See a map of Georgetown
I'll start by admitting we don't know a lot about Georgetown, although we love what we've seen so far. It has a comfortable, rural aspect, and although the town center can't compare with one like Andover's, it's still walkable and has a friendly feel to it. And of course we love the proximity to the many state forests, conservation areas and other open space parcels close by.
Home Values
From an investment perspective, we're convinced that home values are about to leap up here, just the way they have in towns like North Andover and Middleton in recent years. We conducted a pretty exhaustive house hunt in a number of area towns, including North Andover (where we live now), Andover, Boxford, Middleton, Topsfield and Ipswich. For homes in the general price range of Littles Hill, Georgetown compared very favorably with all of them. That experience gave us a very strong sense that Georgetown is an up-and-coming community. A town with so much rural character so close to Boston will not be affordable for long, and we're pleased to be getting in the door now.
We might sound like cheerleaders for Georgetown, but to be fair, we're recent converts -- it wasn't at the top of our list of towns when we started looking. We had initially planned to stay in North Andover, or perhaps go to Middleton. The difference in how far our "house dollar" went was truly astonishing, though, and certainly helped Georgetown catapult to the top of our list.
Shopping
We're trying to have a longer term perspective on services. We realize that it's unfair to expect both rural character and extensive services in the same place at the same time, but we do wonder where we're going to shop and eat and get coffee! Then again -- when I look at North Andover, where we live now, I remember how different it was seven years ago when we bought our house there. There was no Stop & Shop, no Blockbuster, no Starbucks. It takes time for those things to come along, and of course we hope that development in Georgetown remains as careful and well-thought-out as it has been for the Littles Hill subdivision.
So we will be patient, and trust that more services will be available in time -- in a manner that doesn't detract from the things we like about the town now.
Schools
I had trouble finding comparative data on schools, but one very helpful gauge was the Boston magazine real estate issue (April). They also have a school data chart online, listing MCAS, SAT, per-pupil spending and other scores for all Mass. school systems, which is really helpful for making comparisons between Georgetown and other communities you like or know about:
www.bostonmagazine.com
Click on "Best Schools" and it will open a PDF file, which you can save and/or print.
Another good reference is the Mass. Department of Education's Georgetown profile.
That more or less sums up what I know about the schools at this point -- if anyone from Georgetown or someone else considering a move here has done the research and wants to share their perspective, please drop me a line at lauriebryce@hotmail.com. I'd be happy to update the site to reflect additional information.
Where IS Georgetown, anyway?
While we conduct reconnaissance to figure out where to get essentials like coffee and Chinese food, here's where Georgetown is located, and where Littles Hill is.
Close-up map of Georgetown
X marks the spot! We'll be on Londonderry Lane, that road right next to the X. It's a great location because we're close to downtown (well, what passes for downtown in Georgetown). We can actually walk to Town Hall. But notice the woods all around -- again, this is why it feels like the best of both worlds to us.
Eventually development will cut into the unbroken swath of woods south of us, but the 72 acres backing up to Littles Hill buffers us from it, so we know we'll never have anyone living or building directly behind us.
Georgetown -- the view from a little farther out
We won't actually be much farther north of Boston than we are now in North Andover, but we'll be a little more east. That means we'll probably take Route 1 when commuting, instead of 93. We're also closer to the beach and Cape Ann, which is nice.
