76001 and 76002 - how is this area? (Dallas, Arlington: sales, real estate, apartment complex)

[spicyoctopusroll]

I am recently trans located from Baltimore Maryland for about a year now. My recently engaged fiance and I are looking at homes. She is originally from DFW - FW to be precise and I met her in Maryland and moved here for her and her family. At any rate, we are looking at homes and the prices here are phenomenal compare to the Baltimore/DC area. Essentially a 150K home here would go for 400k there. Property taxes are a little high of course, but then again no state income tax (although sales taxes are also higher), but most forget you can deduct property tax each year and also interest payments, so overall its really a matter of comparing the home prices, which, did I mention, are phenomenal.

Ok, I am getting to my question. We are living in Grand prairie in an apartment complex that is gated and I have had no problems whatsoever, love it in fact, even though there are many posts to the contrary for GP. We have begun looking at homes, and the homes available in the 150k range (its also a buyers market, so some of the homes that would have sold for 180-190 have dropped drastically to our price range thus opening up more opportunity). The issue I have is that anywhere I have searched in the Texas, FT worth and Dallas forums I cannot find an answer to this question. Many speak of horror stories involving sublett (sp?) and Matlock, and Arlington, but it is rather large. Additionally many speak of Mansfield as being very nice. The confusion lie in the fact that the area between s cooper and 360 as well as Joe pool lake has not really been mentioned or specifically 76001 and 76002. There are a few houses in that area on the market we would really like to look at. Now although my fiance grew up in F worth, she is still a bit green when it comes to real estate and specific areas. She does have a certain grasp of certain areas and have relied on the to narrow down our choices. Work is in Arlington and for the price and such, commute now is nothing, so we need to keep that to a minimum. Although we do not plan on having children, we do realize that its important for resale value to have a good area/ISD.

These homes we are considering are just past the Mansfield/Arlington line but listed in Arlington. Further prompting this thread is that we finally looked at one home on silverton dr across from the high school. The house looked nice. We stopped by during the day and noone was out on a Saturday afternoon, but something about that neighborhood felt "off." The actually viewing was for later and we went back to view it. Now I am in Architecture/engineering and future development, so I happened to be doing my due diligence, ie taking photos, doing some minor inspection. Which the agent I think thought we would be in and out as most people typically are. She told us there were chickens in the back yard. Ok fine, the previous owner, or may have been a rental, never found out, just happened to mention it and thought they belonged to the owner. Luckily I decided to go back through each room and finally outside again. As we were standing by the back fence I noticed a couple of gentleman with peculiar accents (have a feeling Louisiana) were sitting in their backyard, not there before, and said, oh those are our chickens. I could already see there being issues with a direct neighbor. ALso viewing the site, as it got later in the day around 6pm, the people in the area and mostly based on the rear neighbor and the fact that they had poultry running through our potential backyard, as well as using van seats as furniture just made the decision easier for me.

Now we drove around to another house to see the outside, just my fiance and I around the Mirabella additions near joe pool and just didn't see anything to really know whether the area is good or not. Or if its a bastion for many of the hurricane victims.

Now don't get me wrong, if I had to I would open my own home to help any victim, but as neighbors and in general a neighbor with urban sprawl, other factors, we have to consider we will be living there at least five years and how the area might be then. Perhaps it was that one street and the neighborhood, but the other homes near JPL as described, seem to really fit our demand, but we like a nice quiet neighborhood, fairly safe (being from Baltimore/DC I have dealt with issues, but I really do not need to have to had the hassle of calling the police due to consistent noise levels, note I say consistent, everyone has the right to enjoy themselves, but consistently disregarding your neighbors is really uncalled for.

So what is the general consensus of this areas near mansfield/arlington joe pool - 76001/76002?

Looking at turner warnell, where we saw the one house it does seem close to matlock and sublett. Another few homes are right over on the east of 360 in the little area by loyd park. some of the homes are between these two.

Any thoughts. All are appreciated!

[spicyoctopusroll]

looking now at some of these listings, they are sandwiched between harris, matlock and turner warnell which is further from matlock and sublett but not much...so not sure

[lonestar2007]

If you look a little further to the west, you might find something to your liking. I gather you are not looking at new construction. There are some very nice neughborhoods in Pantego. The homes are older, but well built and there are some areas with older people who've lived there for years. If you don't have kids you might want to look at this option. I have some friends who moved into such a neighborhood. They were younger, but didn't have children and no plans to have any, and they loved it. The neighbors were quiet and kept their homes and yards in tiptop condition.

Another factor to look at is the way the home is built. As I said, some of these older homes are in much better condition that some of the houses that were thrown together a few years back.

The soil is important. I don't mean to keep harping on this, but I have actually seen fireplaces that have pulled away from the home. West of Cooper is sand, east is black land. When we have our long periods of no rain, the sandy soil is bad enough to crack, but the black land, well, I've seen cracks wide enough you can fall in them. You've got to keep your foundations watered, but it easier to maintain in sand than black.

Another factor to check out is school taxes. Unless, it's changed, Mansfield has always had the higher taxes, but it's been several years since I lived in Arlington, so I don't know if it's still that way.