Possible move to Dallas area
Im interviewing with a company in the Dallas area. If offered the job, will be moving by summer. Any input on the area, where to look at homes, where not to look, whats reasonable to pay in rent, reasonable to buy, etc? Anything else I might want to know? Appreciate whatever you guys can tell me.
Dan
Dan
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Geez, I'm sorry man.
Arlington has the baseball team and Six Flags. Then there's, um... hmmm...
Like I said, sorry man. [:D]0 -
Don't live in the city, live in the suburbs, and out of the county if possible. What area is the company in? North, south, east, west or central? I've got a buddy who's about to sell his house and move back to Colorado, I think he would make you a good deal, and it's only about a year old. It's 3 bedroom, 1850 SQ FT. He needs to do something quick if you want to save realitor fees. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by spanielsells
Geez, I'm sorry man.
Me too.0 -
The city's not a bad place, but as dheffley said, the suburbs are nicer in terms of traffic and overall atmosphere. The nicer neighborhoods in Dallas proper will set you back quite a bit, so unless you're flush with cash, I'd recommend something outside of the LBJ loop.
Plano's not bad. Quiet and well-kept.
Richardson is Dallas' version of Chinatown, but not as crowded as you'd get in some places like New York or Philly. It's low-key and quiet. Not as well-kept as Plano, but it's not a slum either.
As far as specific neighborhoods to avoid, Dallas is kind of weird. A lot of bad neighborhoods are sandwiched in with some of the nicer ones, oftentimes separated by a four-lane street and nothing more.
North Dallas, for the most part, is a nice neighborhood.
South Dallas is bad. Stay away.
Oak Lawn: stay away.
Addison: not bad. Quiet, traffic not as bad as some other areas of Dallas.
If you have kids, DISD is a pretty good school system (at least it was back in the day - not sure about now) and there are some good private schools (located mostly in North Dallas).
Hope this helped.0 -
quote:Originally posted by ElMuertoMonkey
If you have kids, DISD is a pretty good school system (at least it was back in the day - not sure about now) and there are some good private schools (located mostly in North Dallas).
I would not put a kid of any age in DISD today. It's more of a juvenile detention center than a learnig center. ALL of the outter city school systems are better by a long shot. If he's in the northern section of Dallas, Lewisville's school district is great, and it's in Denton County rather than Dallas County. Frisco is the hot new area, and Frisco's school district is great, plus it's in Collin County.0 -
If your from up north you will feel right at home in Frisco or anywhere in Collin County....... 0 -
quote:Originally posted by pickenup
quote:Originally posted by spanielsells
Geez, I'm sorry man.
Me too.
Me Three0 -
it would help to know what part of town the job is at to steer you in the right direction, because dallas/fart worth is such a huge place.
635 runs around the whole thing. generally speaking, 1) outside of 635 is better than inside 635 anywhere you go, and 2) the south half of town is bad, the north half is good. so you definitely want to make sure to avoid being inside 635 on the south half of town.
garland is to the northeast, pretty much low rent crappy suburb that a lot of people start off with cheap houses, so it got popular for that and now there's a lot of nice expensive houses being built further out on the edge of that like a whole nother suburb. the people range from rednecks to hicks to latinos to orientals. garland was mentioned in that Three Kings movie with george clooney, where they ask where everybody's from and one yoyo says "I'm from Garland" and he has a flashback about blowing away stuffed teddy bears with a sawed off shotgun. that wasn't too far off. on the outskirts of garland you have the garland public shooting range, which is about average size but recommended. I think they have targets out to 200 yards, and they do have a trap/skeet shooting area off to the left of the range. to the south of garland you have the biggest movie theaters in texas, off of 635 & jupiter. the screens are about 1-1/2 semi trucks long and 1 semi truck tall. a few blocks away from that you have fry's electronics, which has everything from oscilloscopes to refrigerators, and it's so big they have 64 cash registers.
garland would be a good place to start off at, assuming the job isn't too far away. you got all different kinds of stuff ranging from nice to crappy, it's not too crowded and you can easily commute to anywhere else.
richardson is nicer, to the left and going to I75 which runs right through the middle of town. (this is still a suburb to the north) it has texas instruments, which is huge, U of TX at Dallas, a "telecom corridor" and a "silicon valley" that is comparable to the silicon valley in california. I thought I saw halliburton somewhere over there too. but it's also got plenty of residential area. the southern part of richardson a lot of thugs from down south like to come up and hang out "uptown", so it doesn't look like it, but if you're not careful you can get jacked.
go north of richardson a ways on I75 and you get to plano, which is a decent quieter middle class residential area with some manufacturing, most notably, tackleboxes. lots of car and boat dealerships.
go east of garland and you get to rowlett, which is like rich cowboys. it can get very expensive, being on a lake, and it's a longer commute to work anywhere else in town, but if you're going to be making a lot of $$$$ and plan on buying a $$$ house and you're a cowboy, you might want to think about that area. yes you don't have to be rich to live there, but it's too far from anything else in dallas to really have a reason to live that far out unless your job is over there too.
south of that (east part of town) is mesquite, where the poorer cowboy types live. they have rodeos over there and there's this strip mall type thing that has a pretty decent gun show once in a while. also further in town you got "the armory" which is a small comfy hole-in-the-wall that sells a lot of every kind of ammo.
south of that (southeast part of town) is balch springs and seagoville, an uninteresting place to live but out in the sticks there's a nice mom-n-pop shooting range I'd recommend (forgot the name of it) last time I went there you could shoot all day for 10 bucks.
