Narrowing down neighborhoods...visiting soon (Plantation, Hampton: schools, living in, pricing)

[SmtSF]

Durbin Creek, Julington and Palencia are excellent choices to add to your list. Don't be too put off by the prices of houses in Nocatee. You can find something lovely in your price range, especially if you're willing to consider resale. Take a look at Greenleaf Village--you will find several three bedrooms. You may also want to consider Walden Chase. It's next to Nocatee and feeds into Valley Ridge Academy, which just opened last year. It has a pool and nice amenities. Not resort style, but still nice and you certainly get more for your dollar.

Out of all the neighborhoods in St. Johns County, I think Palencia is the most beautiful. It has a nice community commercial center with small shops, as well as townhouses, homes, and the huge homes. the amenities are first class. And, unlike many neighborhoods, they've made an effort to preserve many of the trees so there are sections that feel leafy and green. Just outside of Palencia are some nice conveniences like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. There are other neighborhoods on Hwy 1 next to Palencia and they too feed into the Palencia elementary school. You'll see them as you drive down. I think one is called Las Calinas, but I can't remember off the top of my head.

Be forewarned that the taxes in Nocatee and Palencia are higher--you do pay for that fancy infrastructure.

When we were searching, we got overwhelmed by all the choices and in many ways we went with what felt easiest--Nocatee. We had only a few days and despite my stop watch beeping, it takes a long time to go through each major neighborhood, stop at the sales offices, wander round the amenities. I do like Nocatee, but I think we would have been equally happy in any of the neighborhoods mentioned by the posters.

Good Luck!

[judeK]

Palencia is a beautiful community, but isn't it being held hostage by a really bad cable/internet company called I believe
Litestream(?) If so that would dissuade me from even considering Palencia, even though I love their golf course.

[HLYNNF]

Thanks so much everyone! We appreciate the input, it all helps! Julington Creek does seem very pretty - it seems like the homes are a little older and in need of some upgrades, but we don't mind that if we could find the right place.

Originally Posted by judeK

Palencia is a beautiful community, but isn't it being held hostage by a really bad cable/internet company called I believe
Litestream(?) If so that would dissuade me from even considering Palencia, even though I love their golf course.

I appreciate you mentioning that Jude...I did a post a while back clarifying the internet situation and you are right, we do need reliable internet and that would be a problem. In VA, we don't do that where one company gets a lock on a neighborhood, that makes me very uncomfortable! That will be a factor.

[SaintCabbage]

The Internet situation in Palencia is seemingly bad under Litestream control, mixed reviews, most are bad. Palencia, although only a mere 5 or so miles to the south, is seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Believe me, I'm a Palencia fan, but it's far, and the houses within Palencia are deep in there, it takes a solid 5 to 10 minutes to get out of the neighborhood in addition to the extra commute to get to anything like shopping, restaurants, etc.

[Florida2014]

I would agree with Saint Cabbage. The internet/cable situation knocked it off our short list and it just seemed so much further away from Jacksonville. We're in Durbin - much farther north - and still feel like it's a good 15 mins to Mandarin, 20-25 to St Johns Town Center and 35-45 mins to downtown Jax.....I can't imagine adding another 20 mins to each of those. It would make me want to stay home and surf the ne.....oops.

It's too bad, Palencia is such a beautiful community. I would recommend it if you didn't need reliable/fast internet and didn't mind long drives.

[beer234]

We moved to Palencia in April 2015. I work from home and am on VPN all day including my phone and Webex. I can say that in the past 8 weeks we've only had one brief outage. I think something must have improved as the speed is consistently good and the uptime very good. I know in the past they were horrible but i've been pleased. The cable is not as good as Dish, the channels are generally all there but the Motorola box while a dual DVR is a bit clunky but it works. We pay about 30% less for cable/internet than we did in our area where we moved.

[judeK]

Originally Posted by beer234

We moved to Palencia in April 2015. I work from home and am on VPN all day including my phone and Webex. I can say that in the past 8 weeks we've only had one brief outage. I think something must have improved as the speed is consistently good and the uptime very good. I know in the past they were horrible but i've been pleased. The cable is not as good as Dish, the channels are generally all there but the Motorola box while a dual DVR is a bit clunky but it works. We pay about 30% less for cable/internet than we did in our area where we moved.

Great! Good to hear that it's gotten better, but another thing I've heard about Palencia is that the community has really bad water pressure due to all the new construction in the area.

[beer234]

No problem with our water pressure. In fact we had Culligan remove the pump thing they installed because our fridge and reverse osmosis faucet were dripping.

[HLYNNF]

Originally Posted by beer234

We moved to Palencia in April 2015. I work from home and am on VPN all day including my phone and Webex. I can say that in the past 8 weeks we've only had one brief outage. I think something must have improved as the speed is consistently good and the uptime very good. I know in the past they were horrible but i've been pleased. The cable is not as good as Dish, the channels are generally all there but the Motorola box while a dual DVR is a bit clunky but it works. We pay about 30% less for cable/internet than we did in our area where we moved.

That's good to know, perhaps they have made some improvements. We are in VA, so I can't imagine paying any more for cable/internet!

We appreciate everyone's help! It can be a bit overwhelming, we are really hoping to get a feel for the areas, drive time, location, etc on this trip so we can narrow it down even further on a future trip!

[Newporttom]

Hey HLYNNF, retired military here also, living in Julington Creek Plantation. We also came here from Hampton Roads, although since we were (Gasp!) Air Force, we were in Newport News. We use the base at NAS Jax, and from we are (Google Race Track Rd and Flora Branch Blvd), it's usually about 20 minutes assuming we are not going at rush hour.

Rush hour (either coming or going) gets congested on the Buckmann Bridge (I-295 going over St Johns River).

I don't know if either of you are planning to work, but if you do, getting to either I-295 or I-95 becomes the bottleneck at rush hour. They are building more and more housing areas on Racetrack, and each one will make it harder to get to I-95. That's one advantage Nocatee would have over JCP (although NAS JAx would be further).

We love JCP, but it would be hard to go wrong with either area. Let me know if you have any questions I can answer.