Do People HATE Living In Clayton North Carolina

Do People HATE Living In Clayton North Carolina

September 03, 202415 min read

Do People HATE Living In Clayton North Carolina

 Are you considering relocating to the Raleigh area and you've heard of the suburb Clayton, and you're wondering, is it a great place for you and your family to live? While everybody will tell you about the good things about an area, they won't necessarily tell you the bad or the ugly, as they say in the South.

Now, while there's many reasons people love living in Clayton, I used to live there as well, there's a lot of other reasons a lot of people hate living there. So today i'll be going over some of those reasons that people wish they knew Before they live there if you want to know more of that information stay tuned.

We're at it Welcome back to the channel or

welcome back. I'm Brandy Nemergut, a local real estate agent right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Your connection to all things real estate and all things Raleigh. If this is the first time to the channel or you haven't subscribed yet, please click the subscribe button and tap that little bell, and you'll be notified every time we drop a new video.

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Okay. So before I get started, I just want to let you know that this is going to be based on my personal experience and my family. We relocated here almost six years ago now from Southern California, and we actually came here sight unseen. We just did some research on the internet in three weeks. We had a secure, a rental, a place to live that was commuter friendly to my husband's job.

And we were here, we were looking for a smaller town feel and thought we would love to live out in the country with the horses and the cows and have some land. And other experiences that I'm going to share are from my personal friends that live in Clayton, who also relocated, as well as some clients that relocated from California, New York, and even New Jersey.

And just as a disclaimer, some of these things that I'm going to mention could, you know, be something that someone hates. And is annoyed by it while other people say that's not a big deal. It's not a deal breaker It's still worth living in clayton So either way I promise not just to give you the good which if you look up my other videos I tell you all the reasons people love living in clayton, but i'm also here today to give you the bad and the ugly as we stay in the south.

Okay, so I'm gonna get started. We're gonna start with the first thing, which is everything is far away. Now, initially when we moved there, it was roughly about a 20 to 30 minute drive to get into Raleigh, which doesn't seem bad, especially depending where you're from. California, it was easy to drive somewhere 30 minutes to an hour because of traffic.

But getting away from California and all the traffic, I thought this is going to be great. We're going to be in a rural quiet town. We're just going to be zipping and zinging around these country roads. Life's going to be great. On the flip side, I have clients that have relocated from New York, especially Long Island.

And one of the common threads that I hear is Clayton is a lot bigger than they thought. It takes a lot longer to get from one side of Clayton all the way to New York. to the other. If you look at Clayton on a map, it looks relatively small, but it is deceiving because it is pretty, pretty wide. So on average, to get to fun things or even commute to work, it's going to easily take you 30 minutes.

And in the peak hours of rush hour, and between the construction off of the 40, 42 and the 70, you're looking right around 45 minutes to an hour. Again, depending where you're from, you could say, no big deal. I'm used to that. But if you're like me and you moved here thinking you were getting away from all that traffic, it's not true.

Another thing that really surprised me when we moved here, there's no Target, no Chick fil A, no skating rink, no movie theater. The list can go on and on. So again, you're going to have to drive further out or a lot of people go into the Raleigh area to have some fun. Now there is a bowling alley, I believe it's called Rainbow Lanes.

off the 42, but I know some people complain and say, Hey, it's outdated. We want to dress up, go out for a date night. It's not like say Dave and Buster's or even urban air. There's also not a lot of food choices in comparison to Raleigh, but I will say they've definitely improved. And over the years, more and more restaurants are opening up in the downtown area.

And they've come from chefs in Raleigh that have brought their Restaurants or their concepts here, which is nice to see one of the cons you'll find though Is that typically especially on hot date night Friday Saturday night? It's really hard to get in and you're gonna have over an hour wait So I know when it comes to date nights a lot of people will just like to head to Raleigh now Another thing people hate is it's not staying room rural.

One of the draws to moving to Clayton is country living, wide open spaces, and the ability to have land. Now when we were looking for a suburb to live in, and we had asked people about Clayton, and we did our research online, there was a lot of buzz saying that Clayton was going to be like the next city.

