Recommended Neighborhoods in Columbia, MO? (Houston, Fairview: section 8, crime, brokers)

[free2run]

I will be moving from Texas to Columbia in the next couple of months and need some advice on which neighborhoods are the safest and will be good for maintaining resale value. Although I do not have children, I want to make sure it is located in a good school district for resale. I'm 30/single and will probably be looking for new construction (I'm not very good with maintentance!) somewhere in the range of $200,000. I don't know anyone in the area so any advice would be appreciated!

[Peperosso]

If you're buying a home check the House of Brokers website, if they don't have any new construction homes I'm sure they can point you in the right direction. The Columbia Police Department maintains a crime map you can access it on their website it shows the crime and location in the City. Also you can read the daily news on the Columbia Tribune and Columbia Missiourian websites.

If you haven't been to Columbia yet I would highly recommend you visiting several times prior to your move.

[aragx6]

Most of what truly little serious crime occurs in Columbia occurs in its most central areas. As such, if you're looking for new construction you're unlikely to be anywhere near crime.

The entire city is under one school district, though Rockbridge is considered a better high school than Hickman.

Sprawl is pretty common, so if you want new construction, prepare to be on the northern, southern, eastern or western edges of the city -- anywhere from 10-20 minutes to downtown.

[cyrano]

I think a visit here and a lot of homework would be a very good idea. There's only one school district in Columbia, for instance-- it's not like a Houston, Dallas, or Austin. There are also multiple discussions here on Columbia neighborhoods-- it should be easy to use the search tools available to find them. The city has crime maps that get down to individual offense levels on what street and block (gocolumbiamo.com is the city website).

New construction sends you to the suburbs, probably north of I-70. Stay away from the Derby Ridge area, notorious as a Section 8 housing area with a lot of crime, but otherwise it looks like suburbia everywhere. It's a lot more fun to live close in, though-- the outer suburbs feel like anywhere USA, but several inner-city neighborhoods feel like, well, Columbia.

[stepka]

You could go live in my old neighborhood--Fairview. The elementary school was very good at one time and still is as far as I know and Ronald Reagan visited it one time. It's a bit older and more established but there are very few truly old houses in Columbia and the houses in Fairview shouldn't require too much maintenance and besides, you have all those big trees.