Looking to Move to South Carolina.

[BKQC]

Originally Posted by marcrob

Like everyone else, I'm contemplating relocating to work in Rock Hill but live in Ft. Mill. I understand Ft. Mill is the place for great schooling compared to Charlotte and Rock Hill. I'm wondering what are these facts based on? I'm coming from Arlington,VA which is crazy expensive and crazy traffic but the schools are pretty good. Here is Arlington I am only a few metro stops from DC and just a short drive to Maryland. There are tons of stuff to do as well here in the DC area.

Can someone give me a few names of some great young family communities in the Fort Mill area? Also what are some fun family things to do down there in Ft. Mill?

You need to give a price range for people to recommend some neighborhoods.

[jm14638]

Welcome, soon maybe, to the Carolinas.

First I would second 'LovetheCarolinas' that you really should line up work before making the move. Look around the Charlotte, NC section of these forums and you will see many unfortunate stories of people that moved first only to not find work as easily or quickly as they figured a 'growing area' might provide.

Next - some homebuying advice. In todays mortgage market you are going to find it harder to get a loan. Everything I read says you need to come to the table with at least 10%, preferably 20%, of the value of the home in order to secure a loan with good rates. In an earlier post you said you figured to put down $20K so a $200K home would probably be the absolute top of the range.

My last and probably most important bit of advice... really pay attention to what a house payment will do to your lifestyle. The rule of thumb is that your house payment (thats the mortgage + taxes + insurance) should be 28% OR LESS of your gross (before taxes and whatnot) income. A little math will quickly show you the max you should be paying each month: (your income X 0.28)/12. So if you make $40K per year (the median for an LPN), you should not be spending more than (40000 X 0.28)/12 or about $930 per month on your home which means you should look for something in the low to mid 100K range. Any more and you'll likely be among the "house poor" that achieve the goal of finally owning a home only to find themselves perpetually broke and just making it.

Best of luck to you!

[PA Family]

As someone who has been through it, the best advice I can give is do your research and then take a few days to drive around the different areas, subdivisions, schools etc. When we first decided to move to the Charlotte area we had (still have...) friends in Huntersville and in Waxhaw. We were sure we would end up in one of those two areas because if our friends like it we would too, right? After reading up on this site we decided to add Fort Mill and Tega Cay to our list and came down several times to tour all of the suburbs we were interested, tried the commute, toured the schools etc. In the end, we liked Tega Cay the best, but I can honestly say that spending so much time researching and touring really helped us make a decision. So I would definitely encourage anyone who is considering a move to the area to really spend some time there to "kick the tires" so to speak.

There are really a nice mix of subdivisions in Fort Mill and quite affordable (speaking as someone from the north...) for example Knightsbridge, the Reserve, Baxter Village to just name a few. I usually shy away from giving too much advice because there are so many folks on this site who are WAY more knowledgable, I am sure you will get a bunch of great suggestions.

Good luck!