Keller, Saginaw, North Richalnd Hills etc and commuting to FW downtown and DFW airport (Fort Worth: apartment, rent)

[loves2read]

if you have used to a quiet existence where you live now--even in suburbs it will be difficult to find that peacefulness--
most homes are built on small lots in neighborhoods and are bounded by city streets with quite a bit of traffic--
finding something that back to a green belt (especially in rental property) is just about impossible--

I know because I looked for over two years trying to find a house with quiet and privacy--
found the privacy if not the quiet==because our backyard does back up to tail end of a city park where there is no public traffic--and behind that is property zoned for light business but which will be expensive to build on because of the drainage issues

if you find a rental property that is in your price range, in decent shape (hopefully remodeled someting recently), in good location with decent commute and access to shopping/restaurants/parks
then you will be ahead of the game...

[Tigerlily64]

Originally Posted by loves2read

--most homes are built on small lots in neighborhoods and are bounded by city streets with quite a bit of traffic--
finding something that back to a green belt (especially in rental property) is just about impossible--

Yes, I looked on YouTube and seen a few videos taken in the area and also seen the property listings on various websites. However the suburbs in the UK are even more tightly packed in than it appears over there, gardens are tiny here generally and houses are jammed in at every angle to make the most use of space. I think that the neighborhood living in the suburbs where I have seen a few available properties advertised in my budget will be a happy compromise. It will also be nice to try and get to know the neighbors a little and feel part of a community when you are somewhere so new and have not got the close network of family and friends visiting etc.

[FW transplant]

Assuming you will commute during the rush hour, it will take about 45 minutes to get to and from Keller to downtown Fort Worth. Even more time from Eagle Mountain. However, Keller and north Fort Worth have pockets of housing not surrounded by development.

If you will need DFW airport at least weekly, consider a home near the Trinity Express rail. You can ride the train to downtown FW, to DFW and to Dallas (the rail is named the Trinity Express in Tarrant County and the DART in Dallas County). If you live near the rail in north Tarrant County, you'll also be near lots of shopping, including the Northeast Mall.

I recommend avoiding commuting by car on north loop 820 and hwy. 183. The traffic is almost always heavy regardless of the time of day/night or day of the week.

[Tigerlily64]

Originally Posted by FW transplant

If you will need DFW airport at least weekly, consider a home near the Trinity Express rail. You can ride the train to downtown FW, to DFW and to Dallas (the rail is named the Trinity Express in Tarrant County and the DART in Dallas County). If you live near the rail in north Tarrant County, you'll also be near lots of shopping, including the Northeast Mall.

This is really useful idea thank you. Please can you give me an idea where in Tarrant County this runs so I can narrow down rental search? E.g zip code or names of places near to rail system?

Thank you

[FW transplant]

Glad to be of help. I'd Google Trinity Rail Express and Tarrant County, Texas. I don't know zip codes. I'm sure there are many.

[hypocore]

Be aware that the TRE does not actually take you to DFW airport as it only runs east/west between downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas and is several miles south of the airport. You can take the TRE to the Centreport station and then take a shuttle to the airport from there.

It takes about 15 minutes to get from the train station to the airport, however you have to add in additional time if you have to wait on the shuttle and then time needed at the airport to get where you are going. Also, the TRE does not operate on Sundays and has reduced schedules on holidays, so there is no guarantee your air travel schedule will work with the train/shuttle schedules. I would not use the TRE as a first choice to get to the airport, if I were you.

Taking the TRE to downtown Dallas is good, as long as your destination is close to the downtown station or on the light rail routes. That part is DART. (Dallas Area Rapid Transit)

There are numerous park and ride lots that you can use to take a shuttle to the airport and you can always use the long term parking on site as well if needed.

Traveling in the DFW area can be complicated totally depending on where you have to go and what time of day you are needing to travel.

[Tigerlily64]

Thank you hypocore and FW transplant. I googled the TRE and then the nearby area of Richland Hills looking at rentals currently advertised and noticed that the houses seem quite a bit cheaper there than the Keller area, is this because the area is not as nice?

