Best Value Suburbs

[mn55110]

White Bear Lake and Vadnais Heights both have very affordable home prices which will fit your price and square footage requirements. Distance to downtown St. Paul is under 10-miles, downtown Minneapolis is about 15-miles and the Bloomington I-494 strip is 20-miles. Rush hour express bus service is available to both downtown St. Paul ( route# 265) and downtown Minneapolis (route#270).

[ocsid]

I think the biggest question might be how new of a house are you looking for? Are you looking for tract-housing newer developments, or older neighborhoods with more character, but that might require a bit more upkeep?

50 minutes is pretty vague. Weather plays a huge part in commute times. What might be 20-30 minutes normally in the summer can be 1.5 to 3 hours with even an inch of snow falling in rush hour (plenty of people can back me up on this with the recent weather). We moved two years ago after getting tired of a 20 mile commute taking literally 2 hours on some winter days - the quality of life not being spent in a car has made a huge difference. If you're sure the job will be downtown Mpls, I'd be looking at Minnetonka, Golden Valley and Plymouth, but no farther out than that. Minnetonka and Golden Valley will have older houses, but some very nice neighborhoods. Plymouth will have newer houses, but isn't too much farther out. Brooklyn Park will fit your criteria, but I'd avoid it - I lived there, and while it's a straight shot to downtown, even the newer neighborhoods deteriorate more quickly, and the schools aren't good.

Some people are saying Woodbury, but I would not want to commute to Minneapolis from there. I'm sure many people do, but having to drive through St. Paul and the midway on 94 everyday would get old fast. I grew up in the East Metro, and I'd love to move back, but from a commuting standpoint, I probably never will.