Cranberry Township Neighborhood Tour | Living in Pittsburgh, PA

If you are considering relocating your family to the Pittsburgh area in Cranberry Township in particular, then this video is for you. Well welcome, my name is Chris Fuhrman with eXp Realty and today we are going to answer the question, is Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania a good place to live? We'll talk about everything from education, to transportation, to real estate, to saving money on taxes. So keep watching until the end as you don't want to miss out on how you can potentially save $5,000, $10,000, or even more thousands of dollars per year on property taxes by living in Cranberry Township. All right, let's dive on in. One of the reasons that Cranberry Township has developed so much is it's a great place to live based on its prime location. Both the east and west Pennsylvania Turnpike, Interstate 76, and the north-south Interstate 79 pass right through Cranberry Township. There are other significant highways here including US Route 19 and Route 228 and all four of these routes are linked by an interchange which provide pretty direct non-stop access between a lot of locations. So if you're going to be commuting to work in a number of places, it's fairly easy most likely. And if you're a traveler and just like to get around, it's also pretty easy if you live in Cranberry Township. Now getting to downtown Pittsburgh is only about 25 minutes away as well, so it's a really good location with prime access to a lot of places in the Pittsburgh metro area. Speaking of travel, being in this prime location opens up endless job opportunities for you. Like I said, you can get to downtown Pittsburgh fairly easily, but Cranberry Township in particular also boasts a number of job opportunities. The township's economy here is pretty balanced with a variety of industries including things from technology to business to professional manufacturing, finance, retail business, and many more industries. Westinghouse's headquarters is actually in Cranberry Township and is a pretty big employer here. And there are a number of other small to large businesses that also call Cranberry Township their home, so getting a job should not be a problem in this general area. All right, let's dive on in and talk about the demographics. So family values here are pretty important and the overall population reflects what I would say is a young, healthy, well-educated, and wealthy community. Toddler and school-aged children are more common here than maybe a number of other suburbs around the area. And it's, like I said earlier, a major center for technology, so Cranberry Township is attracting what is probably a more diverse, well-educated population. So for those looking to start a new family or looking for fresh job opportunities, you really have a great future home here in Cranberry Township. All right, you guys still with me? I know some of this is a little bit mundane, but we're gonna get some exciting save on taxes information pretty soon. But let's quickly talk about education here. So Cranberry Township values academic excellence and the school district here is called Seneca Valley. Seneca Valley School District and it's one of the region's finest public school districts out there that serves the entire Cranberry Township community. Niche.com actually recommended or ranked, rather, Seneca Valley as the number one best school district in the Butler County area. If you want more information, just go to niche.com. It could tell you more about the school rankings in particular, but you really can't go wrong here with the schools. But again, do your own research based on what is important to you and your family. All right, let's talk about real estate. So what can you buy in Cranberry Township? What does it look like here? Well, new communities and residences are really constantly being built here and the area is home to many excellent businesses and shopping malls. They have single-family homes, townhomes, two-story homes, condos, bigger fortified bedroom homes with bigger lots are really among the various types of housing here. So essentially, you can get whatever you want. Now, one of the things that is pretty unique about Cranberry in particular, because it's only developed pretty aggressively maybe over the last 10 or 20 years, comparatively to some other places around the Pittsburgh area, the homes skew newer here. So the average age of a home here was built in 1998, where if you go to different areas in you might be 1970s, 1960s. You're going to have a little bit of an older home, which doesn't necessarily mean that's a problem. But if you are looking for new, Cranberry Township has a lot of opportunities for you. Now, the median home price here is going to close out the year 2022, right around $410,000. It might be a little bit less, but somewhere around $410,000 will be the median price in Cranberry Township, comparatively to other areas. So like I said, homes skew new here. 1998 might not be new to you, so you might be thinking, well, that's kind of old. And if you're looking for brand new, you also have that opportunity. 