My wife and I are thinking about making an offer on some property with an Apex zipcode, but not technically located within its city limits. What are some "gotchas" associated with not living in a city that we should consider? For example, we would be responsible for our own trash removal, rely on the sheriff's dept. rather than city police as well as a volunteer fire department rather than a city funded one. Thanks.

1/3/2010 6:29:30 AM

There are plenty of other gotchas for purchasing a piece of land, clearing it, and going through the homebuilding process. I'll omit those. Overall, it's really not that bad of a deal.

- Well / Septic may be needed if not using City Water (if so, make sure your land has perked and WHERE is perked).
- High Speed Internet / Cable may not be available. Use a wireless 3G card and Satellite.
- If no common trash collection, you take it to the dump yourself or pay a private hauler. A cheap, used truck is very handy for this and other purposes.
- Sheriff / Fire department whomever is closest.
- Post Office will not deliver packages to your door if you are > 0.5 mile off a main road. UPS / Fedex will.

1/3/2010 7:55:05 AM

We are a couple blocks outside of the city limits here in SC, and its just as you say.

We are lucky enough to have city water, but we pay for our own trash service, and we have the sherrif out here instead of the local police.

Everything else is pretty much the same. We live in a neighborhood, so theres no issue with mail/package delivery.

1/3/2010 8:33:33 AM

we have well water
internet and cable is available as it is in the city limits
pay for own trash service and there are certain things that can't get picked up - like you don't blow your leaves onto the street cause the city doesn't come around and clean them up. same with xmas trees.
no issues with the post office (we are just outside raleigh city limits outside 540)
potential issues with roads getting cleared promptly in the case of bad weather
this goes for power restoration, too!!

but basically it is the same. i'd say the biggest things are the water and the trash. you have to haul certain items (furniture etc) to the dump yourself. and i don't mind our well water though i know some people refuse to live on property with a well. whatevs!

1/3/2010 1:17:54 PM

It's FANTASTIC.

Well water is very much FTW; I adore not being subject to so many of the municipal regulations, and water usage is a fine example of that.

With regards to private trash hauling companies: it can be a MAJOR pain in the ass. I've had one company tell me the reason they stopped picking up our recycling (which is often a separate paid service from trash pickup) was because we had white paper in it, and they weren't allowed to take white paper to the facility where they took recycling We finally got set up with a good company, but until then, it sucked concrete donkey balls.
http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=567231 (the followup on that is that Shaw is A+++++)

Quote :

"- Post Office will not deliver packages to your door if you are > 0.5 mile off a main road. UPS / Fedex will."

I'd really like to see a source on this one. I find it hard to believe, unless USPS' definition of a "main road" is vastly different than most people's.

And that's not really an issue of 'within city limits'-vs-'right outside city limits' as much as it's a 'living WAY out in The Boonies, BFE' issue.
--
Don't let being outside of Apex' city limits dissuade you from buying a house you like. At least around here, it's no big deal. Like ^ said, the biggest two are trash pickup and well water.

[Edited on January 3, 2010 at 8:07 PM. Reason : waesrd]

1/3/2010 8:05:45 PM

i second shaw

we switched for a year and now are switching back

1/3/2010 9:28:40 PM

no City Taxes is a huge benefit!

since it would be Wake County, your water will probably be provided by Heater Utilities or the like, unless you are on a well.

We live in Johnston Co. just outside of the Clayton City Limits and we use Waste Industries for our trash pickup and have for about 3 years and have had really good service with them. Before you hire a company to collect your garbage, pay attention to who your neighbors use and call each company to get pricing.

is there an existing house on the property or are you looking to build?

1/4/2010 11:00:10 AM

I strongly prefer being outside of city limits, especially as a homeowner.