Carrie or the next North Hills. And if you talk to a lot of locals here, a lot of people will roll their eyes or be like, yeah, that'll be the day. But as time has gone by Flowers, who owns a lot of the land in Clayton has built over 40 communities and County. Now they have new plans to make a waterfront hotel with shops and business offices.

And as other suburbs have been growing out and they're running out of land, the developers, the builders have just been coming towards Clayton, building communities with a lot less land compared to a decade ago when they were building on an acre, which brings me to another thing that people hate, which is the never ending construction.

And when we moved here almost six years ago, they told us the expansion of the roads was about a 10 year project. But if you've seen the progress and you've talked to a lot of locals that have been here a while, they'll say it's 12 year plus going on who knows how long. So not only do you have the construction on the 42, the 70, they also have the 540.

that they're trying to finish the outer loop, which is going to be right around the guy road area. So again, that's going to bring even more road construction to the communities as well. Now I know between this five, four day expansion, there's already other suburbs out there and they're complaining about, about the constant noise from the construction.

So just be prepared for wait times with traffic, especially on the peak hours. And while they are expanding the main veins of the road, Another complaint that a lot of locals have is as all these new communities are being built within Clayton, you know, off of the main veins, all the country roads, the country roads are not being expanded.

So again, During, you know, peak hours of the day and night, you're going to have a lot of congestion. People getting off work or trying to go to work. And I know at night it makes it really difficult because the country roads are not well lit and they also don't have shoulders. So if something happens, if you have to pull off on the side of the road, there's nowhere to go because it's a ditch.

Another thing that people hate is a lot of communities do not have sidewalks. Or they'll have sidewalk on one side, but not the other side. And if you're like me from California or other parts of the West Coast or even the East Coast, we're used to the luxury of not only having sidewalks on both sides of the street, but also having the neighborhood road wide enough to park on each side of the street.

And here, a lot of communities, especially the newer built ones, have more narrow roads. And they also don't allow you to park on the road. So I know personally for me, that one was a huge shocker. I was like, where are the sidewalks? Why can't I park on the side of the road? What is going on? I was used to being able to walk up the road out of our community, go say into, you know, the downtown area or the main areas and have sidewalks and be able to walk around shop, get some coffee.

It's not like that here. There's not a lot of Walker friendly areas within the town. You basically have to drive or ride your bike, but again, no bike lanes. So the city I came from, it was biker friendly and we had all these bike lanes. So you really didn't need to drive if you didn't want to, besides the weather being amazing all the time.

Um, out here, between the humidity, the rain and the one lane highways, you definitely do not want to ride your bike very far at least. And with all this new construction and new build brings me up to the next reason people say they hate living in Clayton. Which is the schools are overcrowded. There's a lack of special education programs and the fact that schools will shut down when the forecast even says there's a snowflake coming.

Now I know it seems like the new construction homes aren't able to keep up pace with bringing in more schools for our children, but the good news is just last year, they actually opened up Bailey's Academy. Now it is a private school, so you do have to pay for it. But it's one of the most affordable private schools around.

And my daughter actually goes to Bailey's in another city, and she absolutely loves it. Now this next one actually shocked me, because when I first moved here, I was told a lot of people like going to Johnston County, which is where Clayton is, it's in Johnston County, over Wake County, because the taxes were less expensive.

However, if you're in the city town limits, You're going to find that you may actually be paying higher tax rates than your neighboring county, Wake County. Now the tax rate in Clayton is going to be 0. 73%, whereas in Wake County it's going to be 0. 6195%. And for your city tax, You're going to have to pay 0.

60%. Now, again, if you live in one of your flowers plantation communities, no city tax, which is really nice. So a lot of people actually like living in the flowers community because they save that taxes. So speaking of taxes and saving with flowers, plantation, That brings me to a next pain point that a lot of people have here is the fact that a lot of communities have HOAs and also the rules and restrictive covenants in Flowers Plantation.

