Moving from Birmingham, AL

[rainrock]

Originally Posted by Pat_in_Pa

Hurdle for poster is the time. I lived in Paoli for years. He's not doing your towns in under an hour. It ain't happening unless he catches the flyer. With drive to train time, it's an hour and a half, min.

Poster, go to Septa.org. Look at the Zones in the schedules under the regional rail link. Example, on the R5 Paoli, only outer limit of zone 2, maybe inner 3, gets you to Suburban Station in an hour door-to-door.

Seriously, why don't you take a look at some of the completely modernized and renovated houses in Lower Merion? All the comforts of "new" are there, and you get home for dinner. Might even get to make it to the kid's evening activities.

I lived in Westtown for 5 years, commuting into Center City daily by car 30-45 minutes on good days, 45min-1hr on bad days.


The OP asked for new housingwith a little bit of room for $400-$500K, stressing that commute time wasnt critical if it improved his housing options.Thats exactly what I presented.You then subsequently
blew up that recommendation and told octdoc to go to Lower Merion where non rehabbed 50 year old, 3000sf cape cod goes for $875K. So I guess the moral of this story is I can poke holes in your suggestions as well.


For the extra 20-30 minute drive westward it is a world of difference in what your money can buy.You may get lucky and find that perfect house in Lower Merion for $400-$500K but your odds increase tenfold a little further out.

Lower Merion 45 Year old cape cod

Prudential Fox and Roach - Home Search / Property Profile (http://www.prufoxroach.com/search/search_results_profile.cfm?propID=87035560-0a0b-4402-abd2-a49f354b97d2&propNo=74&sortby=1&pagestart=1&startr ow=61 - broken link)

West Chester7 year old Colonial. If this house were in Lower Merion it would be $800K.


Prudential Fox and Roach - Home Search / Property Profile (http://www.prufoxroach.com/search/search_results_profile.cfm?propID=855fba95-80eb-4a2b-a53a-865e54fbe01e&propNo=10&sortby=1&pagestart=1&startr ow=1 - broken link)

[billb7581]

Here ya go brand new construction 449K

Single Family Home - Cinnaminson, NJ, 08077 - Realtor.com


From Cinnaminson you'd probably have a 5 minute drive to the River Line stop which takes you to the walter rand center in camden where you'd transfer to the Patco Line.

[billb7581]

FWIW, according to the schedule it's 17 minutes from Cinnaminson to the Walter Rand Ctr.

http://www.riverline.com/LRT0343.pdf (broken link)


Then it looks like it's 9 minutes from the Walter Rand Center to 16th and locust


http://www.ridepatco.org/pdf/Patco_timetable.pdf

[Pat_in_Pa]

Hey, BillB, what are the taxes on that one?

Here's a PA comparison. These might be good goalposts for the poster to compare shorter train PA to shorter train NJ. I'm going to watch these over the next year and see if either goes for over 5.
http://tinyurl.com/2ekgad (broken link)
http://tinyurl.com/26944z (broken link)

[billb7581]

Haven't the slightest. I'd estimate them to be 8 grand or thereabouts.


In Cinnaminson, you're probably better off spending less money for an older house that's been redone and get off easy paying "only" 5-6 thousand in property tax and get a bigger lot.

[JerzBoy]

Billb - good call on the RiverLine. I always forget about it haha. IMO, it is much easier to find a newer house close to Center City on the NJ side rather than the PA side.

[billb7581]

I can't forget about it.. whenever I'm headed to Palmyra, it seems like the train is going by!