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I just found out that we are moving from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. We are very excited but I have about a million questions for any and all of yinz who are willing to provide answers! I've never even been to Pittsburgh but I've done a lot of searching and reading on this forum so I'm a little bit informed. I'm still not sure where I should focus my search and I need to narrow it down to maybe 4 or 5 main areas.
We are a family of 5 and I'm a stay-at-home mom. My husband is out of town most of the week and his schedule is erratic and unpredictable. So I'm a bit like a single parent most of the time. The kids are in preschool, 1st and 3rd grades. My biggest concern is choosing where to live. In no particular order, here are the things that are important to us.
LOCATION. . . My husband is not a fan of city living so I think we will be in the suburbs. He is in sales and travels all over the place so the tunnels, bridges and other commuting issues are not a factor for us. He will occasionally need to get to the airport but most of his travel will be by car.
BUDGET. . . We plan to rent for a year or two so we can be sure we like the neighborhood. When we are ready to buy a house we will probably spend around $500k. We have done a lot of remodeling in past homes so we are comfortable with the idea of buying a house for $350k and immediately putting $150k of remodeling into it. In fact, that might be our preferred plan because then we can get the features we want instead of buying someone else's. We would like to be in a neighborhood where $500k is upper middle class. We don't want to be the poor folks in an ultra wealthy neighborhood or vice versa.
SCHOOLS. . . We send our kids to Catholic school and will probably do so in Pittsburgh too. So the quality of the schools is not a high priority but we want to be in an area with decent public schools because that seems to attract other families. Also, we want to choose an area where the Catholic schools don't have extensive waiting lists (as can sometimes be the case in the newer suburbs). My preference is for a somewhat larger school in the range of 400 or 500 students because I like when there is more than one class per grade.
HOUSE AMENITIES. . . We have lived in both new construction and older homes and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. On the one hand, we love the character of older homes and the "neighborhood feeling" that comes with a more established neighborhood. On the other hand, we like having a lot of the features that come with a new home such as a large garage (detached is fine), a finished basement, a mudroom, air conditioning and (maybe just maybe please god) a master bath with a jacuzzi. We prefer homes from either the 1920's or the 2000's. We do not like homes from the 1960's-1980's. There's a part of me that wants a newer house because we've spent the past 6 years renovating an old house and I'm a bit burned out (and it's not even done yet). However, I also know that "they don't build 'em like they used to" and a poorly-built new house can have much worse problems than a well-maintained old house. I guess what I really want is to be done with remodeling and renovating and living in a half-done house. I want a neighborhood where $500k can buy a mostly-done house.
NEIGHBORHOOD AMENITIES. . . Since I am home with the kids, we spend a lot of time doing stuff around the neighborhood. We'd like to have access to a good library and parks. Our current city has a spectacular outdoor pool and an even more spectacular indoor pool. An outdoor pool is somewhat important to us as that's where the kids and I spend a big part of the summer. An indoor pool would be nice but not vital. We'd like to find a city with lots of recreation opportunities: baseball leagues, soccer leagues, summer sports camps, swim lessons, lacrosse, scouting, ballet, etc. I try to keep each kid limited to one activity per kid (excluding scouting). But they are at the age where they like to try something new each summer so it's nice to have lots of options. Also, the city rec leagues are a good way for them to make friends with kids from the public schools too. Yard and driveway/sidewalk space are pretty important too. My kids are outside most of the time and they ride their bikes/scooters/skateboards up and down the driveway and sidewalks for hours. They also play on our swing set and with the basketball hoop in our backyard a lot.
CONVENIENCES. . . I'm big on home cooking, so I spend a lot of time at the grocery. I go to Trader Joe's and our local health food store at least once each week. In the summer, I go to the farmers' market weekly. I go to Costco twice a month. I go to Lowe's or Home 2 or 3 times a month. I go to Target FAR too often. . . like 3 or 4 times a week. Otherwise, I'm not a big shopper. I probably go to the mall only 3 or 4 times a year so I don't mind if I have to drive a while to get there. My husband and I go out to dinner 3 or 4 times a month and we prefer independent restaurants (not chains). We are not total food snobs, but we like a good meal and wine and cocktails to be within a half hour's drive. I also want to live somewhere convenient to a good gym with babysitting, weights, spinning and group classes like bodypump, yoga and pilates. I work out 3 or 4 times a week while the youngest is in preschool and I've met a lot of my friends at the gym.
