Dallas, TX area

[DisnyMama]

Hi Angrypenguin, my ds and I lived in McKinney for 2 years but we chose to move back to So. CA. for family last summer. I really enjoyed McKinney. You have the east side which is the old section which has some really neat old historical homes and a cool town square that the city is restoring-many neat shops with a soda fountain. Then on the West side of the 75 is the newer part of McKinney.

There are many, many new gated communties being formed all over the city with mid to huge, gorgeous homes. They all usually are HOA (pools and some are even part of a country club/golf course, lakes, green belts). In fact, there is one community that has a lake and some type of water park featre for the kids.

My take on traffic as a native L.A. gal: When I first arrived in the Dallas area my realtor tried to scare me about the Dallas/Fort Worth traffic. I spent 2 years driving it (all over the MetroPlex) at various times of the day and night and in my opinion it gets a "6" vs L.A. traffic gets an "8" on a scale of 1-10...10 being total gridlock.

Yearly vehicle registration is cheap compared to CA. (except for your initial transfer of state but still less than CA). Schools in the west side of McKinney are great.

I wish you & your family all the best.

Shannon

 

[Angrypenguin]

Hi Angrypenguin, my ds and I lived in McKinney for 2 years but we chose to move back to So. CA. for family last summer. I really enjoyed McKinney. You have the east side which is the old section which has some really neat old historical homes and a cool town square that the city is restoring-many neat shops with a soda fountain. Then on the West side of the 75 is the newer part of McKinney.

There are many, many new gated communties being formed all over the city with mid to huge, gorgeous homes. They all usually are HOA (pools and some are even part of a country club/golf course, lakes, green belts). In fact, there is one community that has a lake and some type of water park featre for the kids.

My take on traffic as a native L.A. gal: When I first arrived in the Dallas area my realtor tried to scare me about the Dallas/Fort Worth traffic. I spent 2 years driving it (all over the MetroPlex) at various times of the day and night and in my opinion it gets a "6" vs L.A. traffic gets an "8" on a scale of 1-10...10 being total gridlock.

Yearly vehicle registration is cheap compared to CA. (except for your initial transfer of state but still less than CA). Schools in the west side of McKinney are great.

I wish you & your family all the best.

Shannon

Thanks for the very informative post! I've been driving myself nutty lately trying to decide between Plano, Allen, and Frisco. And McKinney's a wild card too. Too many areas! The job's not even a done deal yet

 

[Hercules10]

Um, don't think so? This house is 3 years old.

Builders started using radiant barriers about 5 yeas ago. Ya'll just might have one.

Here's an article in the Dallas Morning News that I found interesting about the housing market here. Basically it states that folks are keeping true home prices secret because of either shame (at taking a loss) or not wanting the appraisers to know exactly how much they paid to avoid property taxes. Keep that in mind when looking at zillow estimates. The zillow-estimate on mine is about 25K over what my neighbors sold their comparible house for.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...Sprices_18bus.ART.State.Edition2.50e6fd6.html

Also keep in mind Texas has one of the highest property insurance rates in the country....once again, thanks to hail and wind.