Wife and I are looking at buying our first home. We’re on my single income as my wife is taking care of our little one.  I work in Lakeville and will be working there for the foreseeable future.

   We’re looking at areas where we can get our money’s worth for the lower salary we have at the moment. We’ve narrowed it down to Faribault area due to the astronomical prices to live in suburbia south of MSP... Anyone commute from Faribault to the greater lakeville area? How bad is it in the winter? Is it a longer commute? Is Faribault worth moving to? I’ll be driving to lakeville at all odd ball hours for my job. Thanks!

Faribault would be a longer drive than I’d like. I am a member of their gun club though.

I used to live in Elko New Market and really liked it there.

I’m a south metro guy myself.  I moved my mother out of Faribault about a year and a half ago, she had lived there since early 2000’s.  My honest opinion is that I wouldn’t want to live there.  It seemed to get dumpier every year she was there, and crime, etc seemed to be getting worse.  The town is in decline, With a lot of empty businesses, especially downtown and out by I-35.  My daughter is a teacher, and she did her required year of externship for college at one of the Faribault elementary schools 3 or 4 years ago.  By her reports, it’s a difficult district for kids to learn in, as there are lot of ESL students slowing progress of most classes.  

The drive isn’t too bad, as long as there isn’t construction going on on I-35.  Particularly if you’d be driving odd hours, you should be able to get back and forth to lakeville in under 30 minutes.

Have you considered Northfield? It's a bit closer, and you have the option of taking 35 directly to Lakeville or taking 3 up to Farmington and then going to Lakeville from there.

Yeah, we’re looking at Northfield as well. It’s a little more expensive. But we’re watching the areas. We want to raise our little one in a safe/good school districts!

Have you considered moving out of Minnesota? It's not going to get any better and the schools are rapidly deteriorating thanks to the woke idiots in administration/government and the Educate Minnesota leftist cabal.

Have fun when your kid is learning how terrible America is in their newly updated History curriculum... https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/01/we-are-all-white-supremacists-now.php

My career has just started. The way my industry is I’m not leaving where I am. Our kiddo is a infant right now. But yes ideally SD, NE is where we would ideally like to live in a perfect world. It’s just the industry I’m in there is no one hiring any where. So I’m blessed to have this job.

You know, you keep saying things like that while ignoring the fact that I still own property in MN that I spend a lot of time at (less than 183 days/yr!, in case anyone from the MN dept of revenue is reading this...). Regardless, I only post information relevant to MN and my thoughts on them as filtered by my experience as a MN resident and non-resident property owner.

Also, yes the SD HT forum is boring...

Avoid Northfield. The very fact you're on this site guarantees that town's politics will drive you to drink. Ask me how I know.

Avoid Faribault. Housing prices are OK but it's a decaying town that's getting more and more crime. Somali is the second most common language in the schools, if that matters to you.

Elko New Market is nice and closer to Lakeville, but housing prices are more expensive.

Try Lonsdale. I wouldn't hesitate to live there except the school situation (geographically) didn't work out for us. There's an elementary in town, but middle school is somewhere else and high school in still another town (I could be wrong about that last part, but I know there is no middle school or high school in Lonsdale). Close to the Faribault Rifle and Pistol Club, too (20 minutes, can shoot out to 600, inexpensive membership fees).  There's a decent grocery store in Lonsdale, two gas stations (with usually the lowest gas prices in the county), and a liquor store. Nice town.

Congrats on the job, my advice is to stay vigilant and engaged in the school system you choose for your kid.  Here's another example of the insanity taking over the MN schools... https://www.americanexperiment.org/2021/01/the-revolution-in-minnesotas-schools/  I could recommend a great private school but it's in the west metro so not near your current locale and even then I worry that the state will attempt to coerce even the private parochial schools into conforming with their leftist campaign to erase American exceptionalism and replace it with their woke socialist group-think.

Out of curiosity, what is the private school you recommend? I have a little one that will be needing schooling soon. Public perception says most people aren't real gung ho on private catholic school's, but that's the way I've been leaning for a while now.

If you're near Chan, Chapel Hill Academy was great for our child. They have pre-k through 8th, 2 classes per grade of around 12-16 kids and feed into Southwest Christian High School in Chaska.  The teachers are engaged and genuinely care not only about the students' academic performance but the children themselves.  She entered SD 2 grades ahead in math and well ahead of her peers in the other subjects.  It's not cheap especially with no tax credit in MN and the massive property taxes we pay to support the liberal indoctrination centers... er public schools, but it's not even close to the expense of some of the other private schools in the area and they do have a robust financial aid program.  Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.

Probably.