Any thoughts?
Cost of living?, likes?, dislikes? good neighborhoods.? bad ones? stuff to do?, job market?
...basically the good, the bad , and the ugly?
any info is appreciated!

Thanks!
- Lori

Lori,
I live near Charlotte and lived there for a few years as an adult and grew up there. It is a bigger city that is growing at a really fast pace. Charlotte has good and bad sections just as any place will have. The only problem that really sticks out now is the "gangs". They are EVERY WHERE! I like living in smaller towns. We lived in Charlotte growing up and then again for about 5 years and I just could not handle it. I like having land and a big yard and living in the country seems safer to me. We live near Kings Mountain / Crowders Mountain and it is a small area part of Gastonia but out in the country.

One thing about Charlotte is you can be in a "good" section of housing and the next thing you know you can end up in a side of town you don't want to be in. Charlotte has some really upper class areas and then you have tons of your middle/lower class areas. The downtown area does have a problem with homeless people and street walkers late at night. But once again that is what you will see in any bigger city.

As far as stuff to do you can find tons of things to do. We have Carowinds which is an amusement park right at the NC, SC line. We have a lot of places for kids to attend, museums arts and crafts...ect....

Taxes are higher on property then some places. The job market is good as far as if you open the Sunday paper pretty much ever filled will have something available in the Sunday paper.

Not sure what else I can say. I like Charlotte (my mom and dad live there) and I work in Charlotte but I prefer to live in the country. LOL so I am biases.

Tracy

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Give me the wisdom and grace to understand

Tracy S
Mommy to 5 little girls
Victoria
Alyssa
Samantha & Selena
Malaya
Tracy_s5girls@yahoo.com

Do you want to live right in Charlotte?

We live about an hour away from there but have found after moving to NC about 3 years ago that we love it. I will wait to see how close you are hoping to live before I post the info about our area since I dont know much about the city itself.

Darlene

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Sell crazy some place else, we are all stocked up here.

Moved about 1 hour north of Charlotte 2 years ago. The weather is great. The cost of living on some things like taxes and homes are cheaper than up north, but food prices here I think are higher than anywhere I have ever lived. If I had to do all over again I would have never left Florida.

We are trying to find a place to go once DH "retires" from the Marine Corps.
We went to Raleigh to check it out but it seems all the new housing developments were either out in the boonies or right next to an ancient part of town (we would want to keep a decent property value of course). We are still considering Raleigh since we were only there a weekend to do a quick look-see. We like NC in general but want to be close to a larger area, at least within decent commute time to shop/work/etc...

He loves all the sports stuff in Charlotte of course ( I could not care less if you paid me! )
I want to be within an hour of a commissary , can't stand the scary prices at regular grocery stores....lol

we are searching for a home....lol at a decent price !
Neither of us wants to ( or can afford to ) move to our home states.


Any place on the east coast is really an option, as long as it's housing market is affordable and jobs are o'plenty.

I moved to Concord, NC (which is minutes from Charlotte) from OH about 18 months ago. We are actually being transferred back to OH. I too think the food prices here are outrageous! Milk is darn near five bucks a gallon at some stores! The schools here are aweful, but we did manage to find a nice neighborhood that we like with a lot of ammenities! I like it because you can get to a lot of fun places in a short amount of time, and the weather is mild compared to OH! The shopping is pretty good too! The taxes are cheap, and the housing is affordable, but you make up for it in other areas. I actually told someone from this board who lived in CA about my neighborhood when she said she would be moving to the Charlotte area last year, and I never heard from her again, and we found each other a few months ago and she built a house behind me!! kinda cool! I'd be glad to answer any specific questions you have especially since I was freshly transferred here!

Kristie
pgrandsko@carolina.rr.com

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Kristie
mom to Tyler (11/94) & Joycie (3/99)
www.thegrandskofour.shutterfly.com

I live in Jonesborough TN and I absolutely love it! Of course I basically lived in the area all my life. I moved from a small town in VA that was about 30 minutes away from here. It's beautiful here and the cost of living is not bad at all. Housing is really affordable here and you are within a 45 minute drive to 3 larger cities(Kingsport,Johnson City, & Bristol-home of the Bristol Motor Speedway) Kingsport & Johnson City are only 25 minutes away. Bristol is the one that's 45 minutes away. We're also located just two hours from Knoxville and Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg.

http://www.jonesboroughtn.org/

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"Let me watch my children grow to see what they become
Lord don't let that cold wind blow til I'm too old to die young'

Loribean,

We live near Winston-Salem NC. We moved here because hubbys job moved here about 3 years ago. I find that the cost for housing, land and taxes are cheaper then my family pays in PA. It is just a little more then we paid in GA. I dont mind telling you what we paid for our house... we bought a 3 bedroom ranch home that has a full basement (1600 Sq ft before we finished the basement, about 3000sq ft now) it sits on 1.25 acre and we paide less than $170,000.

As for food, I dont find that it is that much different. I shop the sales and only buy my milk at the mini mart where it is $2.99 a gallon. It is more than that in the grocery store.
We have been to football games in Charlotte and the drive wasnt bad at all. Hubby has been to the Nascar race track a couple times too. There is a really great petting zoo, drive thru thing called Lazy 5 that is nearby too.

I dont know if you have kids but the school districts are alright. We picked what we thought was the best in the area but wish sometimes we would have went one district to the north. They just seem to have newer schools and are a little more aggressive in the teaching. My boys do well though and are in 10th and 7th grade.

As for the job market, it is better here than anywhere we have been before. We have decided that if worst comes to worst and hubby gets laid off then we will certainly do our best to look here for work because we finally feel like we have settled someone we could stay forever.

Hope that this helps, I didnt mean to get so long winded.

Darlene

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Sell crazy some place else, we are all stocked up here.

Thanks for the ideas guys!

we are really trying to figure this out!
We like it here in Va but it is very expensive and we want a bigger house /with a garage/etc which won't happen here for much under $400,000....ugh!

We looked at a place (new) in Raleigh that was $148,000-ish, it was over $300,000 here, same builder/same model/sq ft, etc....grrrrr...... how irritating is that!? (less land too!)


Keep the ideas coming!

Anyone from Columbia, SC?, we have kicked that one around too.

Moved to Charlotte from MD and love it. We live in the University area of Charlotte. Close to UNC-C and Concord Mills. I only have a problem with the Charlotte Mecklenburg schools. but we got out by going the charter school route this year and could not be happier. Lots to do and seee. BEAUTIFUL parks and rec! Wide range of prices in housing. I prefer the lower taxes in Cabarrus county and am thinking about moving that way but other than that, I highly recommend Charlotte and the surrounding area. I would suggest staying out of the uptown area as it is costly and very much big city. Good luck and if you need any more help, let me know. Oh, I can highly recommend Highland Creek as THE neighborhood to be in. Wish we had known that when we were house hunting.

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Three Little Princesses Mommy