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Hello! My husband and I are looking to move to Dallas from Minnesota. He would be working in Lancaster, and we are considering living in Cedar Hill. Are there any areas of the town we should stay away from or areas that are good? We are a young family, so our housing price range is only up to about $130K (which will still buy us a much nicer house than we could buy in St. Paul!). Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as we have 2 young children and want them to live in a safe area
I've lived in Cedar Hill for 9 years. The population has grown from 32,000 to 45,000 in that time.
Current demographic is
>40% african american
<40% white
~20% hispanic
In the school system african americans outnumber whites about 3 to 1, maybe more.
There has been some white flight, but primarily just more african americans moving in. However, this summer there were 5 young white couples with young children who moved into my congregation.
Cedar Hill is at a crossroads as to how the city will continue to develop in terms of demographics.
Cedar Hill is a nice, safe, growing city. There is enough space left to build out homes in Cedar Hill to perhaps double the population over time.
School performance has struggled a little bit in some of the schools, but is ok. The 9th grade center was rated unacceptable last year, but apparently is back on track now.
A lot of retail has been built (perhaps a little overbuilt right now) over the last 5 years making it something of a shopping hub particularly at the crossroads of Hwy 67 and FM 1382.
In Cedar Hill, I would suggest the High Pointe neighborhood. I would avoid the neighborhood around the planet streets.
As far as resale, our home in High Pointe was bought new in 1999 for $106,000 and sold for $120,000 in 2006 just before foreclosures started to hit the neighborhood in force.
If you are working in Lancaster, I suggest you consider living in Red Oak for the school district and home values.
I prefer the Midlothian school district to Cedar Hill's.
I've lived in Cedar Hill for 9 years. The population has grown from 32,000 to 45,000 in that time.
Current demographic is >40% african american <40% white ~20% hispanic
I think its great there is such balance exists in cedar hill. I read somewhere that cedar hill is the only city in the metroplex where the pop of AA increased without a corresponding decrease in the white pop. I think thats great considering that most of the metro is pretty segregated along racial lines
I only wish this kind of diversity was reflected in the school district. One of the teachers in CH informed me that alot of students from dallas attend cedar hill schools (they just provide a friend's address), though the district is not enforcing boundaries because more kids means more funding from the state.
city services were great when i lived there. with the huge increase in tax-base, it can only get better. I dont think the retail is overbuilt. for everybody from waxahachie , red oak, midlothian, to south dallas, cedar hill is the most convenient place to go shopping
Last edited by BstYet2Be; 10-06-2008 at 05:40 PM..
Reason: Correcting the quote
I think for a nicer/safer area your price range would have to go above 150K unless you were looking for a 1200 sq ft place in a nice area or a townhouse. Its cheaper in Texas but not ridiculously cheaper. If you come and rent for a while you may be able to take advantage of a real estate auction/foreclosure or even a builder inventory sale. I recommend not buying right away so you can research while "living" here.
There are plenty out door activities in Cedar Hill for you and the family.
Look on mansfield road along Joe Pool Lake in Grand Prairie. Also look along beltline road east of 75 in Cedar Hill for homes in that range.
There are other areas but this is what I can come up with for now.
I bought my house in Cedar Hill in 93 for 99,500. We sold it for 118,000 5 years later. We built a home in Thoroughbred Hills in Duncanville for 258,900 and moved in July 99. Troy Priddy Custom Homes built my house there. When we relocated 3 years later to Florida, thankfully my husbands new company paid for the total relo and paid the mortgage on the house till it sold. It sold 18 months later for 241,000. We were very lucky that the new company paid the difference instead of us out of pocket. My inlaws home in Greenbriar Estates at the time we moved went down too. They had bought a spec custom there for 125K and it went down to 118K.
Over the years it has risen back up and their home is worth about 140 from what my fil told me. My bil lived over in Windsor in Cedar Hill in a KB Home. They bought there's for 113K about 1999 and sold for a bit more about 2006. They had many people walk in and after a few months got it sold. I think in general that real estate has taken a beating EVERYWHERE in DFW and it is taking longer in general to sell homes .We are not in the market anymore but it seems like most people aren't in the market for what we wanted to sell our home for. Most people tend to be looking in the 100K to 300K. That seems to be a good target number. As said prior, most people wanting to put their children in good schools do steer away from Cedar Hill and mainly because they feel that it is using coaches to teach other subjects.
I went after my last post and found around 25 coaches/teachers at the high school. The issue is that the parents feel that kids who are not strong in certain subjects who are in core classes feel cheated due to having a coach who doesn't really care much to teach but LOVES to coach. My father loved teaching all levels and if I get the chance to finish out my degree will love teaching all levels too. I do understand that Duncanville does hire more teachers versus coaches/teachers in their district. Though they do have issues. A few years back, the choral director of the high school left due to being told that she had to meet a quota of students who were african american into the upper choir by auditions. She would not have it, she felt it was reverse discrimination and wanted the people who were the best singers to be given the opportunity to be in the upper honors choir. She quite her job and her husband and family moved to Colorado. True true true. Lots of politics as far as I am concerned.
South verses North- well I love southwest dallas county but would not move back.
