Ithaca, NY homes (Buffalo, Syracuse, Clay: real estate market, 2015, apartment)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am moving from Syracuse, NY area to Ithaca, NY for a career opportunity in teaching. I have visited Ithaca many times and enjoy the overall vibe of the area (lots of restaurants, "tourist-like" place, lots to do, Wine tours, apple fests, etc.). I have a pretty stable job and am looking towards the future and hoping to buy a house here someday. As I compare the housing market down here to the nice suburbs around Syracuse (JD area, Bville, Liverpool, etc.), it seems to me that the houses around my own area are nicer for the price. Or am I looking in the wrong places/surrounding areas?
A few general questions I have in terms of what I have yet to find are--
1. How is Ithaca perceived as an area in the Finger Lakes region? It is seen as a run-down, tough neighborhood-like place to live or are there some beautiful neighborhoods where a house can be bought some day? I am renting an apartment as of right now. I picture my future house to be in a nice cozy neighborhood, where the neighbors are having BBQ's, going on walks, where there is lots to do in the area as well! I tend to like to have a lot to do and to be entertained I guess.
2. How are the school districts in the 607 and how do they compare to the suburbs back where I originally am from? I always had a high view of JD, FM, WG, Bville, etc. so I am wondering if the districts are comparable? How about the overall athletics? The schools do seem smaller down here than I am used to.
In general, I am trying to plan for the future. I know what I want in my future house, neighborhood, school, etc. and I am wondering if my needs will be met in Ithaca, NY?
Lansing may be the best bet in terms of a more suburban feel, shopping and high level academics. 2014 Syracuse Area school district rankings - Buffalo Business First
It has the mall and other shopping around Route 13 and Triphammer, along with housing developments being built in the town. They usually have a solid Football team and Basketball for Girls and Boys is usually solid. They are Class C in that regard and are in Section 4.
Ithaca City is also a pretty good SD overall that has a range of areas from urban to very rural. Football outside of one year about 5 years ago, has been one of the worst big school programs in the state. Basketball is decent for both Boys and Girls(Boys beat Binghamton High for the first time in almost 20 years this year). Very good Hockey and Lacrosse programs though.
Newfield is a also Class C(Class D for Football) and has a usually good Basketball programs, as the Boys won Section 4 Class C this year.
Groton has had some good Football teams in recent years and they are Class D in that sport.
Trumansburg and Dryden will occasionally have good Football teams, but not sure about other sports. I believe that T-burg and Newfield had to combine or even drop Football a year or two in recent years.
I have heard from people that the South Side around Cleveland Ave has a "reputation", but not too sure about other areas of the city of Ithaca and it may be a matter of relativity too. If you don't mind the city or ICSD, maybe Belle Sherman is an area to look into. There are other posters that would give more specific info and hopefully, they will chime in.
I have no idea what any of your acronyms are; I'm only slightly familiar with the Syracuse area. That being said, if you're doing nice suburb comparisons, then I agree that Lansing is what you should be comparing. There is newer construction there, and the school population is more homogeneous. Ithaca and the surrounding towns themselves are probably much more rural and smaller than your comparisons. Hockey and wrestling seem to be the big sports, but Ithaca is smaller than the small town in CT I grew up in, and the surrounding towns are smaller still. Big-scale high school sports isn't really prevalent here.
The houses in your area *are* probably nicer for the price. Ithaca's real estate market is hotter than most of upstate NY. We really wanted to buy a house downtown and were just plain priced out, especially for the widely-available 100 year old house--lovely, but needing regular heavy-duty maintenance. There are friendly cozy neighborhoods--look at things like Porchfest to get an idea of Ithaca as its most Ithaca-y.
In terms of local schools, Ithaca, Lansing, and Trumansburg are pretty well-regarded. Ithaca's greatest downside seems to be at the intersection of professor's kids, poorer rural kids, and poorer urban kids all in one place. The greatest downside of the other towns is the opposite end of the spectrum; they're pretty darn homogeneous.
