10 Reasons I Like Dracut

I posted this over at http://dracutmusings.blogspot.com/ and thought people would enjoy it.  I’ve been meaning to write this for years…

My wife and I have been married for three years. I was living in South Boston when I proposed to her and then moved back to my parents house in Melrose to save money for the wedding. We knew we wanted to own rather than rent so we started looking for condos. We both made decent money but we could only afford about a $200,000 condo. We knew we could not find a nice condo that cheap in the Greater Boston area.

As we started searching for condos with our realtor (my uncle George Dargan – call him at Century 21 in Medford if you’re selling or buying, he is the best), we kept on finding places in Dracut. Being a native of Melrose and my wife hailing from West Roxbury, we never heard of Dracut. But, the price was right so we decided to take a look.

We drove to Dracut on a snowy Saturday in February, four months before our wedding. Dracut is located about 5 miles off of Route 93. However, I didn’t know that and I used Mapquest to find the condo. As it normally does, Mapquest took us around the world – it sent us via 495, Rt. 38, and some unattractive streets in Lowell. I worked in Wellesley at the time so I thought my commute would be hell. We did not like the place we first looked at (it had a funky odor) but we found another condo in the same complex a few weeks later. Only then did I figure out that Dracut is pretty easy to get to.

After living here for three years, my wife and I love it. Considering we never heard of the town before, we have settled in quite nicely. I wasn’t too thrilled at first – we didn’t know anyone, we waited two months to get cable so we were without a TV, and I didn’t know where I was in proportion to anything else! But, after a few months we grew to love it here.

Here (in no particular order) are some reasons Dracut is a great place to live:

1. It is affordable – our 850 sq. ft. condo was $177,000 (not bad for Mass.)
2. It has a small town feel
3. It has operating farms such as Shaw Farm (best chocolate milk ever)
4. Our parish (St. Francis Catholic Church) is amazing
5. It is close to major highways (93, 495, 3) but they don’t go through the town
6. It borders tax-free New Hampshire
7. It is next to Lowell (which is making a nice come back)
8. It is near plenty of Market Baskets (the most affordable supermarket around)
9. It is quiet
10. Great school system