Relocating from FL....North Glendale, Peoria, or Deer Valley?? (Phoenix: insurance, crime)

[bree093]

We are a young professional family in our late 20's. We have 2 young girls, 3 and 8. I'm a teacher, he is a network administrator. We are getting out of South Florida....it's beautiful here, but only good for the super rich or super weird. (I'm going to love not writing out that $12,000 property tax check and that $6200 insurance check each year!!!) My question is, North Glendale, Peoria, or Deer valley? How is the commute to downtown, the crime, which is the best subdivision? I've got family in North Glendale and Peoria, and both areas seem nice. Happy Valley area, Arrowhead, Stetson, seem nice? The cheaper the better, but if it takes $450k to be in a very safe neighborhood, that is fine. BTW, anybody want to invest in an 5/3 on an acre outside of Fort Lauderdale...only $700k???

[wit-nit]

Actually any of the areas you mention are good choices. You might want to look up each cities web site on Google and see which area fits your need best. You'll find nice homes in those nice areas from$ 300.000 and up. Arrowhead and No Phoenix would be my first two choices. Good stable communities. No snobs, much better taxes than FL, no gators or swamp land here. A little warm right now, 112, but no humidity. It's a dry heat, 10-15% humidity on the average. But our humid monsoon season will start in a few weeks and then it'll be like FL is to your for about 6 weeks. Right now it would feel like about 85 to you with your higher humidity there. We don't sweat and have to take a shower every two hours like FL.
If you're talking about the commute to downtown Phoenix, depending on the time of day it would take approximately 30 to 45 minutes from the areras you're interested in. Your taxes will be dramatically lower, insurance much lower too. Quality of homes are great compared to what I've seen in FL.

[bree093]

Thanks for your reply...makes me feel like I'm on the right track =)

[HX_Guy]

I'd go N. Phoenix or Peoria...Deer Valley is a bit of an older area (80s - early 90s). Your budget sounds perfect for either N Phoenix or Peoria, you should be able to find a very nice brand new home.

As for FL, 700k doesn't seem that bad for the description. A house on an acre lot out here would probably cost the same, depending on the house of course.

[sablebaby]

I think you'll be just fine with any of your choices (maybe not deer valley), but north Glendale and north Peoria, Happy Valley, Stetson Valley or Hills are all great places to live. However the commute to downtown will be about 35-45 minutes during the good time of the year (which is right now) and depending what time you need to be at work and where exactly you work. And more during the busy time of year, as the only freeway to get into the city is very heavy up here. I live up here real close to the freeway (Happy Valley) and it takes me right now 27-30 minutes to get to central phx (north of downtown by several miles), but I also don't have to be at work until 9:15am, later than most. The traffic is just heavy up north, but quickly moves as others move on to the loop 101. During the bad time of the year I don't even consider using the freeway and just take surface streets and it takes me 36-40 minutes.

It's fairly safe up here, however we do get a lot of property crimes. There was a link on the forum to crime stats on a map. We have a lot! You will have a LOT less over IN Arrowhead as I checked that is was looking really good. I would HIGHLY recommend living in Arrowhead anyway, it's such a nice place to be in. The commute may add a few minutes to your commute though (depends, it may be the same as HV). But you won't have any problems finding a home in your price range there, or anywhere up here. Depending on size, it could be as little as $265k-350k, or up to your stated $450k (or more of course ).