Moving to Philadelphia in 2013 Need Help: (Chester, Drexel Hill: low crime, houses, neighborhood)

[jmeads3]

Hi all,

I am new to the site but love it. I have read many of these threads trying to seek out the answers I am looking for. My family and I are moving to Philadelphia metro area in 2013. My wife and I have one child. My son is 10 months old currently. We are looking for a neighborhood in the suburbs. We would like a quiet neighborhood that is close to shopping and food.

I am not sure if my wife can live without being close to Walmart, Ruby Tuesday, Target ect, ect... We want to live somewhere safe and close to a nice shopping/ eating area. We also are only looking at the Middle to South Philadelphia area.

We have looked at places like Springfield, Haverstown, Chester, Drexel Hill......We also have looked closer to the city in the area of South Philly near the ballparks.

But haven't been able to find what we are looking for:


1. Safe

2. Close to food and shopping

3. Not too far outside the city (no more that 15-20 miles.)

4. Something in our Price range. ($100,000 a year)

5. Place where we can have a house and a back yard. Quiet street.

Any help you can provide would be welcomed!!!

[newmarlig]

Where will you be working? Will your wife be working outside of the home? If so, where. Will you need two cars? Will you be able/willing to take public transportation to your job if it's available? When you say something in your price range - does $100,000 mean that will be your salary? What can you actually afford for a home?

[CarnivalGal]

Check out Media.

[NJT 9801]

Cherry Hill, New Jersey. It has all the all the requirements that you listed. Target, Restaurants, Walmart, easy access to Philadelphia with 5 different Interstate systems to go anywhere. It's an upper middle class to upscale township with great schools low crime, and house with a lot of land in your price range.

[ThomasDarcy]

+1 for Media. Very cute, walkable, with good transportation access. In contrast, Cherry Hill is a wasteland.

[UDResident]

Stay out of Chester. There's really nothing suburban about it anyway. It's a post-industrial city that has seen some hard times.

Given your criteria, out of the list you gave I'd suggest Havertown, Springfield, and Drexel Hill (specifically the Pilgrim Gardens and Aronimink sections). Not included in your list, I'd suggest Media, Marple, Newtown Square, Swarthmore, and possibly some other places in Delaware County. 15 to 20 miles from the city covers a lot of places. $100,000 a year goes pretty far in this area, too. I think Havertown and Drexel Hill especially would be a good combination of being walkable and near amenities and having safe and quiet streets. There are also some huge houses with large yards in both. I've seen houses with more than an acre of land in Havertown.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by UDResident

Stay out of Chester. There's really nothing suburban about it anyway. It's a post-industrial city that has seen some hard times.

Given your criteria, out of the list you gave I'd suggest Havertown, Springfield, and Drexel Hill (specifically the Pilgrim Gardens and Aronimink sections). Not included in your list, I'd suggest Media, Marple, Newtown Square, Swarthmore, and possibly some other places in Delaware County. 15 to 20 miles from the city covers a lot of places. $100,000 a year goes pretty far in this area, too. I think Havertown and Drexel Hill especially would be a good combination of being walkable and near amenities and having safe and quiet streets. There are also some huge houses with large yards in both. I've seen houses with more than an acre of land in Havertown.

The cardinal rule of home purchasing is to not buy a property worth more than three times your pre-tax income. This can obviously be adjusted upward or downward based on savings, debt, expected future income, etc. etc., which is why we can be of more help to the OP if they give us a price range.

Going off a budget of ~300k, Havertown, Springfield, and Marple are all within reach. You won't be able to afford new construction, but you can buy a decent-sized house on a decent plot of land with good bones that could use, if anything, some aesthetic modifications to bring it up-to-date. I would also add Ardmore (within parts of Lower Merion and Havertown).

$300k can buy something quite nice in Drexel Hill, but the public school situation may not be to your liking (UD schools aren't "the pits" as some would have you believe, but the environment is a bit different from what a wealthier, more homogeneous suburban district would provide--in some ways good, others not so good [I'll let UDResident, who is much more intimately acquainted with the schools than I am, explain in further detail]).

$300k will be on the low side for Newtown and parts of Media (Middletown Township and the Borough proper are the most affordable; Upper Providence and Rose Valley are a bit more expensive), but you could still strike gold--either a fixer-upper you fall in love with or a more desirable property someone's trying to sell fast. If you're amenable to that sort of property, I'd check out Nether Providence, Swarthmore, and Narberth (the Borough) along with Penn Wynne, Bala-Cynwyd, and Merion (the areas closest to City Ave) in Lower Merion.

Across the River in Jersey, I'd check out Cherry Hill, Voorhees, Evesham, and Mt. Laurel if you don't mind sprawl and want to be able to get to the city in a breeze. North of the City on the PA side, Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Springfield (Montgomery County), and Abington could work too, though of all the places mentioned, it's toughest getting into Town from the Northern suburbs.

All this may seem overwhelming, but you should be happy to know that there are a lot of great suburbs for you to choose from. There isn't really a wrong choice. It's all a question of your wants and needs.

Good luck!