I was wondering if anyone that lives in San Antonio could tell me of the "good" neighborhoods or areas to live in there. I am talking upscale with nice homes, lower crime, good schools, etc.

I'm just looking for the names of the areas for some research. Thanks.

Basically anything north of downtown. The school districts you want are Northside ISD, Northeast ISD, or Alamo Heights ISD.

Note that Alamo Heights ISD will, generally speaking, have higher property taxes than the other two. It encompasses the two original middle-to-upper-class suburbs of the city. Northside and Northeast ISDs both cover huge geographic areas (Northside in particular) with mixed neighborhoods within them.

What base will you be working out of? There's a lot of sprawl in San Antonio, so that really is a factor. You could have up to a 30 mile / hour+ long commute while staying within the metro area, so you kind of want to use your work location as a focal point and spiral out from there.

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Hope is the new black.

I am looking more to settle down there when I retire. I am interested in buying land in the area to build a house on and I figured by the time I get around to building I'd probably have a family and all that crap. I won't be wanting to move ever again if I can help it, so I want to try and get into a good neighborhood/area from the start (and hope it stays nice).

I was reading a few other websites that listed North and Northeast as the places that tend to be nicer. Commute time...I'm not sure if it will really matter for me based on what I am considering doing.

Thanks for the input!

Why San Antonio? If I had the choice, I'd pick Austin over San Antonio.

If you're looking to buy land to do a custom home build, you'll probably want to look north and west of downtown, probably up around 1604 and 10, which is in Northside ISD. That may take you outside of incorporated San Antonio and into a smaller municipality such as Helotes or into unincorporated Bexar County.

That will put you a fair distance outside of downtown. However, the stretch of I-10 that is outside of the 410 loop has pretty much all of the shopping you could need, and there's a second bit of development on I-10 just north of the 1604 loop that also has a good amount of shopping.

To give you a sense of what I mean, Rugen and I used to live right around I-10 and Huebner Rd. Within a 15 minute drive was my doctor and dentist, several hospitals, our vet, two grocery stores, Target, Wal Mart, two outdoor upscale malls, some walking/biking trails, a couple dozen restaurants, and two movie theaters, one which showed blockbusters and the other shows art films. The main campus of UT-San Antonio is nearby if you want to take classes, and there's a Six Flags and a golf course, as well, with Sea World being a half-hour away. But the immediate area we lived in was well-wooded and pretty private with plenty of space to walk our dog.

If my life goals meshed with it, I would move back there in a heartbeat. I would say that my total cost of living was about 60% of what it is in the Boston area. People dump on San Antonio, but when you live there, you actually have enough money to go out and do stuff. In Boston, there's a lot to do, but I can't afford to do any of it.

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Hope is the new black.

That is exactly why I am looking at SA and not Austin. For what I could buy in SA, I'd be spending at around 150% more to get the same thing in Austin. I've done a lot of cost comparisons on land parcels, new houses, used houses, etc. between the two cities and Austin is clearly more expensive. Sure, it's a cool town, but I want my money to go further. I'll be 42ish by the time I can retire. Austin's average age is in the 20s. From my experience, ladies that age are not looking for someone their dad's age. hehe

Then again, I am just getting info for now. If something draws me to Austin, or even Dallas or Phoenix for that matter, I'll go there. I am just getting information because I like to plan ahead.

If you want to dump questions on me, feel free to shoot me a PM for my email address. Now that I'm back from London I'm doing house shopping and all that jazz. San Antonio has been home for 8 years at this point. If I don't know it off the top of my head, I can probably find out pretty quickly.

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It's also one of the cities I'm looking at for 'retirement' in about 5 years, for the exact same reasons Bello pointed out. It's unfortunate that it may not suit my needs by then because it's been hailed for a few years as one of the best places in the US to live. As more people have the ability to choose where in the world they live because they're not tethered to a physical job location (or say fuck it and move and take a chance on finding something)...prices will go up, etc.

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The Indianapolis area generally has a small cost of living too.

Yeah but the weather up here is ass.

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I live outside Dallas in Flower Mound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Mound,_Texas). It is close enough to Dallas, Ft. Worth, and DFW airport for us to do anything but still live in a nice house with large trees in the front and back yard.

I used to live off Bandera and 1604, the houses around there are fairly nice. I now am living for my internship at Van Jackson and I-10 the houses aren't as nice but the neighborhood is super old, still feels pretty safe though.

I go to school in Austin and it really is a lot more expensive, everything is more expensive especially housing, my 800 sqft apt costs 718 a month not including utilities. In San Antonio i'm renting a 3 bedroom house for 700 a month.

Oh and you can get pretty tasty food without breaking the bank in SA too.

Oh hell yeah... Austin too (least 10 years ago). I miss the texmex so much.

I miss the texmex in Austin, the seafood in St. Augustine and the green chili in Colorado. Now I am in Cincinnati where their culinary claim to fame is fat soaked oats fried for breakfast. Yuck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetta

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Buy in Phoenix now!!! All our houses are so fucking upside down it makes me sick. I think I am $110k upside down If you aren't as worried about the younger crowd or comute etc check out the gilbert area, mainly all "new" everything and much more affordable then the Scottsdale area which outside of one stretch of area isn't nearly as nice.

But other then that I wouldn't really want to live any where else if I could help it but I might end up in the Congo for work depending on how things pan out..