Hi all

Does anyone have any advice on the good areas to live in Barrie and near by areas so that I can look up property for these parts?


Thanks
Danny

We are moving to Barrie, hopefully this August.

Depends on your situation...do you have kids?

We have 2 children 7 and 2 yrs old. We live in a small village outside Brentwood, Essex and are looking to be quite rural over there. We really like Craighurst, Shanty Bay and Oro. They are all North to North-East of Barrie centre.

Midhurst is quite nice aswell, slightly more built up area, plenty of houses all with decent sizes plots, but no acreage. Prices seemed a bit higher there. Midhurst is pretty close to the city centre, 5 mins away while the areas we like are about 15 minute drive.

I can put you in touch with a really good agent there if you like. Feel free to PM me if there is anything else i can help with.

Chris

chris just sent you a pm
any info on the barrie area would be good, love the look of the area and had so good feedback that we have added it to our next recci trip

gill

Not point scoring here, you can see from the blog that we don't live terribly far from Barrie ourselves, but what is it attracts you to Barrie?

away from toronto, there looks some fab areas and as im from a small village in the uk, dont want to goto a large town or city with the kids.
More for your $, yeah i know that wages are not as good, but as we say its swings and round abouts.
got a friend who has family there, was heading to bigger towns for good jobs, but we are not leaving the uk as ho needs a better job, we are leaving for the kids, quality of life and a more relaxed area for the kids

done the first visit to see if it was what we wanted and now we are heading back for job hunt and ho to get his licience, got info for recci trip just want to know if expats have setled well in the area etc etc
suppose like the erson who posted the treat, what areas have the expats settled in and have they experienced problems????


gill

Hi Chris

Thanks for that, our girls are 9 and 4 I think we are also looking for something a little rural and Barrie seems a good size with job possibilities, and not to big. where we are at the moment has around 15'000 next to a town of 50'000, and right next to the sea. Being next to a lake is another attraction. and also not to far from a major city.

I will pm you for those details, I might even ask your realator if they know anyone looking for a good mortgage broker I,m hoping to stay in the same field when we move.

Thanks
again
Danny

Barrie currently has a population of about 150,000. So a bit bigger than where you are however it did seem pretty spread out, so wasn't any massive concentration of housing.

I will PM you our realtors details. Word of warning when we first drove into Barrie all we saw was the industrial parts and the massive stores, 5 mins drive away are some picture postcard areas. We fell in love, pretty much cancelled all other areas we wanted to look at.

Mortgage broker, when i give you his details get in touch and take things from there. May be able to help you out myself in some ways, i trade Commodities, Bonds, Indexs, Currencies and Interest Rate Futures, mainly for a Uk based Hedge Fund but also for my own account. Will be trading from home when we move to Barrie.

Chris

Agreed. We stayed last year at the Best Western on Hart Drive. Our first impressions were not not good. The surrounding roads such as Vespra Street were virtually unmade and covered in rubble and there was a s*x shop nearby. It's a strange part of the city and one I hope they are planning to redevelop as they are with downtown and along the lakeshore.

Agreed, we really liked Barrie on one of our reccie trips, but didn't really understand the amount of s*x shops needed in a town of that size. Tattoo parlours in abundance aswell. We have an amusing picture in our heads of everyone running around wearing gimp masks and getting tattooed on the long winter nights
Seriously though we probably would still consider Barrie if we ever move from here, we have quite fond memories of our Barrie reccie.
Jo xx

Hi

I don't live that far from Barrie (30-45 minutes drive depending on which part of town I'm heading to).
There are a lot of Brits there, so I'm surprised no-one else has jumped on here to give their opinion at length.

For what it's worth, and I am a bit of a curmudgeon, here are my opinions:
It's North America's fastest growing city so those leafy outskirts surrounded by farmland are fast disappearing. It's pretty lively, especially in summer and they seem to have some kind of festival every other weekend with loads for kids to do. The lakeside and marina are quite popular with joggers and cyclists as well as people out walking in the evening - the only thing that's missing in my opinion, are bars or restaurants with patios which would surely do a roaring trade along the lakefront. Sadly, either town regulations, or Canadian inability to exploit a great idea means there are none.
The kids will enjoy the parks that are next to the lake, there is a splash-pad in the heat of the summer that they just love and there are a couple of good supervised beaches on Kempenfelt Bay - both minutes walk from downtown.
There are also now at least two Indian restaurants - never been to either, so can't comment on how good they are, but one - the Tara - always seems full

However:
There seem to be a lot of undesirables in town. The centre of downtown has a small memorial area which seems to be frequented at all hours by groups of people off their faces on their drug of choice. The crime rate seems to be very much on the up with stabbings, break ins and various assorted criminal acts making our local news every night.
Many of the houses and businesses in the West End look like they've seen better days and the place seems nowadays to be in constant gridlock.
As for the sex shops - funny you should mention that! Only a couple of months ago I remarked on how many there seem to be in Barrie. Whatever direction you come into town, you seem to pass at least two.
I can only surmise that the fumes from the 400 - which passes through West of the city - are having a flagging effect on the love lives of the inhabitants.
The roads in general are in terrible shape - and they have implemented a crappy one-way system in the centre which has newcomers scratching their heads.

Midhurst isn't a bad area - there's a nice, if small, Provincial Park just up the road (Springwater). Other nice areas are as mentioned - Oro and north of the city. Centre Vespre and Grenfel seem nice little hamlets, as does Thornton - although the south side of Barrie seems to be edging ever closer to it.

If you want any more info or opinions on the surrounding area, let me know as I know it all reasonably well now...

IMO. the Tara restaurant mentioned above charges about twice as much as the equivalent restaurants in Toronto for a poorer quality of meal. Of course, people don't move to Barrie for the multiculturalism but, even so, better to drive to Brampton now and then than to accept what's offerred there.

Fair enough - like I said - never been in.
Any recommendations/directions by the way, for decent Indian places in Brampton that would warrant the 3/4 hour drive from deepest darkest Alliston dbd?

The new one in town - the "Nawab" - looks rather posh. Has anyone checked that out?

We check out the Barrie Advance and A Channel news online (good old Sarah Piccolotto!) and it does seem that crime is lower than even Toronto, let alone Croydon where I live.

I heard they removed the benches in downtown to stop the winos hanging around. What's the word on the street? - I keep reading about the proposed regeneration, the "Next Wave" as it was called. I just hope that the character of the place doesn't change with the planned huge increase in residents.

Having said that we can't wait to go back and look around.

have a look at www.barrie.ca there is an article called

Packed Hall Listens, Responds to Plans for City Centre

open the link it has the presentation for the regeneration around the bay area. I was impressed by it.

Chris

We're moving to Wasaga beach not too far from Barrie. This is going off at a bit of a tangent but I ca highly recommend the HSBC in Barrie to set up accounts, mortgages etc They are the most helpful bank people I have ever come across in England, USA or Canada.

Also with the "boom" etc in Barrie does anyone know if its a decent area for buy to lets; much demand for rental properties etc.

andrew