NEIGHBORS. . . We have no family in Pittsburgh and we don't know anyone who lives there. So we want to live somewhere where we can make new friends and become a part of the neighborhood. We have great friends where we live now and a lot of them live on our block. The families on our block take turns hosting backyard parties 2 or 3 times a month where everyone brings their kids and the kids play and make smores while the parents hang out. There are over 50 kids in our one block of the street. This weekend we are having our 61st annual block party. We have a winter party too that is usually a chili cook off or fish fry. I know 7 teenage girls who live within 2 blocks of my house who babysit for us on a regular basis. I need babysitters about once a week so can I attend meetings for the PTA or my knitting club or book club or some other thing while my husband is out of town. I like that I know these girls and their parents well and I trust them. Most of our neighbors and friends are highly educated and successful. There are a lot of doctors, bankers, lawyers and a couple of dentists. My husband jokes that he's the bum of the bunch because he only has a college degree. About half of our friends and neighbors have a stay at home mom or dad in the family. We are looking for a place where we can find other families like our own and people who won't treat us like "outsiders."
Ok, so if you have gotten this far, thank you for reading my list of demands! I know I may not be able to find all of these things in one neighborhood in Pittsburgh but I'm hopeful that we can find someplace that gives us a feeling of "home." We don't have to move until school starts, but I'd like to find a rental that starts August 1st or September 1st so I need to start focusing on a particular area soon. I'm going to drive down next week for 3-4 days so I can begin scouting some areas. Please let me know your recommendations for suburbs where I should focus. Thanks again!
If you are committed to Catholic schools, then that is where I would focus your hunt. There are a lot of Catholic schools in Pittsburgh, but they can be a mixed bag, and it can be hard to find information about them. Given your (smart, IMO!) desire to focus on the larger schools, and the kind of neighborhood you prefer, you should have a relatively short list of possibilities: St. Alphonsus in Wexford (north of the city), St. Louise de Marillac in Upper St. Clair, St. Thomas More in Bethel Park (both south) all come to mind. There is also St. Kilian in Cranberry, but I am pretty sure they have a waiting list.
Off the top of my head, Mt. Lebanon (south) sounds like a good fit for you. The Catholic school in Mt. Lebanon proper is St. Bernard -- I don't know much about that school's size, but other posters can weigh in on that. Alternatively, it is close enough to St. Thomas More and St. Louise that you could make the geography work.
Mt. Lebanon has sidewalks, tons of kids, professional parents, and some good restaurants. There is a Trader Joe's close by, and I think a Fresh Market is opening soon. The taxes are a bit higher there than in other neighborhoods. It has a pretty dense feel that some people love and some more purely-suburban types find claustrophobic. Housing stock is mostly 1920s-1970s, with some outliers.
I don't know a lot about Mt. Lebanon's pool offerings, but the neighboring suburb of Upper St. Clair has a spectacular rec center that people from other municipalities can join.
Last edited by EggMaker; 06-24-2013 at 09:27 PM..
Reason: spelling
We would like to be in a neighborhood where $500k is upper middle class.
Sooooo.....anywhere? Sorry, couldn't resist.
Thank you for including so much info in your first post, I don't know enough about wealthy suburbs or schools to really be of help, but I'm sure others will be able to point you in the right direction.
500k doesn't go all that far in Squirrel Hill, shadyside, or fox chapel. Otherwise, it's a generous budget. Make sure you understand how high property taxes are. At 500k you are likely looking at 15k or so a year on many of the suburbs.
You've got a lot of good options to meet your needs, personally would look at the area considered Wexford (pine, Marshall, franklin park townships) but it's hard to find faults with other areas already mentioned since they are all nice too. I don't really know much about the Catholic schools outside of the city.
Renting a single family home for a year will be expensive and difficult to find.
Renting a single family home for a year will be expensive and difficult to find.
Very true, but if OP relaxes her standards a bit for the rental home it will make it easier to find. I think it would be a mistake to buy such an expensive house when you haven't even been here yet. Finding a rental home some place, even if they know it's not the perfect neighborhood for them, will allow them to have a home-base for investigating other areas and give them the time to properly hunt for the appropriate house (and possibly fix it up before the move in). Six month or month-to-month leases would be better, and it sounds like OP has the financial ability to negotiate that (paying more up front or slightly more per month). Who knows, maybe they'll rent in a $250K area and come to find out they love it and will save a lot of money in the long run.