I have no idea what any of your acronyms are; I'm only slightly familiar with the Syracuse area. That being said, if you're doing nice suburb comparisons, then I agree that Lansing is what you should be comparing. There is newer construction there, and the school population is more homogeneous. Ithaca and the surrounding towns themselves are probably much more rural and smaller than your comparisons. Hockey and wrestling seem to be the big sports, but Ithaca is smaller than the small town in CT I grew up in, and the surrounding towns are smaller still. Big-scale high school sports isn't really prevalent here.
The houses in your area *are* probably nicer for the price. Ithaca's real estate market is hotter than most of upstate NY. We really wanted to buy a house downtown and were just plain priced out, especially for the widely-available 100 year old house--lovely, but needing regular heavy-duty maintenance. There are friendly cozy neighborhoods--look at things like Porchfest to get an idea of Ithaca as its most Ithaca-y.
In terms of local schools, Ithaca, Lansing, and Trumansburg are pretty well-regarded. Ithaca's greatest downside seems to be at the intersection of professor's kids, poorer rural kids, and poorer urban kids all in one place. The greatest downside of the other towns is the opposite end of the spectrum; they're pretty darn homogeneous.
Those acronyms are for Jamesville-DeWitt, Fayetteville-Manlius, West Genesee and Baldwinsville.
Demographically outside of Ithaca City, the other districts will have a "couple to a few" Black students in terms of percentage, with Newfield at about 5% in that regard and maybe in 1-3% range for Hispanic and Asian(except for Lansing) students. Here's a picture of Newfield's Boys Basketball team: Gallery: Newfield takes Class C Section IV boys over Watkins Glen (Their head coach is the bald Black guy on the top left) Lansing has a decent Asian student population in the 5-10% range. Heres a great website to check this info out and can do this for private schools as well: Search For Schools and Colleges
I'd say that the surrounding towns/school districts outside of Ithaca in Tompkins County are similar to the school districts/towns South and SW of Syracuse in terms of size and being more rural/small town in environment.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 04-09-2015 at 01:24 PM..
I am moving from Syracuse, NY area to Ithaca, NY for a career opportunity in teaching. I have visited Ithaca many times and enjoy the overall vibe of the area (lots of restaurants, "tourist-like" place, lots to do, Wine tours, apple fests, etc.). I have a pretty stable job and am looking towards the future and hoping to buy a house here someday. As I compare the housing market down here to the nice suburbs around Syracuse (JD area, Bville, Liverpool, etc.), it seems to me that the houses around my own area are nicer for the price. Or am I looking in the wrong places/surrounding areas?
A few general questions I have in terms of what I have yet to find are--
1. How is Ithaca perceived as an area in the Finger Lakes region? It is seen as a run-down, tough neighborhood-like place to live or are there some beautiful neighborhoods where a house can be bought some day? I am renting an apartment as of right now. I picture my future house to be in a nice cozy neighborhood, where the neighbors are having BBQ's, going on walks, where there is lots to do in the area as well! I tend to like to have a lot to do and to be entertained I guess.
2. How are the school districts in the 607 and how do they compare to the suburbs back where I originally am from? I always had a high view of JD, FM, WG, Bville, etc. so I am wondering if the districts are comparable? How about the overall athletics? The schools do seem smaller down here than I am used to.
In general, I am trying to plan for the future. I know what I want in my future house, neighborhood, school, etc. and I am wondering if my needs will be met in Ithaca, NY?
I grew up in the Syracuse area (CNS grad), went to college at Cornell and I do real estate analysis.
1. Ithaca as a perception is generally pretty good. It's the gateway to the Finger Lakes, and supplies most of the big town/small city amenities to travelers going through the region. There are a couple dicey areas in Ithaca, but on the whole real estate tends to be a lot more expensive than surrounding cities.
