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New Map makes it easy to find the best schools in Florida

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I think it’s almost universal that when people are moving into an area they want to live in safe neighborhoods. Not only that, people also search for areas with good hospitals and great schools for their children to attend.

Luckily for those who choose to live in the State of Florida schools are graded there, with the best schools being given an A and the worst and F. Did you know that there area neighborhoods with great schools in Ponte Vedra beach, Jacksonville and St. Johns County?

RE/MAX real estate agent, Krista Fracke, is often asked by her clients which neighborhoods have the best schools. That’s why she has put a page on her site that as of today, will allow home buyers across the state of Florida to display a Google map that shows all of the public schools in the county in which they wish to purchase real estate. The new map will show the FCAT scores for these schools for the past 5 years.

The Schools grades are color coded so that home buyers can easily identify neighborhoods with the best schools. Just click on a Florida county that you wish to see and the map will center on that area. Once you are looking at the county that you are interested in purchasing a home you’ll noticed that the schools are color marked to indicate the grade that they received in the last year. By clicking on a schools color marker you’ll be able to see the grades that the school has achieved in the last five years as well as the schools full name.

I think that this is a great idea and I only wish that a page like this was available for all areas across North America.






Geneology – my family left Canada for the USA

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Are any of my readers genealogy buffs? For some reason I’ve always been interested in my family history. Actually I think I might know why I developed an interest early on. You see I’m the last child of much older parents. The next sibling closest to me is 10 years older, and my oldest brother was just shy of 20 when I arrived in this world. So I grew up knowing I might not have my parents around as long as most people do, and I only ever had one grandparent.

When I was 12 or so I began asking my only living grandparent about our family history. She was 92 at the time, and little did I know it but it’s a good thing that I did start asking questions when I did because she was gone a year later.

One of the things that I’d learned from her in those talks so long ago was that her branch of the family came from England, Wales, and Scotland. Part of her long family line had been in what was to become Canada since the 1600’s! Another thing that learned was that in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s several lines of our family moved to the US for work. Many of them settled in Ohio and Idaho.

I’d like to learn more about my American relatives so I might travel to Idaho one day. What have begun to do is spend some time researching the history of the areas that my relatives moved to. One of the areas is Boise Idaho.

Boise is a thriving city with a quaint small town feel from what I’ve gathered reading about the city. You know where I got some of my information? From the Boise Home Guide! Yeah, a real Estate page. Actually I’ve learned that the city is growing because many people like the city, and the atmosphere so much and that their real estate market is doing well as a result. Check out these homes on the Boise mls to see what’s available. I really like the style of some of the houses and the prices seem reasonable for the area as well.

Boise seems so nice. Perhaps I’ve discovered one of the reasons why my relatives moved there and ended up staying? I’d love to learn if they’ve started any businesses there or if anyone made a bit of a name for themselves in the area. That would be interesting. It’s always fun finding an interesting gem of information like that.

So how many of my gardening friends also have an interest in genealogy? I bet more of you have that interest than I think.

Properties In Spain

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Do you watch Home and Garden TV? I enjoy watching a number of programs on that channel. I must say that their garden programing has gone downhill as there’s very few garden programs on these days, and when they are on it’s like five or six a.m.. Poor programming times if you ask me.

Some of the show I like watching are the European ones where they visit properties in the UK or Spain, and discuss having a second home, or a vacation home. I hadn’t really seriously thought of purchasing Overseas Properties before, but the more I see these types of programs, the more interested I become.

There’s a website called Property Mart Overseas, who’s actually sponsoring this post, and they list a number of Properties to buy overseas. I’ve been taking a look at it and there are some remarkably beautiful homes for sale on the site.

Considering that I’ve heard so much about people purchasing Properties Spain through the HGTV shows, I’ve focused on that area of the website. In their listings there are some properties that look almost like small castles. I love the look. That one, I’m sure is way out of my price range, but others are actually within a price range that I could afford- even taking into account my travel expenses back and forth from Canada a few times a year. They even have an interesting looking cave house listed.

Have you ever thought of purchasing a second property to use as a vacation home? Perhaps renting it out to others when you weren’t using it yourself? If you have, or if you already do, do that, what has your experience been like?

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