Looking for Nice IL Subdivision within St. Louis Commute (Columbia: house, neighborhoods)

[yates2009]

Hi,

We are a large family looking to possibly build new in the SE IL area to get what we need (5 bedrooms in a great school zone). We have seen McBride Homes and looked into StoneBriar and Far Oaks which are in O'Fallon. Any one know of other communities that may be up and coming that are in the low 200s they would recommend in a great school system?

My husband will work in DT ST Louis so we would like less than a 30 minute drive, safe and great schools.

We have already explored MO side and event took a trip out there last week. Trying to get more house so now looking at the IL side.

Thanks in advance.

[billiken]

Home prices are lower in IL, but watch out for the higher property taxes.

[pdm_ad]

Property taxes were about double when I was looking at homes in Il. I didn't notice that much of a difference in price in the neighborhoods that I was comparing.

OP, check out Columbia, Milstadt and the Waterloo area. Waterloo will be a bit longer commute than Columbia but those have been the growth areas down here and you can avoid the Poplar Street Bridge daily backups by crossing at JB and taking 55 into downtown.

[sillynanny]

We are very new to the area (moved here from WA state) so I don't know much about schools and such. We live in Maryville, IL but if we were to stay here permanently we'd look into Edwardsville or Glen Carbon.

Another thing we've noticed about it here......traffic is NOTHING compared to some cities we're familiar with (like Seattle, SF, etc) which was surprising to us when we moved here. We thought with the size of STL that traffic would be much worse but were pleasantly surprised.