Moving to Madison, AL (Need Help!) (Huntsville, Clay: apartments, crime, houses)

[newcityboy]

My wife and I are moving to Madison from Florida soon. We are looking to get a new construction home and are looking at the Clayton Cove and Iredell communities. Now I know, they used to be Hunter Homes and now they are Adams Homes. Is that good? Bad?
If you live in the area, what would you suggest, is it a good area/communities, as in crime and traffic?
Are there any other new constructions communities you would recommend?

[bmrisko]

Just a FYI, if you are looking to move to Madison for the schools, neither of those communities are technically in Madison city proper and are actually zoned for Huntsville city schools.

[CoreLysium]

I'll add to what Bmrisko said. I've had a Madison mailing address too. If you're looking on Slaughter Rd, everything to the east of it is Huntsville politically, though it has a Madison mailign address. I've also had a Madison mailing address at Colonial Grand at Edgewater (apartments) and further down Zeirdt where Williams Middle School is, that whole area is city of Huntsville while having a Madison mailing address.

And others know more about this than I do, but when Adam's was Breeland in the 1990's the house they built for us in the Creekwood subdivision was well made. I have never heard anything good about Hunter, though I do find their 1200 sqft two story to be the cutest little thing.

[FatTails]

We looked at Iredell before we had ruled Hunter out. The houses were actually quite nice on the inside. We did a few test runs from the area to gauge traffic. My wife thought it was okay at 6am but I thought it was terrible at 7am. It is close to a lot of amenities though.

[pcsanders]

Between 7:10 and probably 8:30, traffic in and around Madison sucks and it's getting much worse for the next 12 to 18 months thanks to additional construction.

I doubt the impact of that construction will be significant as traffic load will surely catch up in the meantime.

That said, the closer you get to I-565, the better, in my opinion. The sooner you can get off the two-lane roads -- and the further you get from all the school traffic that is unavoidable -- the better your experience will be. I'm not sure where the communities you are looking at are located, and again this is just my opinion.

Good luck!

[newcityboy]

It is good to know that the communities are not within city limits. However, when I went to the Madison Schools website and entered the address for communities, the assigned schools do come under Madison schools. Another community I like is Savannah. I do see some pre-built options and they do seem to be priced better than both Clayton Cove and Iredell. Does anyone live in Savannah? Would you recommend it?

[LCTMadison]

Neither Clayton Cove or Iredell are in Madison city or zoned for Madison City schools. Both of those neighborhoods are in Huntsville city and are zoned for Providence/Columbia. They do both have Madison mailing addresses because the Madison post office services them. Its confusing, I know.

Savannah is not in Madison either, it is in Triana. Triana has an agreement with Madison city that goes back to when Madison created its own city school system that their kids attend the Madison schools, so they go to Columbia/Discovery/Bob Jones....which makes no sense because Columbia is the farthest school from Triana, but that's how it is. That area is down south of the airport, and the location is why they are so much cheaper.

[bmrisko]

Originally Posted by newcityboy

It is good to know that the communities are not within city limits. However, when I went to the Madison Schools website and entered the address for communities, the assigned schools do come under Madison schools. Another community I like is Savannah. I do see some pre-built options and they do seem to be priced better than both Clayton Cove and Iredell. Does anyone live in Savannah? Would you recommend it?

I don't know what website you are looking at, but Clayton Cove and Iredell are 100% positively not zoned for Madison city schools.

Here is the Madison City schools address lookup.
StreetAddress

You can also see from the map below that there are no neighborhoods north of Highway 72 that are zoned into Madison city schools.
http://data.madisoncity.k12.al.us/Do...ary_Zoning.pdf

I just don't want you to be misled as some builders will advertise their neighborhoods as having a Madison mailing address, when in reality they are not in Madison city limits.

[newcityboy]

I realized what I was doing wrong. I was looking at Savannah and not Clayton Cove or Iredell. So that makes Savannah more appealing for the schools and price. Even though we don't have kids yet, the schools do factor in for the future.

[FatTails]

When we moved to Meridianville we did so knowing that certain stores would be a little drive to get to. However, since we only go shopping twice a month this wasn't a concern to us. Most stores we would need to visit in a pinch are less than 10 minutes away. That being said, we visited the Savannah area when we were house hunting and were totally turned off by its location. It's a quite a drive to get to absolutely anything except a Subway and Gate 7. IMO, if you want to save money and get good schools there are tons of better locations in different parts of the county to try first.