Moving to McKinney/Allen/Fairview area

[thestafs]

Hi, we have been trying to sell our house for 8+ months now. DH is working in Dallas and I am in DE with the 5 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats... until the house sells but the market stinks here so who knows... We have dropped the price a bunch just yesterday so lets pray!

Anyway, just wondering if there are some neighborhoods that we should stay away from in these areas. We are looking to spend no more than $235,000 and would need a 4 br 2.5 bath minimum. No fixers either. Is this reasonable that we would find something in our price range with good location, good neighborhood, good schools (even though we homeschool) or are we totally our of our minds?

I am working with a realtor in the area down there and it would be so much better to have a mamas opinion too! You know the area well!

Thanks mammas!
Lynn

[cherylchoo]

I am not intimately familiar with that area, but I know enough about it to know that 1) you should have no problem finding what you need in that price range and 2) if your DH works in Dallas proper, he's in for a really long commute. But it's a very nice area, in general.

What I can tell you is to use the ebby.com real estate web site to aid in your home search, even if they aren't your realtors. Use the search to pull up a listing in McKinney, and click on that listing (any one will do), and then click on the "Proprty Map" button. Then, a window will pop up with a map showing you that listing. Check the box in the upper left hand corner that says "Properties for Sale". It will list everything for sale on the map. You can further use the pull-down menus to screen out the number of bedrooms, price range, etc. and you can zoom in or out so you have less than 150 listings on the screen. Once you have less than 150, you can mouse over individual houses on the map and preview the summary before you click and pull up the whole listing.

This is a great way to search for houses if you are visually oriented. You can see what the houses in the surrounding neighborhoods are listing for, if there is a school/park/business development/major road nearby, and it has a better filtering function than most online real estate sources. I used this extensively before we found our house in Richardson (not terribly far from where you are looking, but much closer to downtown Dallas). Ebby is a DFW realtor, tho, so it wouldn't help people looking outside of this part of Texas.

Good luck!

cheryl

[vmccal1]

The houses are much better priced here than in other areas. For the same price we got 3x's the house we would have gotten in Chicago or 4x in Colorado. I look forward to you being part of our DFW mama's group!