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moving to chicago! some questions
hi everyone! i'll be starting phd studies at northwestern university this fall, so DH and i will be moving to chicago in september. i'm beginning to scout out apartments and stuff now. here are my basic questions ATM:
we're coming from suburban philly. we have two cars, one of which we'll be selling before we move. the other is an '08 honda fit, and we'll definitely be keeping it. does anyone have any idea how much car insurance might run us in chicago? right now i think we pay about $900/year for this car.
i think that we're looking at rogers park and/or skokie to live. if skokie, it would need to be walking distance to the skokie swift station. from looking around online, i think i'd prefer rogers park (cost, vintage buildings, located between evanston and downtown chicago since we don't know where DH will be working yet), but i've been reading some bad things online about rogers park being not a very safe area. is this true, or does it maybe depend on the street? any information on this would be greatly appreciated. also, any thoughts on whether parking (lot or street) is generally available in these areas, or if we'll need to budget extra for that.
TIA!
Re: moving to chicago! some questions
We had a 2001 pontiac sunfire and the insurance was about $750/yr for accident and ticket free.
I don't know anything about Skokie so I can't help there. Rogers Park has some ok areas and some not ok areas. Personally, it's not an area I would pick. My friends used to live there but didn't like it do to safety and parking issues. Street parking is really tough there so if you do go with this area I'd recommend renting a space.
We currently own a 1 bedroom condo (and selling to move to the burbs) in Rogers Park on the lake, right next to Loyola college. There are some shady areas of Rogers Park, but there are shady areas of all areas, including Lincoln Park. We rent a parking spot for $73/month, so I don't worry about parking and we have underground valet for when friends visit. During the school year, parking can be difficult. We are about 3 blocks from the red line el and we have 3 buses right out our front door. West Rogers Park (west of the metra) is the nicest part of Rogers park but it's mostly houses, and that's where I park to take the metra so parking is bad there also.
As for car insurance, we pay $684 for just collision insurance. We have a 15 year old car and we don't need full coverage.
Just wanted to add that we had full coverage insurance (highest liability and comprehensive collision).
Have you looked into Edgewater. A friend used to live there and loves it. She moved away but misses living there.
Edgewater can be ok, and Andersonville, just south of Edgewater, is great! I don't really have experience with Rodgers Park. The nice thing about Edgewater/Andersonville is that they are still next to the Red Line, which is easier for getting to Evanston. I love our neighborhood, Lincoln Square, which is also near where you're going to school. It's more west, though, so public transit won't be as easy.
If you live anywhere with only street parking, I would highly recommend selling the nicer car. We sold our new Mazda 3 when we moved here 3 years ago, and kept our 2000 Honda Civic. The Civic has gotten a bit beat up from street parking, but since it's older we don't stress about it! We have lived in nicer areas, and still had a review mirror broken off and a window smashed. Not trying to scare you off, but we keep saying we won't get a nicer car until we have a garage to park it in!
Overall, you need to decide if you're interested in the burbs or the city. Skokie is much more suburban. I personally really like Evanston, and find it to be a nice combination of city and suburban living. Good luck sorting it out, and good luck with school, too!
Also, if you're going to come to town to apartment search before you officially move, there are TONS of apartment finding services in Chicago that are free to the renter. The landlords pay out a comission, but it's no cost to you and can be really nice when you don't know the area well. We used The Apartment People to find our first place, and it was great since we didn't know the city well at all.
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Like PP's have mentioned, there are some shady areas, but also some nice areas of Rogers Park. But really, you would find that to be the case in most neighborhoods. I would recommend looking at a couple of different neighborhoods in the city and a couple near the Skokie area, and see what you like when you're there in person.
Andersonville, Edgewater, Lincoln Square and North Center are all neighborhoods that are in the city and further north, if you want to explore some ideas aside from just Rogers Park.
Car insurance will depend on if you're in the city or burbs. If you budget around 900-1K per year you should be good.
Oh, and like another poster said, don't expect your car to stay dent-free if you park on the street. Lots of Chicago drivers parallel park using the "bump" method. It annoyed the heck out of me when I first moved here but you get used to it.
thank you everyone! i really appreciate the advice, and i think i'm starting to narrow down the list of potential places. i decided to just go ahead and call my insurance company to get a ballpark quote for the car; apparently the philly area is really inflated, so it's actually going to go down for us (yay!). and i definitely get the advice about keeping the old car versus the new one because of the parking situation, but the other car is thirteen years old and we don't know how long it has left.