Should the proximity of Hanscom Field influence our house hunting in Lexington & Concord? (Winchester: middle-class, real estate)

[ernani]

Our family is considering a relocation to either Lexington or Concord. During a previous visit to the area, a real estate agent, trying to convince us to consider Winchester, brought-up the concern of increased levels of noise and disturbances because of the growth in frequency of flights to and from Hanscom Air Field.
Is it true? Should we be concerned? Are there specific areas that suffer more / areas to avoid?
We will highly appreciate local input and information.
Thanks.

[wxjay]

I work right outside Hanscom Air Force Base and the noise is not overly noticeable. I also don't find it super frequent. However, it is an office building and not a home.

[kingeorge]

Living close to Hanscome, you will hear some noise for sure, but it is up to you to decide if you can deal with it or not.

[gf2020]

It's worth considering Winchester as an alternative to Lexington and Concord even without any issues from Hanscom.

[ernani]

Thanks everybody for their replies. I guess I am trying to find-out whether there are regular approach routes to landings that are affecting areas a little further away from the immediate surroundings of the air field. Information anybody?

[MikePRU]

I think the agent you spoke with is exaggerating quite a bit. I've sold in Lexington in the past and I keep in touch on a regular basis with my clients. None of them have ever complained about noise from Hanscom and one of my clients lives about a 3.5 mile drive from Hanscom. I'm sure there are some areas that are under approach routes and are a little more noisey, but any house that has modern windows will probably deaden the noise enough that you will never notice it unless the windows are open.

[Billski]

I realize this is an old thread. But it's the only place I see to express my parting sorrows.

I lived in Lexington for the last 17 years. I moved from Lexington due to the noise. I had lots of neighbors who were not affected at all by the noise. It depends on what is important to you. I wish people who make glancing comments such as "not bad" or "didn't notice" would put it into a context. Where did these folks live previously? Did they come from a city? Were they never home except on Sunday morning? Did they live under a flight path?

Lexington is a fantastic town in terms of not just the schools, but the "convenience factor" - close to the highways, close to transit, close to shopping, close to medical care, lots of a mature offering of cultural and, social and foodie opportunities, amature and well-funded infrastructure. But. You can't choose your neighbors and you can't (for the most part) choose what they can and cannot do on their property. Which leads me to Hanscom.

Hanscom is a dual-use field. Civil and Military. Probably 98% civil flights. The Air Force is a perfect neighbor. They are mostly R&D support nowadays, business hours for the most part. Even when fighter jets do come in, it's during waking hours in the middle of a day. Civil aviation patters diverge from there. It's predominantly private jet and turboprop aircraft, largely carrying executives from places like Liberty Mutual and Raytheon. A few times a day it's a 727 cargo flight. This generally amounts to, on the average as I've witnessed, about 30 landings and 30 takeoffs per hour until about 8:30 am. In the afternoon, flights begin to pick up around 4 pm and continue until about 6:30 pm at a steady pace. Some jets are quieter than others, but that's relative tool. Around noon on Friday you'll see a lot of flights from execs heading out for the weekend. Saturdays is generally quiet, maybe a flight every 10 minutes. Sunday afternoons starting at about 3 pm, the pilots begin to arrive to pickup their executives for the business flight out. There are fairly regular pro sports team charters. You can always count on a 727 flying low at about 2am after an away game. We also have a medi-flight helicopter base which operates 24/7. So that's the use.

It's all about location, right? Right! There are many specific neighborhoods in Lexington that are directly under the Hanscom approach. Hanscom has two major runways, 5/23 and 11/29. 5/23 does not affect Lexington, 29/11 does. The landing approach is almost always on 29, right over Lexington. Get out your map, and find the runways. Take a ruler and Draw a straight line out from the runway as if the runway was being extended into Lexington. The first mile is general the landing approach path. I lived one mile out along this line. At this point, most business jets have lined up for landing and it’s a straight line over the house. At this point, the aircraft are approximately 1,000 feet overhead and the aircraft is moving rather slowly.
But how loud is it? Well, when a business jet is overhead, outdoor conversations cease entirely for about 20-30 seconds. You wouldn’t hear a baby cry. I never even considered putting up my hammock. I’d never snooze. Things in the house rattle even though the windows are all new. The noise is somewhere in the 90 decibel range. That’s about four times louder than an ordinary person would consider “annoying”. It’s about as loud as a motorcycle at 25 feet.
You need to define your measure of “quiet” and then define specific neighborhoods. For example, Follen Hill or Meriam Hill area have zero flights overhead. Diamond Middle school? Not so much. Winchester? Another great place for avoiding overhead noise.


In the course of looking for a new town, I “redlined” areas on a map where I would not live. For me, it’s within one mile of an airport runway approach, a highway, a commercial district, a factory, etc. I realize that it’s give and take in the housing market.
I’m sure most Lexingtonians are more than happy to ignore overhead noise for the other benefits. Many will disagree with me. So take mine as one more opinion, mix it with the others and pick your poison. I grew up in quiet area of the country and am much more of a “country mouse”, which may explain my proclivity towards peaceful settings. So there you have it.

[lrfox]

^That's all good info, and very fair.

One thing that is important to point out with things like airports, railroad tracks, etc. is that they don't always stay the same. And often risk becoming more active over time. It happens all the time with train tracks - someone buys a house near an old, sparsely used railroad and is horrified when the start running trains again. I completely understand the frustration, but you can't bank on infrastructure like this always maintaining the same levels of use.

Hanscom may be tolerable now for many, but it may not always remain that way. Hanscom has played host to scheduled commercial service as recently as 10 years ago. It had scheduled service on 56 passenger Dash-8 (loud) aircraft as recently as 2003. It currently sees regularly scheduled cargo flights. With Logan nearing capacity and demand increasing, it's not out of the realm of possibility that Hanscom will take on some of the overflow. It could see an increase in cargo, passenger, and general aviation flights in coming years which would definitely up the noise levels. If you're buying and noise is a concern, the safe bet is to always plan for it to get worse.

[turf3]

Personally, the worst thing for me is the small plane pilots who take off on sunny afternoons and then circle, circle, circle, for hours.

The character of Lexington vs. Concord vs. Winchester is quite different. My summary:

Concord - most semi-rural. Furthest from the city. Least convenient. Lots of old money. Less McMansionization. Lots of Hanscom noise in certain areas.

Lexington - rapidly becoming nothing but condos and McMansions. Forget buying a single family house unless you are prepared to live in a horrible shack (for $600k+) or you're two neurosurgeons. Basically a very nice small town that currently serves as an appendage and support system for a high powered public school system; lots of new money and debt, lots of luxury cars being badly operated. Closer to the city. Very convenient. Western side has some areas that approach semi-rural; eastern side is more "thickly settled suburban" if that makes any sense. Less Hanscom noise in my opinion, over most of the town.

Winchester - more middle-class, less McMansionization and yuppie posturing than Lexington. Thickly settled everywhere. Probably as expensive as Lexington, though, for the same kind of house. I am not sure whether Winchester has a defined town center in the way Lexington and Concord do. Closest to the city, but I'm not sure whether commuting is actually any more convenient for most of the places people commute to.

So aside from airport noise, the three towns are quite different from each other - though to my eyes Lexington and Concord are more similar and Winchester is the most unlike the other two (my syntax got a bit garbled there, but you know what I mean).

[tysmith95]

Winchester has a defined town center.