going back north, in town and inside of 635, (west of richardson, north part of town) it's not too bad really but if you're going to live there you would do well to be near 75 for easy access to get on the road to commuting.
same area outside of 635, it's very busy, traffic is jam packed and you have to wait in line for everything you do. if you want to live in the middle of everything but not in the city limits, that's where to go.
now, dallas and fart worth are grown together. so when you go to the northwest of dallas, things quiet down and there's some empty space but shortly you start running into fart worth again. consequently, that's where the richest suburbs are, because it's away from town but you can still commute to either one. that, and grapevine lake. suburbs are coppell and grapevine.
if you don't want to go that far northwest, stick by I35 and you got the middle class suburbs of carrollton and farmer's branch. they aren't bad, but a little too far out and too blah. in carrollton is Big Bear Arms, run by a russian, they import russian arms and ammo. they have an armorer that works there, from russia, probably the only guy I've met who really knows what he's doing when working on east european/russian small arms. the guy who owns the place is named Scott and he's a great guy to meet.
if your job is that far out north, then you also have the option of living in lewisville or flower mound, which are even blah-er.
if you go south instead, to the west part of dallas now, you're in irving, more of an industrial area, definitely poorer but still better than the south part of town, you can get on a bunch of differet highways and commute anywhere. but I wouldn't recommend living there unless you're really strapped for cash. drive down the street going east into town on singleton blvd, and you get to Ray's Sporting Goods, which has a large gun counter with a fascinating collection of handguns, many with engraving, that I'd guess come largely from the rough characters in dallas. I bet a lot of those guns would have some stories to tell about booze card games and women if they could talk.
you can go further south to grand prairie, still be to the west of officially the city of dallas, but here it's all grown together with fart worth, because going west of that past 360 (which splits dallas and fart worth) goes into arlington, which is the east part of fart worth. those two are really just one humungous block of stuff between dallas and arlington. I don't like it there because you're in the middle of seemingly endless run-down in-town urban sprawl, and there's no end in sight. it makes me claustrophobic. and here's where the bad part of the south half of town starts, I've never been to a neighborhood that I was actually afraid to be in (and I've been in some rough neighborhoods) until I got to that place and went too far south. it can get like hell on earth. that was grand prairie, where dennis rodman is from (oak lawn).
going west into arlington, it's not that bad because fart worth is nicer. it has, of course, arlington stadium.
going north to the northeast part of fart worth, you have hurst/euless/bedford, which they call "h.e.b.", which is nicer but that also is endless in-town urban sprawl.
go west of that to the north part of fart worth and it's the same but thinned out, and you have Cheaper Than Dirt. it looks like a smallish shop in a little strip mall, and it would be easy to miss but they have a large artillery shell stuck in the ground outside the door.
I don't know anything about the rest of fart worth or the south part of dallas.
in dallas, there's also the World Trade Center (sort of to the west of downtown) which when I was there had gun shows every few months, and it was huuuuuge. you would have to walk around all day long for two days if you wanted to get a close look at everything on all the tables. it runs 3 or 4 days. babes galore.
(oh yeah, dallas is crawling with chicks, and they all have huge knockers)
the quality of the gun shows went down since I've been there I'm sure, but the w.t.c. is still so big it has to be worth checking out at least once. so look for it.
commuting around dallas/fw isn't as bad as you would think. the place is like one big automotive mosh pit, but traffic moves amazingly well. so, you only have to worry about distance, not so much traffic jams. on the one hand, it can take you an hour to drive from here to there to do anything because the place is so huge, but on the other hand, people do it all the time and you get used to it.
it's been said that dallas is the "east" and fart worth is where the west part of texas begins. driving around would bear this out. dallas is flat as a board, I swear you could roll a marble from one end of town to the other, but fart worth is where the hills and grass begin. when people from the east move into town, they go to dallas. people from the west move into fart worth. when you go out past the west outskirts of fart worth, you definitely see remnants of the "wild west". you don't get that anywhere with dallas inside or out. fart worth people are generally nicer and the women are sweethearts, but not much is going on over there, it's like an overgrown cowtown. in dallas, everything goes on. anything you want to buy, it's there somewhere. whatever you want to do, you can do it, job, recreation or getting in trouble. stuff happens in dallas.
I don't know a thing about housing prices. sorry.0 -
Let us know where the company is located and so we can give you more precise advice. I live in Grapevine which is in between Dallas and Fort Worth and is a great city to live in. 0 -
Company is based in Addisson, Tx. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by axlerfan
Company is based in Addisson, Tx.
If you have kids in school, you'll want to look in North Carrollton, Lewisville, or Frisco. Avoid The Colony, it was a town built by Fox and Jacobs, and although there are some new houses, the whole town was built in 1978 by one builder and the homes are going down hill now, and avoid Plano because the teenagers seem to have some drug problems in their high schools. The houses are nice, but the heroin deaths are common.
Email me at deheffley@verizon.net if you are interested in my friends house. He can sell it cheaper if he doesn't contract a realitor. He can send you pictures and price. He's planning to leave for Colorado at the end of March.0 -
Addison is a very nice area. I would recommend looking in the north Carrolton area as well. Very nice area and would be close to where you work. If you are single Addison would be a good place to live at as well as work. 0 -
Thank you for the input. Will be coming to Dallas in a couple weeks to interview face to face with them. If the money is right, Id be tempted to take it. 0 -
So much for crashing.....I mean....flying any of your remote controls. [:(] 0
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