Hamilton County among best places to raise a family

Recently, Fort Wayne and Indianapolis made Best life Magazine’s “Top 100 places to raise a family”.  Now, all of Hamilton County has been awarded the number one spot in Forbes.com’s “America’s Best Places to Raise a Family” ranking.

In this ranking, schools played a major role in deciding how highly the individual counties ranked.  In order to rank the different counties, Forbes.com considered ten things: schools, graduation rate, cost of living, standardized test scoring, property tax rates as a percentage of median home value, percentage of owner-occupied homes, per-capita income, air quality, commute times and crime rates.  The only category where Hamilton County did not receive an outstanding grade was air quality and it still fell just below the national average.

Hamilton County offers residents eight peaceful communities, an excellent school system, short commute times and affordable housing costs.  The average price of a home in Hamilton County is between $160,000 and $200,000, considerably lower than Marin County California’s median home prices of over $900,000.  Property and violent crime rates are below the national average and the cost of living in Hamilton is 8.79% lower than the rest of the nation.  Hamilton County neighborhoods offer residents a genuine sense of warmth and community.  Other factors that help to make Hamilton County, Indiana a great place to live are excellent parks and recreation departments and a recently renovated downtown including renovated buildings, pedestrian walkways and a brand new sports arena.

I was glad to see this ranking because it helps remind some of us of how good we have it here.

If you have been thinking of relocating to any of the wonderful Hamilton County, Indiana communities, I suggest that you read this article for yourself.