Thank you for including so much info in your first post....
Agreed. It's rare for someone to so eloquently express so many details about their idyllic future hometown, and it's greatly appreciated as it makes recommending areas easier for us.
With that being said my area of expertise lies largely within the city, and even then I'm most familiar with the East End. In terms of grocery shopping as was indicated above there is a Trader Joe's and a Fresh Market (opening in July) in the South Hills in the Upper St. Clair/Bethel Park area. The North Hills only has a Whole Foods (Wexford). There are both a Whole Foods and Trader Joe's in the East End of the city (East Liberty), and while both locations are usually packed to the gills, if you only plan to go on occasion once per week or so while the kids are at school (and when most people are at work) then a trek into the city for either of these grocers shouldn't be too much of a hassle.
$500,000 is a generous maximum housing budget for Metro Pittsburgh, and even though our housing prices are slightly higher, overall, than Metro Cleveland, you should still be able to find a great home here for that price point (outside of the aforementioned Fox Chapel Borough, Squirrel Hill in the city proper, or Shadyside in the city proper). Also don't forget to factor in that annual property taxes in many areas are $2,500-$3,000 per $100,000 of assessed property value. Then again with the horror stories I hear about with high taxes in NE Ohio perhaps that's not much higher than what you're currently paying.
If I had to recommend an area to you based upon my own knowledge I'd first suggest the North Hills of Allegheny County to you (Wexford, McCandless, Pine-Richland, etc.) There are a lot of upper-middle-class professional families in this area, there is a mega-shopping area along McKnight Road in nearby Ross Township, the public schools are generally regarded as excellent, and $500,000 will certainly afford you a comfortable newer home there. North Allegheny School District is one of the largest around.
My next target area would be the far South Hills (Peters Township, South Fayette Township, Cecil Township, maybe even further south into The Strabanes). You'll be far removed here from Whole Foods, but the Costco in Robinson Township isn't very far away, and you'll still also be near the Fresh Market and Trader Joe's. Once again there are lots of college-educated upwardly-mobile families here, lots of children, great public schools, lots of activities, etc.
I can't really think of anywhere comparable to the east of the city. Murrysville would be horrid for those times your husband needed to utilize the airport. To the west Robinson Township would be your best bet. It is a "hub" retail area with a decent mall, IKEA, numerous chains and big-box stores, and several major corporate office parks. There's a great drive-in theater nearby in Moon Twp. that I'm sure the kids would love.
If you're "foodies" you'll find yourselves trekking into the city fairly regularly. Not to imply the suburbs are entirely soulless, but I'm sure a list of the Top 100 independent restaurants in the metro area would largely feature the densest concentration in the city proper. I can't think of many (if any) eateries off the top of my head that would entice me to leave the city. As the area overall continues to grow and continues to garner more national prominence and positive press I'm sure the restaurant scene will continue to improve in the suburbs, too.
A different poster (named "pinkshirt") recently asked for similar advice, and she sounds like your twin: also a mom of 3; also married to someone who is in sales, who travels all the time, and who prefers the suburbs to the city; also sends her kids to Catholic school, also expressed a desire not to be seen as an "outsider," etc. I'm half tempted to believe that you are the same person.
You can and should read the advice that she got here and here.
My advice: look at Mount Lebanon or Sewickley for older homes. I don't think that Pittsburgh has any suburbs with newer homes that also meet your other needs (close to Trader Joe's and Target and a gym; etc.) but Upper St. Clair and Peters Township might fit the bill overall.
If you're open to considering the city, Highland Park has everything that you are looking for except the good public school district. The neighbors, kids, Catholic schools, etc. would all be right up your alley, and there is a Target and a Trader Joe's and two big gyms (Club One and Urban Active) within two minutes by car.
Who are you and what have you done with the real SteelCityRising?
But seriously, Peters is probably a place OP should check out, especially if they are hoping for newer construction.
Haha! I'm not saying I personally would choose to live there; however, I'm starting to realize not everyone is cut out for city living.
On the bright side everyone cheerleading for the East End has elevated housing prices here to the point where some prospective first-time home-buyers such as yours truly are now looking to buy in other city neighborhoods that would likely be urban prairie in another generation if not for housing an impending incoming round of East End housing price refugees who want to fix up houses there.
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