Wisely Picking the Perfect New Town
Moving to a new city or state will always be a difficult transition, no matter what kind of precautions you take. Bundling up all your possessions into one big van and setting them down on the doorstep of a new home in a strange city will always be at least a little bit of an awkward experience. However, picking the right city can be the difference between struggling mightily and simply working through the transition.
In most cases, relocation is specific to the area surrounding a particular office or location. That narrows down the choices quite a bit, which can be more of a blessing than a curse when trying to wade through the multitude of cities that all want the tax dollars and spending money new residents bring with them. So how then do you go about taking at least the preliminary steps toward picking a new town?
Know What You Want
No search was ever completed without at least some kind of criteria to narrow down the possibilities. That goes for web searches, and it goes for finding a new home for you and your family. What kinds of amenities do you want to have within reasonable driving distance? Some things to consider include proximity to major transportation hubs, entertainment options nearby, the quality of a particular school district, and access to highways and major roads.
While the list could probably go on forever as to the kinds of amenities people look for in a potential new home, odds are that you already have in mind the best-case scenario for your town, and committing to getting those thoughts on paper will develop a list of criteria quicker than you might think.
Another helpful tip can be to prioritize your desires so that when reality comes in and tells you that you can’t have the perfect set of amenities, you know what is most important to you. Armed with that information, you can then dive into the deep ocean – the Internet to do some preliminary research on prospective areas.
Pursue Resources on Important Criteria
If you put the quality of local schools at the top of your list, pursue websites that have information on the various school districts in the area you are looking at. SchoolMatch.com is one such site and there are countless others 
that will give you breakdowns of the quality of different districts. If you have personal contacts in the area, this is the time to use them as they will often have insight as to the quality of different districts.
While that example works well for school district criteria, there are also sites out there for nearly everything else you can think of. If at the top of your list is entertainment, look up local chambers of commerce that will be more than willing to extol the virtues of their particular town.
If a particular kind of house of worship is important to have nearby, there are countless mapping programs that will locate them for you and give you a leg up on what neighborhoods you might want to pursue. Personal contact is perhaps the best and quickest way to get this kind of information, but that is not always possible for those moving long distances. The web is full of information and with your priorities at hand, you can cut through most of the junk to get data that is pertinent to your search.
Moving over a long distance will always be a bit of a jarring experience getting used to new surroundings, but doing research on various areas to at least get an idea of what might be best for you will help your realtor immensely. There will always be hiccups along the way and communities that look good on paper but bad in real life, but developing at least an idea will put you quickly on the path towards determining that and hopefully finding the community that fits you and your family perfectly.