i share your anger at the behavior of their previous agent. prejudice is always damaging, and that’s all this is, simple prejudice. people don’t know what it is to live in a certain place, and their opinions are formed by what they hear, read, and see. small things often make lasting impressions. so once a school system gets a reputation of being “bad” it’s very hard for it to change, even if individual schools are fantastic.

when we were planning on moving here i was more focused on west hartford, partly due to some of these same reasons, but largely because i work in canton and wanted to be both near the city and a bit closer to work. all it took was driving down farmington one day with a coworker, though, on our way to 84. once i saw the commercial area along farmington, combined with the gorgeous old homes and the economic and racial diversity i knew it was our kind of place. and it was as far west as we could get and be in the city itself.

once we were looking there were subtle messages that we might want to consider west hartford or canton, etc, by our agent. but for the most part she heard that we wanted to be in the city, and was very good with the whole process. if i had listened to my coworkers we’d be in canton or farmington or whatever. as you say, people will often proclaim their town the best place to live.

anyway, we’re very glad we ended up in the west end and would encourage others to look at what hartford has to offer. i think there are a lot of great neighborhoods that offer different things.

http://bit.ly/4nTUwV

I met this couple when they dropped by a couple of times to look at the house next door to mine. I invited them in to meet my family and we talked a lot the second time they came through about the neighborhood, the house in question, what their concerns and hopes were. They are a really lovely family and I would have enjoyed them as next-door neighbors a lot! (Plus, we’ll need a house painter as well.)

I’m really glad they relocated to Hartford in spite of their experience with a Realtor who steered them away, and hopefully they’re in a home they can enjoy more – I think they were really suffering in that West Hartford house, it just wasn’t a fit for them. When we were house-hunting in spring 2007, I remember being encouraged to look at a lot of homes in West Hartford that felt too small or not “like us,” largely because the school system is considered better.

I try to encourage people to give the Hartford public system a try and see with their own eyes what the challenges and benefits might be. The school system looks very different from the inside than from the outside, and it’s a unique experience for every family. The same could be said for living in a given neighborhood, wherever it is, which is why research is so important.