moving to St Louis

[Brian Kropp]

Hey,

I just had a death in the family(mother), it hit me pretty hard. I realize that I need to be closer to my family, so I'm moving my family down to the St. Louis area, my brother lives there. I'm looking forward to hot sunny days and no RAIN...
My wife wants to live out in rural areas, I want to be able to get to work easy enough(stair builder). I was wondering if anybody who lives in the area know were some not so far out rural areas are, that are close to (40 miles) were custom homes are being built.
I do stairs on site now, I would like to do them in my shop if possible?? you know get away from traffic.. seattle sucks for traffic, whoever designed the roads around here was smoking something...
So any input would be helpful

thanks Brian

[Leigh Costello]

Hi Brian,
First, sorry to hear about your loss. Moving to St. Louis area is a big change. We are currently well above average for rainfall for the year after a fairly significant drought. So the rain thing...well, as we say in Missouri, stick around a few days, the weather will change. And as my mom always said, build up the hill and not down. Judging by the recent flooding thru my backyard, I built high enough.

My hubby and I live about 50 miles from downtown St.L in rural Franklin county, Missouri. I would recommend the website for the St. Louis Post Dispatch for research on the area housing market and job availability. I believe you will find what you need there. Just google "St. Louis Post Dispatch" and the web site has something like stltoday in it.

Good luck on your search. And, if I might add, stay well away from the Big River and the Meramec River, as well as the Bourbeuse River. These rivers tend to flood frequently.

[Joe Mioux]

Like, Leigh, I am 50 miles East of downtown. There is still a lot open land on the east side of StL in St Clair, Madison, Monroe and Clinton (my home co) counties.


I am sure some of the other STL members will add some other good locations on the westside of STL as well.

Good luck with the move and you have my condolences with your mother.

Joe

[Brian Kropp]

Thanks, I'll look at that web page. I want to move closer to my brother, so it will be close to O'fallon ( I hope). But, we have horses so we need some land, so I don't know how far away we will have to go for the price we want to pay.

The difference in the rain here and there is, here it rains for days, weeks or it seems like it and there when it rains it pours, but it doesn't last all year.

I'm coming down there in may, so I'll be looking around the diff areas, hopefully that will help.

Thanks again for the inputs

[Russ Filtz]

How's the Bellevue area in Seattle for commuting to? I assume north and west of there are expensive (Seattle downtown and Microsoft), what about south or east?

[Brian Kropp]

for me commuting isn't that bad, I leave my house early so I can beat the traffiic... but if you miss it by 10 mins, you're toast... If I'm working in Seattle, the trip home sucks, one time it took me 2 hours to get home when it normally took me about 30 mins at that job site.
Housing here is really expensive.. N S E W, it cheaper N S or E that is if you go far enough away.. I bought my 2 acres for 75k back in 01, no improvents, plus it's about 40 miles away from Seattle. It's just getting more expensive and more crowded, and our elected officals don't know what they are doing.

I was born in Bartow

[Gary Herrmann]

I know some people that live out in Washington that have property.

I think you'll have a variety of options. Good luck.

[Joe Pelonio]

How's the Bellevue area in Seattle for commuting to? I assume north and west of there are expensive (Seattle downtown and Microsoft), what about south or east?
The Bellevue area commute is why I moved my business to my home, I'm 11 miles east of there and it took well over an hour at 5pm. Going in at 5am 20 minutes.

Bellevue itself is among the highest prices in the region, the more affordable homes are much further north or south, but with a much longer commute. East, though the commute is bad, is closer, so higher prices.

Brian,

Sorry to hear of your loss. I hope the move works out well for you. True, the roads here have nowhere near kept up with growth. Now that I think of it there's actually been no road improvements, just a lot more homes built and thousands of employees added to the freeways.