South area? (Arlington, Plano, Grapevine: crime rate, mortgage, home)

[EDS_]

OP at least take a look at Red Oak. My daughter used to play club volleyball with a kid from Red Oak. I recall the parents being happy with the schools and parts of town are quite pretty. It's also much closer than some of the other suggestions.

Palmer may be worth a look as well.

That said if you are confident in the 1 or 2X per week commute that opens thing up a lot IMO.

[Stevehanrahan41]

To answer your question about Waxahachie, it’s a great mid sized town but quickly growing. Has good schools, also has charter schools called Global Life. It’s a safe town, generally pretty quiet. We’ve lived here for about 2 years and like it. Make sure you take what a lot of these people say with a grain of salt, they don’t live in Ellis County and probably never have. There’s a skew towards Collin County on this board.

About the other options:

Midlothian: Great smaller city, also quickly growing. Great schools.

Mansfield: The biggest of the 3. Rapidly expanding with Arlington spilling into it. Not necessarily a good thing. Commute down 20 can be hell. Really good schools although part of the district is zoned to Arlington kids and those schools are terrible. So be mindful when looking at houses in Mansfield’s ISD.

These are probably your 3 best options looking South DFW. Any of 3 you can’t go wrong with.

[Stelletti]

Thanks for the input on Waxa. I'm going down soon and will be looking at Midlothian and Waxa specifically. I did find a few places in east Forney that looked decent but havent heard anything about that place. Any thoughts on that?

Also will be checking out Mansfield when we are there too.

[ChristieP]

Forney will be a long commute to Hutchins. It's against traffic for only part of the drive. Honestly, focusing on Ellis County or Mansfield will be the best way to go.

[Stelletti]

Forney to Hutchins says 23 miles in Google. I only have to drive it once per week or less.

[WorldKlas]

Your best options: in order I would be looking..... be aware that in Texas schools may be zoned to districts outside of their actual town. Always, always, always verify schools your house is zoned to. Especially important in Mansfield and Arlington.

Midlothian has the best schools in Ellis County. One of my relatives just sold her house in Wax & moved to Midlothian for the schools.

Mansfield is a good option — but select the school attendance zone for the original Mansfield High School because that school and its middle and elementary feeders are the highest performers in Mansfield.

Also consider SW Arlington in the Martin HS attendance zone. That’s a bit farther and you can do just as fine with the other two above.

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

Count on 2-3 min per mile in rush hour, .uch worse if accident or bad weather.

[Ablebodied]

Originally Posted by Stelletti

Ok so I got a job lined up in Dallas area. The cool thing is that I get to work from home most of the time but not always. I have read a gazillion things about Frisco, Allen, Plano, McKinney etc etc. They sound great but the downer is the location of the place I would have to drive to is in Hutchins. That is on the south side of Dallas. How long of a commute can I truly expect from some of those places? We have found some houses in the south part in Midlothian or Waxahatchie that look really nice. Are those nice places? Do not hear much coming from the south areas. To further clarify we have a child entering middle school and obviously want a good school system and safe neighborhood. Don't care about "happening" things.

Thanks for any input.

You hear plenty on Frisco, Plano...etc because this is Texas, where most conservatives would rather not live with diversity and will pay a heavy price to avoid it with 90 minute commutes, toll two ways everyday and private schools.

So it really depends on how high your racist-o-meter has to run. I live in Cedar Hill, and there are two white families who live on my street that work from home. Their kids have grown up here though they go to private school. While growing up they had no problem when their daughters were pre-teens coming to my door selling girl scout cookies or on Halloween showing up for candy. Their children will have an entirely new outlook from their experiences. Prejudiced costs a lot of money and they save a lot because their racist-o-meter rests on zero. So they have a nice home that costs about $300,000 that would cost up to double that across town. They use their saved money for boats and nice cars and pick-ups and even fly friends in for the weekend. They are also educating their friends who may have had a lot of misconceptions about southern Dallas suburbs. Walking this morning at the park it was beautiful to past mixed race friends living the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. If they got a job in Hutchins they could be there in 15 minutes. Hit 67 to I-20 for a couple of minutes then I-20 to I-45 in a breeze.

I couldn't understand why Mansfield, whose population is only 65000, has 5 high schools and Cedar hill with 48000 only has one high school. I did some research and saw how the city leaders gerrymandered and conspired to keep Mansfield High school white majority. Their district bleeds into grand Prairie and Arlington but they were able to tell minorities moving into the area, "Guess what, your kids are going to have a new high school!"