2022, 2023, 2021, brand new, whatever you're looking for, that is available here in the Cranberry Township area. As you can imagine, buying brand new is usually going to be a little bit more expensive than a pre-built home that's a little bit older, but you have plenty of associated benefits with having a brand new home. Now, really quickly, before we jump into saving thousands of dollars per year by living in Cranberry Township, in case it's not obvious, I am a local real estate agent in the Cranberry Township and the Pittsburgh area, and my team and I regularly help families move to the Pittsburgh metro area and would love to help you and your family do the same if we can be of assistance. So if you're remotely considering moving in the next few months or even the next few years, it's really never too early to start getting actionable information. So give us a call, shoot us a text, or send us an email, and we would love to connect and help you find exactly what you're looking for, provide more information on the area, or start sending you some properties, or whatever is best for you and your family. So don't hesitate to reach out. Oh, and also, make sure that you subscribe to my channel and click the notification bell so that you don't miss any of my videos on what it's like to live in the Pittsburgh metro area. And let me know in the comments below, what other neighborhoods should I make these community tours on? Are there any other particular neighborhoods that you guys really want to see? I'd love to make those for you. All right, let's move on to saving potentially thousands of dollars per year on property taxes. So this is the most exciting part, potentially, if you like saving money. Cranberry is actually not located in Allegheny County, which is the county that Pittsburgh is in. So it's actually just outside of Allegheny County in Butler County. Now, you might be saying, well, what's the big deal about that? Well, $5,000 or more is potentially the big deal about that. So you can save on property taxes by living in Butler County, which again, you still are very close to a lot of the Pittsburgh metro area. So if you need to work downtown or something like that, it is a commute, but it's not that bad. 25, 30 minutes, a little bit more than that, potentially, depending on where you're going to, but you will save a fair amount in property taxes. Now, real estate taxes, unfortunately, in Pennsylvania are way more complicated than they should be. But essentially, you pay property tax to the county that you live in, to the municipality, in this case, Cranberry Township, and you also pay a third tax to the school district. So without getting a complicated spreadsheet up here and talking about all these different levels of minutia, essentially, you'll save somewhere around half on property taxes by living in Butler County. Now, don't quote me on this precisely, because as I said, it's fairly complicated, and each county has lots of municipalities, which each have their own tax rate. So you're not just comparing everything in Allegheny County to Cranberry. So it's a specific municipality and a specific school district that needs to get compared to Cranberry Township. But anyway, for simple math, a good ballpark savings would be around 50%. So on a $450,000 home, you could save somewhere around $4,500 per year by living in Cranberry Township instead of Allegheny. Again, each situation here is unique. So the best way to compare your options would be to talk to a good local real estate agent like yours truly, or a good local mortgage officer. And I have a great one that I regularly work with, and I can recommend to you. Just reach out, call, text, or email, and we would love to facilitate that process and help you compare and contrast your options. All right, well, now that you are sick of hearing about property taxes, let's move on to something a little bit more exciting, like recreation and entertainment in the Cranberry Township area. So with three great parks, a water park, a skate park, a dog park, and Cranberry Highlands Golf Course, which was ranked Pennsylvania's top municipal golf course back in 2009 by Golf Digest, Cranberry Township is essentially known for its commitment to recreation. You've got Grand Park, North Boundary Park, you've got Fun For All here, and you have so much more. So you're really never going to have a dull moment with your family in the Cranberry Township area. And actually one of the neatest things to do with your family is to go ice skating at the same place where the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team practice, at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Center. You could join a training camp or the clinics that they offer there, available every season. Fans of ice hockey have the privilege of watching the Pittsburgh Penguins train here, which is pretty cool. All right, let's talk about what is arguably the most important aspect to consider when choosing where to live, and that is your family's quality of life. Cranberry's high quality of life is one of the most appealing features in my opinion. It offers a wide range of housing options, first-rate health care options, a reputable public school system, and numerous higher education institutions as well, lower crime rates, low taxes, and many other things. So it would be a fantastic opportunity for anyone looking to relocate here, and really anywhere around the Pittsburgh area, if it works for what you're looking for with your family. So if you like what you've seen so far, you'll definitely want to check out this video right here, touring an awesome new build community in the heart of Cranberry Township, with hundreds of new homes. It's actually a pretty unique community that you're not going to want to miss. Heck, they even have a coffee shop and a fitness center right in the middle of the community, so go ahead and check it out.