1/4/2010 11:44:39 AM

I wish I didn't pay Raleigh city taxes, but I don't know that I'd want to be on a well. I remember the one we had at Lake Gaston...We were at the bottom of the hill right where it met the water. Looking up hill you had to think that every single property going up the road had a septic field of which we, and our shallow well, were downhill. Add to that decades of chemicals being dumped on that land when it was farmland. I just don't know about drinking well water in areas like this.

Also, you might not have to deal with municipal restrictions on water usage, but you do have to deal with it if your well goes dry. I know one person near Cary whose well went dry recently...It just spits out red water when it does have any. Not good for a house not hooked up to city/county water.

[Edited on January 4, 2010 at 12:04 PM. Reason : l]

1/4/2010 12:03:48 PM

We are lucky enough to be close enough to the city limits to be on city water/sewer, its fantastic.

1/4/2010 1:28:48 PM

Quote :

"Also, you might not have to deal with municipal restrictions on water usage, but you do have to deal with it if your well goes dry."

And it is this concern that leads many homeowners on wells to not be fucking idiots when it comes to their water usage.

Which is another +1.

1/4/2010 3:22:31 PM

Yeah, but plenty of wells around here share an aquifer. Therefore, your neighbor can water his lawn and take showers until the aquifer is dry and you're stuck with no water either. Even if you don't share an aquifer your water quality is still dependent on your neighbors' actions.

I can't recall ever having a city caused outage since moving to Raleigh in 1997. Not to say that there haven't been slight interruptions in service, but they have been so minor I did not notice them. I'll take that over a well in this area any day.

1/4/2010 4:38:53 PM

the only time i remember our water being an issue was hurricane fran

1/4/2010 4:45:37 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, but plenty of wells around here share an aquifer. Therefore, your neighbor can water his lawn and take showers until the aquifer is dry and you're stuck with no water either. Even if you don't share an aquifer your water quality is still dependent on your neighbors' actions."

Oh, I'm very well aware of this.

Like I said: on a well, you learn the value of conservation. You assume everyone else is being a consummate retard, and conserve like hell. And then so do a good number of your neighbors

1/4/2010 5:52:22 PM

Thanks everyone for the info. We were about to send our offer to the listing agent but first decided to look at the master wake county plan. Turns out that the proposed southern section of 540 will be about 200 feet from the property. Even though this part of the loop might not be done for 20 years, we didn't want to risk it. Back to the drawing board we go.

1/6/2010 7:16:48 PM

Quote :

" - Well / Septic may be needed if not using City Water (if so, make sure your land has perked and WHERE is perked)."

Also if you are on city water you may pay a higher rate.


The obvious things in general are public water/sewer access (which doesn't necessarily translate to city boundaries, police/fire/ambulance coverage and response time (which may also affect your homeowner's insurance premiums), and access to other "quality of life" benefits like city parks/recreation/libraries. And obviously even though you have county schools in NC (except Chapel Hill/Carrboro) school district is a consideration if you have kids or when you sell your house. It is a tradeoff.

1/7/2010 7:28:54 AM

I grew up with well water, and i don't remember it ever going dry, no matter how much water we used.

my aunt and uncle lived next to us, and they had all sorts of well problems. they finally drilled it a lot deeper and don't have trouble anymore.

1/9/2010 1:48:45 AM

I think there are probably some drunks that live outside of City Limits.

1/9/2010 9:26:55 PM

Outside of the city limits is awesome none of the ridiculous restrictions as to what you can and can't do with your property. Had well water my entire life never had an issue with it.

1/10/2010 8:36:10 PM

Did the hard water stain the crap out of your tub, sinks, and toilet? I have a cousin that deals with that. If my water were that way it would aggravate the hell out of me.

[Edited on January 10, 2010 at 10:45 PM. Reason : .]

1/10/2010 10:45:27 PM

Hard water definitely is an issue with wells but I don't really like all the chlorine in city water and how it is hot in the middle of the summer. To each his own though I guess. I will say if you are the neighborhood type you might as well live in the city limits.

1/10/2010 10:48:32 PM