort of "slicing and dicing" that some folks (cough, hworth, cough) seem to have skill at, but I suspect that if you did do this you would find that WeGo is not the worst school in the region, it just has a whole lot of folks that really are down at the lower end of the earnings ladder.
How much of that dearth of job growth of ANY KIND is directly the result of dunderheaded policies of Illinois connected political class is similarly an open question, but there are some reasons to thing WeGo could have some positives to come: the access to good transportation is pretty solid. There is decent UP-W line service to the Loop. Rt 59 upgrades continue to make it less of a hassle to get into Naperville / Aurora. North Avenue is an amazingly well built arterial. The presence of DuPage Airport has to similarly be seen as a positive for the region, even though "personal jets" are not really something that the future seems likely to hold.
What does seem certain is the DOE will not mothball Fermilab even though the main accelerators have been surpassed by the energies of the Euro-consortium at CERN, there is still LOTS of interest in using high energy physics for healthcare and other advance purposes. That ought to be good for WeGo.
Again, still don't understand how someone treats the slight disparity between Batavia and Geneva/STC schools like they are part of two different worlds can say that West Chicago "isn't one of the worst," and then goes on US News and World Report rantings about AP offerings and making AYP and yadda yadda yadda.
They said they want good schools. Yes, West Chicago does feed into St. Charles, but I think the only two others WC feeds into that aren't WC High School itself is STC and U46 (to my knowledge). The WC part that does feed into STC is pretty indistinguishable from STC itself.
If they want good schools, plus a non-awful commute to O'Hare, West Chicago is not the way to go. Winfield, Warrenville, Batavia, Barrington, etc. might be the way to go for them. Warrenville/Winfield especially might be the best "bang for your buck" wise, especially since large parts of Warrenville are unincorporated anyway. Next up would be Batavia, and then Barrington, etc.
Long Grove, Deer Park, Kildeer area. LG is Stevenson (great school but HUGE YMMV) Parts of Kildeer are Stevenson parts are LZ. Deer Park is mostly LZ schools. Then Barrington (you already mentioned). I would also look at Hawthorn Woods.
I see what your saying and I acknowledge that subtly is not my strength...
Quote:
Originally Posted by aga412
Again, still don't understand how someone treats the slight disparity between Batavia and Geneva/STC schools like they are part of two different worlds can say that West Chicago "isn't one of the worst," and then goes on US News and World Report rantings about AP offerings and making AYP and yadda yadda yadda.
They said they want good schools. Yes, West Chicago does feed into St. Charles, but I think the only two others WC feeds into that aren't WC High School itself is STC and U46 (to my knowledge). The WC part that does feed into STC is pretty indistinguishable from STC itself.
If they want good schools, plus a non-awful commute to O'Hare, West Chicago is not the way to go. Winfield, Warrenville, Batavia, Barrington, etc. might be the way to go for them. Warrenville/Winfield especially might be the best "bang for your buck" wise, especially since large parts of Warrenville are unincorporated anyway. Next up would be Batavia, and then Barrington, etc.
I think I have said that Batavia does have its strong points too, and in the context of what you get for the money there are certainly some valid reasons to give it the nod over some similarly priced homes in Geneva or St. Charles. Odds are you can get kind of "premium location" in Batavia for a sort of "challenging" location in the other towns and over the long haul it might be both more fiscally beneficial AND a better quality of life.
The tricky thing is that MOST people are not willing to do that sort of comparison! I can't tell how many really nice people that I have encountered through my former work as real estate agent that specialized in relocations would have absolute MELTDOWN when I would tell 'em "you know for the same money you can get a nicer house in X town" -- once folks focus on specific "address" you can't really do much to convince them other options exist...
Going the other way, for folks a who want / need "a big lot with room for a pool and some trees and maybe an ATV and yeah good schools" is something else entirely. In those situations you can say "well we are an extra XX minutes from where you work / the airport / whatever, are you willing to be closer for $xxxK ?" and in those case the answer varies considerably...
Long Grove, Deer Park, Kildeer area. LG is Stevenson (great school but HUGE YMMV) Parts of Kildeer are Stevenson parts are LZ. Deer Park is mostly LZ schools. Then Barrington (you already mentioned). I would also look at Hawthorn Woods.
I also thought of this area... HUGE lots in that direction with HUGE houses in your price range, and pretty good schools. I have friend in Hawthorn Woods and it's pretty quiet, but $600k gets you a big house there.
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Also want room for a pool and the dogs to roam...
I see what your saying and I acknowledge that subtly is not my strength...