Now I will say some communities seem to be more lenient than others, but in a majority of them you can't park on the street, you can't park your RV or boat on your property, and you also can't a vehicle that has your company logo. And then there's also some people that come here with a dream that they want to have that country life and they want to get some chickens or some goats.

And then they find out with the restrictive covenants, they can't have their live farm animals. So definitely before you put in an offer, make sure your realtor pulls the HOA information and the restrictive covenants and you read over them and make sure that it coincides with the lifestyle that you want to live.

Another pain point for many and Clayton is the fact that the utilities seem higher than in some other areas. Now, talking to a lot of local moms, they say their utility bill is running anywhere from about 240 to about $340 a month, especially in the peak season of summer. Another thing that surprises a lot of people here, they have these grandiose ideas of having land, but they don't realize this land comes a lot of the times with a well and a septic.

So with land, you're typically not going to be attached to city sewer or city water. Now again, if you're within a lot of these flower plantation communities, They are hooked up to that, but if you get on the outskirts of town and you're, you're getting that true country living, then you want to make sure that you understand what a well is, how to check your water and get it tested and sterilized each year.

We actually have a well and we were able to add a fluorescent light that actually is able to kill all the bacteria. And we have a filter under our crawl space and we actually just have them serviced it for us so that we don't have to worry about it. And then we also do have a septic. I'm on three acres.

So I was prepared for this, but I definitely had to do my research. Definitely know for the size of my family that I want to get it pumped every three to five years with the pandemic and staying home more. We pump it a little bit more. So, all those are things that you just want to do your due diligence on and make sure that you understand and that you're prepared to do that.

Now, another pain point that you're going to find talking to a lot of the local moms here is the limited food options. Now, if you're coming from, say, New York or New Jersey, you're going to be really hard pressed to find good pizza and a good deli. And if you're coming from California, you're going to be hard pressed to find Good authentic Mexican food.

Now I will say I have found a couple of restaurants here within Clayton that does have decent Mexican food. So that's a definite plus. But I will tell you a funny story. One of the first places we tried in Clayton when we had come here, I asked them if they had taquitos and they said yes. So we ordered them, we got our food, sat down, we looked and my husband and I were like, These aren't taquitos.

These are flautas. And so we went up and we're like, oh, I'm sorry We didn't order flautas. We ordered taquitos and they're like that is taquitos and we're like no it's with corn tortilla not flour tortilla flour is flauta and They just looked confused and they were like no those are taquitos So here for some reason a lot of the Mexican restaurants will cook with flour Tortillas instead of corn.

I don't know why But if you ask for corn, then they will give you corn. So just a heads up. And another thing, for some reason, they love to put white cheese on everything. This creamy white cheese. I don't know why. I know a lot of people that aren't from California think it's the greatest thing to have this white cheese smothered all over everything, but if you do not like that white saucy stuff, I don't even know what it is, make sure you tell them not to include that.

If you found this information helpful, please click the like button so others like you can find this information as well. Now I know today we went over the reasons that people wish they knew before they moved here. A lot of pain points, people hating these things about Clayton. But like I said, um, earlier, I do other videos of all the reasons to love Clayton as well.

So definitely check those out. And if you're considering relocating to the Raleigh area or anywhere outside the Raleigh area, please feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email. The number on your screen is my information and we would love to chat with you till next time. I'll see y'all later.

Brandy Nemergut is a seasoned real estate expert with over 20 years of experience in the Raleigh-Durham area. As the trusted realtor at Be Sunshine Realty Group with EXP, Brandy specializes in helping clients navigate the complexities of buying and selling homes, offering personalized service and in-depth market knowledge.

Brandy Nemergut

Brandy Nemergut is a seasoned real estate expert with over 20 years of experience in the Raleigh-Durham area. As the trusted realtor at Be Sunshine Realty Group with EXP, Brandy specializes in helping clients navigate the complexities of buying and selling homes, offering personalized service and in-depth market knowledge.

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