2. It's touch to compare school districts with Syracuse because the environments are so different. For example, Cicero has nearly the same population as Ithaca. Cicero and Clay combined are nearly the same population as the entire Ithaca metro. Ithaca has suburbs like Lansing and Dryden, but the graduating classes are about 100 and 150 kids respectively. They're well funded and all, but size is a limiting factor in opportunities for students. Ithaca has more opportunities based on size alone (~400/class), but as someone else mentioned, it's a mix of upper-middle income families, rural blue-collar (Newfield) and urban blue-collar, and there can be friction at times. You're not going to get FM's homogeneity unless it's a small local district. You're not going to get FM's deep pockets and diverse opportunities unless it's Ithaca City schools. And for what it's worth, most of the small towns in Tompkins County (Caroline, Danby) send their kids to the ICSD.
Sports are meh. Cornell and IC aren't sports schools, and their staff and faculty pass those values down to their kids. The smaller districts do well in their small divisions, and Ithaca City, barring things like hockey and lacrosse (two sports Cornell cares about, coincidentally), isn't especially interested in athletics.
I see the biggest obstacle to your general plan being the cost of housing. Teachers have trouble affording homes in Ithaca city, local wages aren't that much higher than surrounding counties. But the housing costs are much higher than Syracuse because the economy in Ithaca has grown pretty steadily while new housing hasn't. As a result, you'll pay a lot more for a sampled home in Ithaca than in Syracuse and many of its suburbs. Lansing tends to be even more expensive (Ithaca's own little Manlius, I suppose), but nearby villages like Trumansburg and Dryden are more affordable.
I will say that Ithaca College historically has a very good Division 3 Football program. Occasionally, the Basketball programs at Cornell can be pretty good.
I believe that Dryden is the second biggest school district in the area, if I'm not mistaken. I think it is comparable to Marcellus in the Syracuse area.
Village of Lansing is the new-suburb part of the Town of Lansing that is in Ithaca City schools, it's south of South Lansing (a hamlet in the Town of Lansing that's sort of the central location and has the Lansing post office). So it's good for multi level confusion.
Were it up to me, I'd go back in time and have made the Village of Lansing incorporate instead as "East Lansing," and there might even have been a few in the area who would have appreciated that from a wider world perspective.
(Lansing, MI was originally named after Lansing, NY as far as I can tell, to add another layer.)
For people really from the wider world, new-suburb in upstate NY means post-1965 construction. The northeast Ithaca neighborhood (part of Town of Ithaca east of Cayuga Heights village, immediately south of and abutting Village of Lansing) also qualifies.
I was in this neighborhood last week and was surprised to see that the streets named for brands of cigarettes still seem to retain those names, despite the nice new walkway along Hanshaw Rd. I saw a yard sign "We Want the Walk" up, was that controversial?
>I saw a yard sign "We Want the Walk" up, was that controversial?
SUPER controversial. I live in that area, and bought a house and moved in shortly after the sidewalk had been decided but before any construction had occurred. Every conversation with new neighbors involved them mentioning the sidewalk plans and at least 80% of the houses along Hanshaw had signs for or against at that point. That said, I don't have a great sense of the platform of the antis, since it was a done deal by the time we had moved in, and as the lack of sidewalk was one of the few disappointments with the purchase, we were super-thrilled with the news and vocal about it. There were a few community meetings I attended where people expressed concern about wanting to add more traffic-calming measures than were present in the initial plan. And there are a few more that were added in. Overall, I am so happy with the sidewalks.
The cigarette streets are a thing; I do wonder if anyone will ever start a petition to change them, but it doesn't seem to have a big effect on property values. They are part of the newer (~1950's) construction.
Ithaca does seem to attract teapot tempests. I can picture several meetings about deciding to go around a couple of trees west of Warren Rd.
I thought the walkway with the shallow gutter was well executed, and an appropriate retrofit solution to older excessively auto-oriented development.
Do kids walk to Northeast Elementary from the cigarette streets or are they bused?
Perhaps if younger people were aware of those brands of cigarettes, the names might be more troublesome.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
