Relo from denver, job in Cambridge

[Beantown_mama]

I work in Cambridge and many people seem to live in Lexington, Belmont, Winchester, Newton, Arlington and Melrose. I think all of those places have about 1/2 hour commute. I would definitely say that Melrose is the most affordable for your price range and is a beautiful town. If I had all the money in the world, Winchester would be my first bet.

Also, any town along the Redline would work as there are 4 stops in different parts of Cambridge.

[findingmesomeday]

Take it down to $400K for a 3 bedroom and you might have a bit more luck. You are still going to be limited and probably need to buy a "fixer". I second Medford schools leaving something to be desired. Boston Magazine has one issue each year devoted to rating the individual school systems and it might be a good place to start narrowing down your search. Just be aware that some of the criteria they use to determine the best school districts might not match up with your criteria.

I think there's also an MCAS portion of the mass.gov website (or the education part of that website?). You can probably google it and find out. You can use the MCAS scores to *help* narrow down your choice as well. I wouldn't advise going only by MCAS scores either. But the more you know about each district, the more you can compare and contrast. When we moved here 11 years ago, I targeted what I perceived to be the 10 best districts in MA and then cross referenced it with our commute, housing budget, etc. That narrowed it down to about 2 towns. We've been very , very happy with our decision. Excellent schools and a great place to live!