We have heard that CH schools are not good because of wear and tear, or that the toilets stink (not my experience), or because they hire too many coaches. Im not saying these opinions are wrong, but they are just that. opinions. anybody considering CH should make a campus visit and make up their own minds.
the fact is that the data suggests that CH schools are good. TAKS info is not everything, but it is a big piece of the information pie. Nobody wants their child to go to an unacceptable school because that ranking tells you that there is something wrong with the school. Most of us will choose an exemplery or recognized school over an acceptable one
For those in education, we know that data drives instruction. How else can you tell if your intervention program is working, or if Johny is making progress towards stated goals? or if it is time for modifications? from assessment data ofcourse!
data is important. data is the output of teacher and school effort. You cant discount it. according to the data, cedar hill has good schools.
its a great place to live that is booming. I think everybody agrees at least on that point
We have heard that CH schools are not good because of wear and tear, or that the toilets stink (not my experience), or because they hire too many coaches. Im not saying these opinions are wrong, but they are just that. opinions. anybody considering CH should make a campus visit and make up their own minds.
the fact is that the data suggests that CH schools are good. TAKS info is not everything, but it is a big piece of the information pie. Nobody wants their child to go to an unacceptable school because that ranking tells you that there is something wrong with the school. Most of us will choose an exemplery or recognized school over an acceptable one
For those in education, we know that data drives instruction. How else can you tell if your intervention program is working, or if Johny is making progress towards stated goals? or if it is time for modifications? from assessment data ofcourse!
data is important. data is the output of teacher and school effort. You cant discount it. according to the data, cedar hill has good schools.
its a great place to live that is booming. I think everybody agrees at least on that point
I may be going out on a limb but here goes:
Cedar Hill/GP is what happens when Austin collides with Dallas
Of the southern suburbs CH is the best but there are crime issues in CH as well as Desoto, Lancaster, Duncanville
You might consider a little more of a commute to get in a safer area
Of the southern suburbs CH is the best but there are crime issues in CH as well as Desoto, Lancaster, Duncanville
You might consider a little more of a commute to get in a safer area
Another negatively-toned and blatantly generalized comment about the southern suburbs. It seems to never end.
The four southern suburbs have a combined population of approximately 167,800. In an area that large, crime is going to happen, but none of these places could rightfully be called "dangerous" or "crime-ridden". Crime happens everywhere, even in the so called "safer areas" of the metroplex. The majority of crimes committed in the suburbs regardless of location are largely non-violent and/or property-related. I have lived in the Lancaster/DeSoto area just about all of my life and have never felt unsafe at home or out in public. If crime was such a problem, why have a little over 35,000 people moved to the southern suburbs over the last eight years? If Cedar Hill and Lancaster were that unsafe, why are they among the fastest growing inner-ring suburbs of Dallas in terms of growth percentage?
You made a similar post on a page about DeSoto, saying that the city has a crime problem and then recommended that the OP "go north" to Plano, Frisco, and Addison, when both Addison and Plano had higher scores on the city-data crime index (Frisco didn't have 2006 stats) than DeSoto did in 2006. Addison's crime index score was the second highest (behind the city of Dallas) in Dallas County in 2006 and one of the highest over the past few years, but you never see any posts that telling people that it has "crime issues". If someone posts a message regarding a possible move to one of the southern suburbs, however, you know it won't be long before someone who is ill-informed or doesn't live in the area will try to steer them away using crime as a scare-tactic. These are usually the same people who can't differentiate between "South Dallas" and areas to the "South of Dallas", don't know that the "S" in DeSoto is always capitalized or how to properly pronounce Lancaster (LANK-ister instead of the more common usage: LAN-cast-er), and like to lump huge areas together into "good" and "bad" using arbitrary points such as interstate highways as dividing lines.
I am not one of those who has something against other communities in the Metroplex. I want to see all areas thrive and am proud to see how the entire area continues to attract so many new residents. As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, just about every suburb in the DFW area has "nice" and "not-so-nice" neighborhoods. In most of them, the "nicer" neighborhoods outnumber the "not-so-nice" ones by a large margin. The same can be said for the communities of southwest Dallas County. If you take the same basic safety precautions that should be observed regardless of location, you will be fine in any of the southern suburbs.
Its obvious that posters that slam the southern burbs and suggest that people move specifically to the north and no where else in the metroplex have an agenda.
I think we all see all of the inventory of roofs in the north that must be sold; so lets sell the homes up north first to end our home inventory problem so don't we end up with abondoned development projects. How dreadful would that be?
-I see the light!!!
Now what happens when people start looking for themselves and people in Dallas, the western burbs, eastern burbs and southern burbs start speaking up?
I guess we should tell the developer in Northern Prosper to back out of his new tract home deal b/c buyers are starting to realize the drive to Oklahoma is getting shorter and there are just as nice or nicer options in other areas around town.
Yes people wake up. Stop following what your friends, boss, coworkers say and look for yourself. Who knows they may have fell for the same "peer influence" and are using the same mind tricks on you.
If you look around there are many new and shiney places all over the metroplex. There are also places that are mature and scenic.
Fill up the tank and go for a drive. The school districts are competitive. If they suck today they will be better tomorrow. If not get involved or just move. Most of us won't be in our final house or neighborhood for sometime and have some more moves left in us any way.
Seems like we have an issue. How do we "share" the new buyers equally?
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Cedar Hill
