Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > New Hampshire
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 07-30-2013, 02:40 PM
 
Location: in a cabin overlooking the mountains
3,078 posts, read 4,359,202 times
Reputation: 2275

Advertisements

Almost everything has been said already so the only thing I have to add it is that if you are willing to consider flying out of Manchester Airport instead of Logan (and unless I had to do a lot of international travel, wild horses couldn't drag me to a flight initiating at Logan these days) you might take a look at some of the towns further north like New London. It won't have everything you want but as has already been pointed out, no town in NH will fulfil all of your wishes.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 07-30-2013, 06:41 PM
 
Location: Southern New Hampshire
4,643 posts, read 13,895,244 times
Reputation: 4626
Sorry--I've been away on vaca for the last week or so, and never got back tho this thread I don't know if anyone has answered your questions, Lou11669, but I'll give it a shot. The 2012 tax rate for Hollis is 21.23 per thousand (the 2013 rate won't come out until a little later in the year, between now and the 2nd tax bill in November/December). That breaks down as follows:

Town: 5.80, Local Education: 12.04, State Education: 2.32, County: 1.07

Bedford's tax rate is 20.32, and breaks down as follows:
Town: 4.35, Local Education: 12.53, State Education: 2.30, County: 1.14

Amherst's tax rate is somewhat higher, at 26.28 per thousand:
Town: 4.90, Local Education: 17.60, State Education: 2.62, County: 1.16

The 'average' property tax bill in Hollis, Bedford or Amherst is likely to come in somewhere in the 9-12k range. This would be a 'newer' 3000+ square foot home on 1-3 acres (or more). You can find smaller lot sizes in Bedford, which has areas that are much more densely populated then either Amherst or Hollis. (Bedford also has neighborhoods with public water/public sewer natural gas). All 3 towns are consistently ranked in the top 15 towns both in property values & per capita income. It's worth noting that property values are significantly higher than say.... Derry. With one of the state's highest property tax rates ($30.48 per thousand, with 16.35 going toward local edu) the tax bills will actually be somewhat lower (8-10k) due to lower property values in that town.

The following document will give you a good idea on how much the various towns are spending on schools, municipal, etc. Take a look for yourself:

http://www.revenue.nh.gov/munc_prop/...RateReport.pdf



The town of Hollis does not offer curbside pickup. You can arrange for a private hauler to take away your trash, or you can deliver it to the transfer station (ie: dump). Hollis does not have any public water/public sewer--private well/private septic only. I don't know if Hollis has full day K-program, but can tell you that grades 7-12, students are in the Hollis/Brookline Co-op. And yes, there are buses

Many towns come to mind when reading your final wish: to find the town that comes together: you may want to add Londonderry, Hampstead, Chester and Auburn to your list of considerations. Auburn & Chester are more rural (woods, vs the fields and farms of Hollis and Bedford). Their HS students attend Pinkerton Academy, and I know that the elementary and middle schools of both towns preps the kids well for HS. Just a quick example off the top of my head for local festivals in Derry & Londonderry (since they are my backyard): Londonderry has a great Old Home Day celebration (4 days of activities on the town green, including kids night, senior night/supper/orchestra, fireworks & concert, ,Summertime Concerts on the Common, and several art festivals through the year. Derry has DerryFest, Frost Fest (winter carnival) plus a great summer concert series. Most towns in the area have similar events going on, and I can send you a list of the various festivals throughout the year, if that would be helpful for you...


Quote:
Originally Posted by Lou11669 View Post
riddei, Great information on Hollis. It sounds like somewhere the kids could really enjoy growing up with all that acreage. If you have any pictures of Hollis, I would gladly view them. I can only imagine the view outside your window with that much land. A few people mentioned high property taxes, if you don't mind could you give me an idea on property taxes in Hollis? Put it this way, we already pay $10,000 a year total for our quarter acre our house sits on and also the tiny piece of land our condo sits on that we rent out, both in Suffolk County, LI. I am glad you are impressed with the school so far. Does the Hollis school district have school buses? What about a full day kindergarten program? What about garbage disposal?

Valerie C, Thank you also for the valuable information. I would take the better schools over the walkable town for sure, especially is such towns would be in driving distance. My children are still little, with one of them about to start kindergarten so in terms of what is important to us in terms of music or sports etc, its hard to say at this point. To me a good school district performs well in test scores but more than that, a good support system is provided for children and parents, a community feel is fostered, the turnover of teachers is low, the whole child is taught and they are not taught only to be good test-takers. I see you are a real estate agent. Can you give me an idea of property taxes for a larger home with 4/5 bedrooms on around 2-3 acres of land in Hollis as compared with Amherst and Bedford for example. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. Like I said, We hope to visit the area later in the year and getting down to two or three towns to visit would be really helpful.

What we are really looking for is a good community feel...we are looking for more space/land/fresh air but we do not want to isolate ourselves. The walkable town thing is not so much wanting to literally walk around a town every weekend but yearning for a place where the community comes together. Somewhere that perhaps holds annual community fairs/parades on holidays. The true All-American kind of experience. If that exists!
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 07-30-2013, 06:41 PM
 
Location: Nashua area, NH
278 posts, read 653,529 times
Reputation: 399
As someone who spent my first three decades on LI, I will gladly take NH's lack of services! I've only been here for a month, but love it! Most of the people here are very helpful. Lots of things for the kids to do.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-01-2013, 01:11 PM
 
11 posts, read 22,591 times
Reputation: 20
Thank you for all your help once again. Valerie C invaluable information there.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-08-2013, 10:06 PM
 
Location: Southern NH
2,541 posts, read 5,826,558 times
Reputation: 1762
I pay $10k in real estate taxes each year. Most of that stays in the town (Amherst) and most of that is for the schools. I have had three kids go through the schools successfully, so it has been money well spent. I have many friends and family in MA and they send their kids to private schools from 7th or 9th grade onwards. That is $15k or more per kid per year.

This is a house similar to mine:
NNEREN.com : Listing Detail

$10,063 per year in RE taxes.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-10-2013, 08:07 PM
 
Location: New Hampshire
1,137 posts, read 1,392,975 times
Reputation: 1236
There is no such thing as an excellent public school anywhere in this nation so I guess the Op will be sending hid kids to private school.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:




Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > New Hampshire

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top