Re: Chicago suburbs
I would put both Gurnee and Aurora in the same "very out of the way, but perfectly fine if you plan on staying close to home" category as Naperville, Libertyville, etc. As I said, this may or may not be an issue for you personally.
Basically, for the same $300k, you're going to get a much better (bigger, nicer) home in Gurnee than you are going to get in Skokie. Some people prefer this, and don't mind being a 75-minute drive away from downtown. Others prefer the smaller home in Skokie, b/c they would rather have a 25-minute drive downtown.
The one thing I would say though is that the school districts in Gurnee or Aurora is not going to be competitive with GBN/GBS or Niles West / Niles North. I don't know any stats offhand but I'm like 99% sure that they lag significantly behind on any numerical metric you look at (avg SAT score, # of AP classes offered, % of class going on to 4 -year colleges, etc.) I might be wrong - if so, I would love to be corrected.
-bigbootch
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