Not sure where to post this so poting here too question about zip 76001/76002 (Dallas: sales)

[spicyoctopusroll]

I am recently trans located from Baltimore Maryland for about a year now. My recently engaged fiance and I are looking at homes. She is originally from DFW - FW to be precise and I met her in Maryland and moved here for her and her family. At any rate, we are looking at homes and the prices here are phenomenal compare to the Baltimore/DC area. Essentially a 150K home here would go for 400k there. Property taxes are a little high of course, but then again no state income tax (although sales taxes are also higher), but most forget you can deduct property tax each year and also interest payments, so overall its really a matter of comparing the home prices, which, did I mention, are phenomenal.

Ok, I am getting to my question. We are living in Grand prairie in an apartment complex that is gated and I have had no problems whatsoever, love it in fact, even though there are many posts to the contrary for GP. We have begun looking at homes, and the homes available in the 150k range (its also a buyers market, so some of the homes that would have sold for 180-190 have dropped drastically to our price range thus opening up more opportunity). The issue I have is that anywhere I have searched in the Texas, FT worth and Dallas forums I cannot find an answer to this question. Many speak of horror stories involving sublett (sp?) and Matlock, and Arlington, but it is rather large. Additionally many speak of Mansfield as being very nice. The confusion lie in the fact that the area between s cooper and 360 as well as Joe pool lake has not really been mentioned or specifically 76001 and 76002. There are a few houses in that area on the market we would really like to look at. Now although my fiance grew up in F worth, she is still a bit green when it comes to real estate and specific areas. She does have a certain grasp of certain areas and have relied on the to narrow down our choices. Work is in Arlington and for the price and such, commute now is nothing, so we need to keep that to a minimum. Although we do not plan on having children, we do realize that its important for resale value to have a good area/ISD.

These homes we are considering are just past the Mansfield/Arlington line but listed in Arlington. Further prompting this thread is that we finally looked at one home on silverton dr across from the high school. The house looked nice. We stopped by during the day and noone was out on a Saturday afternoon, but something about that neighborhood felt "off." The actually viewing was for later and we went back to view it. Now I am in Architecture/engineering and future development, so I happened to be doing my due diligence, ie taking photos, doing some minor inspection. Which the agent I think thought we would be in and out as most people typically are. She told us there were chickens in the back yard. Ok fine, the previous owner, or may have been a rental, never found out, just happened to mention it and thought they belonged to the owner. Luckily I decided to go back through each room and finally outside again. As we were standing by the back fence I noticed a couple of gentleman with peculiar accents (have a feeling Louisiana) were sitting in their backyard, not there before, and said, oh those are our chickens. I could already see there being issues with a direct neighbor. ALso viewing the site, as it got later in the day around 6pm, the people in the area and mostly based on the rear neighbor and the fact that they had poultry running through our potential backyard, as well as using van seats as furniture just made the decision easier for me.

Now we drove around to another house to see the outside, just my fiance and I around the Mirabella additions near joe pool and just didn't see anything to really know whether the area is good or not. Or if its a bastion for many of the hurricane victims.

Now don't get me wrong, if I had to I would open my own home to help any victim, but as neighbors and in general a neighbor with urban sprawl, other factors, we have to consider we will be living there at least five years and how the area might be then. Perhaps it was that one street and the neighborhood, but the other homes near JPL as described, seem to really fit our demand, but we like a nice quiet neighborhood, fairly safe (being from Baltimore/DC I have dealt with issues, but I really do not need to have to had the hassle of calling the police due to consistent noise levels, note I say consistent, everyone has the right to enjoy themselves, but consistently disregarding your neighbors is really uncalled for.

So what is the general consensus of this areas near mansfield/arlington joe pool - 76001/76002?

Looking at turner warnell, where we saw the one house it does seem close to matlock and sublett. Another few homes are right over on the east of 360 in the little area by loyd park. some of the homes are between these two.

Any thoughts. All are appreciated!

Note - Also noted that in reviewing the listings I have for homes they are mostly located right in the middle of harris/matlock/turner warnell, now its not right at sublett and matlock, but awfully close.

[loves2read]

You don't mention where either one of you work--so I would guess GP is an ok commute for you and girlfriend...is it the prices that make you want to stay in that area or the commute time or being close to her family--would you consider looking elsewhere?

I don't know that area specifically--and I think that if you are asking about homes in subdivisions vs homes on individual plots of land you would do well to ask about those by name of the subdivision--
I know that Mansfield in general saw a big run up in number of foreclosures from last year to this--
there are some areas that are not inside a city limit--just county supervision--which does make a difference in building codes and and things like police/fire responses...
schools are also important especially for resale value...
I know that a couple of years ago my husband and I were looking at an area in Mansfield with large acre type lots and homes in the 450-550K range...but we were not familiar with the area and thought the development was pretty isolated--well, we drove through it about 4 months ago and about half the houses that had been built by builders looked really shabby--vacant, no yard maintenance, there were no sidewalks because the lots are so large and the streets were in bad shape==some people who lived there were taking care of their homes but obviously there were some real problems as well...we were very glad that we had let our reservations keep us from buying a lot and building a home...
There are not too many people from that area who post on these boards--so you may not get any specific feedback...
have your checked the Mansfield/Arlington police webs to see if there are any maps showing crime calls that might help you...
Have you looked at the MLS info to see what schools those houses are zoned for and checked their reputations...in Mansfield perception was that west of 287 was not the "good" area because so much of it was lower socio-economic compared to the more upscale, developed east side--but there are some new developments going in east so don't know about specific schools...

My husband has a guy who lives in GP in SFR-tract home and they have two girls in high school and they seem pretty pleased--he works in downtown FTW---
I know that around Lake Ridge development/Joe Pool Lake issues with improperly done foundations which failed have affected many homes--foreclosures are pretty high around there as well...