[hypocore]

Richland Hills is a rather small city that tends to be a bit heavy on the retiree population, though there are plenty of families scattered throughout. There are some beautiful older houses with terrific large lots for good prices and there are some newer built houses to be found as well, though not many and not large areas of them. You can even find many houses with enough land that they have horses on site as well. There are of course less desirable areas within the small city, but that's true of all cities.

There is very little within the actual city itself other than residences. That can be a drawback for many, yet you won't have any trouble finding anything you want connected to the city, so it's not really a big problem. It borders North Richland Hills (Walmart and Kroger for groceries for instance) , Hurst (North East Mall for shopping), Haltom City (Asian markets) and Fort Worth (easy access to downtown from Richland Hills).

The biggest downside is that it is not a up and coming place, doesn't draw people who like to be busy doesn't have the best schools and can be a forgotten place as many people don't realize it is it's own city and tend to believe it is the southernmost part of North Richland Hills.

[ChristieP]

Hypocore's advice on Richland Hills is true. Most of the houses in Richland Hills are OLD, as in built right after WW2. Some have been maintained better than others. I have friends that live down there, and their house required complete electrical rewiring, and complete replumbing of BOTH gas and water to be up to code and liveable. Needless to say, this was really expensive!

Richland Hills does have some bad parts. The apartments along Baker Dr can be very rough, especially the further west you go. Also, the apartments along Booth-Calloway are not particularly great.

Since there are very few businesses there, the city of Richland Hills is perpetually short of money. The residents there almost voted themselves out of the public transit system so they could keep the 1 cent sales tax for the city. The streets are not as well-maintained as in other suburbs. Richland Hills police vigorously enforce the 30 mph speed limit on Glenview Drive, and get a lot of revenue from the red light camera at the corner of Glenview and Booth-Calloway.

[hypocore]

True that they are old, as most were built in the 1950's, when the city began to be settled. Many have been passed down from parent to child then from that child grown up to be a parent passed on to their child. Some houses share more than one generation living in it, so additions are common amongst the houses as well. Both of those can easily cause things to not be up to code. If someone buys a house through conventional financing, the current owners typically have to pay to bring it up to code though, so the expense is not on the new buyer. As the executor of my mother's estate, which had inherited two houses in Richland Hills from my grandmother's estate, I can attest to what it takes to bring it up to code in order to sell it. Not cheap!

They also have a large amount of empty house either because of estates not being handled in a timely manner, or due to foreclosures, so they are not able to collect property taxes in a timely manner in those cases, if at all.

Most of the apartments mentioned are not actually in Richland Hills. All the ones on the east side of Booth Calloway are the ones that constantly have police called in and they are in Hurst. There is only one small complex on the west side surrounded by some duplexes.
There are a couple of very small complexes on Baker Blvd, but that larger set to the west as it curves is actually in Haltom City. There are a couple of larger assisted living places that might look like apartments on Baker Blvd though, but are not.

The city took a major hit in sales tax revenue when Sam's Club moved to the Rufe Snow location in North Richland Hills. Since then, that building has stayed empty with only a few very short term uses and the city has been struggling. The red light cameras are a relatively new addition starting in mid 2007 if I remember correctly.

The police do more radar on 121 than they do on Glenview in general, though they do heavy enforcement during school zone hours on Glenview, Norton and Baker Blvd for each of the schools, that's for sure!

The government is always at odds over how to overcome the loss of Sam's and they've never achieved anything effective. At one point they voted an approval for Albertson's to build a new store on the corner of Rufe Snow and Grapevine Hwy. They tore down the vacant grocery store left there, used imminent domain to get the homes behind the lot and tore them down. Then Albertson's backed out of the deal. It still sits undeveloped to this day. I have a relative who was forced out of their life long home there and is very bitter about it, as you can imagine.

If it weren't for the TRE, they would have even more budget trouble, in my opinion, so to vote it out would be shooting themselves in the foot for a huge boost the city got for joining in. Now if they would actually develop some retail near the station they could help themselves even more.

Yeah, I used to live in Richland Hills...can you tell? lol I lived in one house that I would have loved to purchase.....huge huge lot, grand trees, beautifully maintained house. However the schools lack a tremendous amount of what we needed for our children and their education, and we needed families near us with children as well. So we left the lovely house, for a more desirable location. I still miss that house! If I didn't have kids, I would have stayed there, most likely.