So if you are Sean Hannity, Trump, tea party material, you will have to pay for that in tolls, long commutes and such because to put it simple, prejudice costs money, but it is a price most conservatives are willing to pay.

But you'll never convince a person like Brooks Ralph to ever buy any of it for his children. He'll tell them how as one of the few white players on the Cedar Hill football team he kicked the winning field goal against Katy for the State Championship. And you'll never be able to tell my white neighbors that.

[thenewtexan]

Originally Posted by Ablebodied

You hear plenty on Frisco, Plano...etc because this is Texas, where most conservatives would rather not live with diversity and will pay a heavy price to avoid it with 90 minute commutes, toll two ways everyday and private schools.

So it really depends on how high your racist-o-meter has to run. I live in Cedar Hill, and there are two white families who live on my street that work from home. Their kids have grown up here though they go to private school. While growing up they had no problem when their daughters were pre-teens coming to my door selling girl scout cookies or on Halloween showing up for candy. Their children will have an entirely new outlook from their experiences. Prejudiced costs a lot of money and they save a lot because their racist-o-meter rests on zero. So they have a nice home that costs about $300,000 that would cost up to double that across town. They use their saved money for boats and nice cars and pick-ups and even fly friends in for the weekend. They are also educating their friends who may have had a lot of misconceptions about southern Dallas suburbs. Walking this morning at the park it was beautiful to past mixed race friends living the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. If they got a job in Hutchins they could be there in 15 minutes. Hit 67 to I-20 for a couple of minutes then I-20 to I-45 in a breeze.

I couldn't understand why Mansfield, whose population is only 65000, has 5 high schools and Cedar hill with 48000 only has one high school. I did some research and saw how the city leaders gerrymandered and conspired to keep Mansfield High school white majority. Their district bleeds into grand Prairie and Arlington but they were able to tell minorities moving into the area, "Guess what, your kids are going to have a new high school!"

So if you are Sean Hannity, Trump, tea party material, you will have to pay for that in tolls, long commutes and such because to put it simple, prejudice costs money, but it is a price most conservatives are willing to pay.

But you'll never convince a person like Brooks Ralph to ever buy any of it for his children. He'll tell them how as one of the few white players on the Cedar Hill football team he kicked the winning field goal against Katy for the State Championship. And you'll never be able to tell my white neighbors that.

Interesting... Link?

[WorldKlas]

Originally Posted by Ablebodied

You hear plenty on Frisco, Plano...etc because this is Texas, where most conservatives would rather not live with diversity and will pay a heavy price to avoid it with 90 minute commutes, toll two ways everyday and private schools.

So it really depends on how high your racist-o-meter has to run. I live in Cedar Hill, and there are two white families who live on my street that work from home. Their kids have grown up here though they go to private school. While growing up they had no problem when their daughters were pre-teens coming to my door selling girl scout cookies or on Halloween showing up for candy. Their children will have an entirely new outlook from their experiences. Prejudiced costs a lot of money and they save a lot because their racist-o-meter rests on zero. So they have a nice home that costs about $300,000 that would cost up to double that across town. They use their saved money for boats and nice cars and pick-ups and even fly friends in for the weekend. They are also educating their friends who may have had a lot of misconceptions about southern Dallas suburbs. Walking this morning at the park it was beautiful to past mixed race friends living the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. If they got a job in Hutchins they could be there in 15 minutes. Hit 67 to I-20 for a couple of minutes then I-20 to I-45 in a breeze.

I couldn't understand why Mansfield, whose population is only 65000, has 5 high schools and Cedar hill with 48000 only has one high school. I did some research and saw how the city leaders gerrymandered and conspired to keep Mansfield High school white majority. Their district bleeds into grand Prairie and Arlington but they were able to tell minorities moving into the area, "Guess what, your kids are going to have a new high school!"

So if you are Sean Hannity, Trump, tea party material, you will have to pay for that in tolls, long commutes and such because to put it simple, prejudice costs money, but it is a price most conservatives are willing to pay.

But you'll never convince a person like Brooks Ralph to ever buy any of it for his children. He'll tell them how as one of the few white players on the Cedar Hill football team he kicked the winning field goal against Katy for the State Championship. And you'll never be able to tell my white neighbors that.

The thing is Cedar Hill’s academic performance is not very strong. So, if the OP buys a home in your neighborhood for $300K and then has to spend $50K/annually on private schools....how is the family’s budget better than just spending $400K on a house in Midlothian?