Moving to eastern Bethlehem area? (Easton, Wilson: for sale, real estate, rental)

[kbaker]

I am relocating to a job that is in the eastern part of Bethlehem, right off of highway 33 between interstate 78 and highway 22 on Emrick Blvd. I am married and have 3 kids ages 10, 7, 5. I am looking for 3 bedroom rental with a commute time of less than 30min, less the better. My other main concern is moving somewhere with a good school district, and with the possibility of buying a house after a year or so.

I have doing some research and I was wondering if the Nazareth area was a good place to live. I don't mind rural areas, as long as they meet the above criteria. This looks like a very quick commute, since it is right off of 33. I am very unfamiliar with the surrounding area. Therefore, I am just guessing where the best school district, quickest commute, etc. would be in this area. Perhaps another surrounding area might better suit me? Thanks in advance for any comments/suggestions they are greatly appreciated.

[toobusytoday]

What's more important, the quick commute or the better school? Here are the school districts that you should compare on www.schoolmatters.com: (broken link) Nazareth, Bethlehem, Saucon Valley, Southern Lehigh, Parkland. Rental housing outside of the city of Bethlehem might be hard to come by, but the schools in Bethlehem are not that great. Nazareth is growing pretty quickly and has not been known for having strong schools. Make sure that you check past the elementary schools if you have any plans of staying. Most of the districts have good elementary schools, it's the MS and HS's where the scores start going down. Good luck!

[kbaker]

I would like to have both a quick commute and good school. I would probably prefer the quick commute, since I can always move again before my oldest starts middle school, if the current area is not good.

Thanks for the link. I still have some time to look for a place to rent. It looks like the Saucon Valley, eastern part of Bethlehem, or Nazareth would be the ideal location from what you said. Are their any other school districts in this area? Perhaps just north of Nazareth off of highway 33? I have also been reading that a lot of people live in this area and commute the New Jersey and such. I am afraid that this will drive up the cost of housing. Is their any truth to that? If so is there anywhere that is less desirable to New Jersey commuters, but would still satisfy me goals? Thanks again.

[toobusytoday]

The other school districts are Wilson, Pen Argyl, Bangor,and Easton. I wouldn't put my kids in any of those schools, but their location would be an easy commute for you. The local paper, The Morning Call, has a feature in the Sunday Real Estate section that shows a map of the area with the avg. priced house by school district. It's compares housing sales from March 2006 to March 2007. According to this past Sunday's paper, of the school districts I mentioned in this post and my first post, Bangor is the lowest with a house price of $170,000. Nazareth's is listed as $303,000. Here is a good realtors site: http://www.lehighvalleyarea.com/content/schools.htm This particular link is to the schools but the main site that you can navigate to also has listings of houses for sale.

The one thing I remember about Bangor is that our HS's mascot was beaten up at a football game. Not gangs or anything, just rednecks. Since our football team hasn't had a winning season since longer then we've been here (almost 10 years) it wasn't anything to do with sports. For me, a ten minute longer commute would be worth better schools.