Relocation Help Houston (NorthWest area) (Tomball, Center: real estate, house, neighborhoods)

[madu2013]

Hi All,
We are planning move to Houston and looking a house in North West area. I am going to work at HP office on Tomball pkwy. We have two kids: 3 year old and 2 moth old newborn baby. We are looking a good community with good school system and easy access to hospital/doctors office. Can you please recommend a good community in North West area? Are there good private schools? Also, we are moving from Boston and concern about hurricane/storm season in Houston. Since we have little kids we are little worry about it. Can you give us idea how worst NW area gets affect in hurricane/storm season?

We really appreciate your advice.
Thank you,

[UpstaterInBklyn]

I came here 3 1/2 years ago to work at HP. All of the neighborhoods around HP are solid, stable suburban communities. You'll find a variety of housing options from older (but well-maintained) communities built in the 70's (Lakewood Forest, Norchester), to brand new (but half-built) master planned communities like Northpointe. In general You'll get a better cost per square foot and larger lots in the older homes, but might need to deal with doing updates or living with an outdated floor plan etc. It's really all about what you end up liking.

Assuming you stay west of 249, The two school districts are Cy-Fair and Tomball, both are overall very good, but there is some variance in the quality of individual schools. We don't have kids so we don't pay a ton of attention to schools to be honest, but you should check out the individual school data.

Access to hospitals and doctors is absolutely not a problem. In the immediate area are St. Luke's, Methodist, Tomball Regional Medical Center, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, and probably several others I don't know about. All are shiny, new facilities.

As for hurricanes, there hasn't been any in the last 3.5 years so I have no personal experience, but it is a fact of life of on the Gulf coast, really not a question of "if" but "when" we'll get struck again. From what I've heard every storm is different. With Ike it was the wind, causing downed trees that led to two week power outages and lots of roof damage. Alison wasn't even a hurricane but a tropical storm that dumped huge quantities of rain that caused widespread flooding. The good news is that the Northwestern part of the area is a long way from Gulf and isn't affected storm surge flooding. Bottom line is be prepared, the local weather guys track every tropical disturbance right from the beginning, so you'll have lots of advance warning.

On a more routine basis, flooding is an issue. It happens often and can happen anywhere. It isn't at all unusual to get 12" or more of rain over a couple of days in a small local area. Exactly one year ago we had flooding issues along Cypress Creek after a very rainy few days when 14" came down in just this area and the creek spilled over its banks. Jones Road and Grant road were washed out and several homes in the vicinity of the creek were flooded. Even the HP parking garages had to close off the basement levels due to water. Ask your real estate agent for advice on this. Every part of the county has been mapped into flood plain areas designated as "100 year" and "500 year" flood zones. Avoid "100 year".

[madu2013]

Thank you for the valuable information. This is a huge help to make my decisions.

[crone]

Most of the private schools in the NW area are religious. We have Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Northland Christian Academy. Most of them will take anyone who can pay the tuition. We also have a Charter school, Harmony Academy. Some think it is Turkish Muslim, especially the good ladies over at The Eagle Forum. Harmony denies any religious affiliation.

Do not be concerned about storms unless you live on the coast or can see the creek from your kitchen. Like Upstater said, stay away from the 100 year flood plain.

You can locate very close to work and be in a good public school district.

The water table is usually high in Houston. Below grade garages and office basement should expect to flood in localized heavy rains. Pool owners all know the risk involved with draining the pool. Some pop up out of the ground.