Whats the area like crime/drug wise?  Sewers/sanitation?  Anything negative or positive you can throw in?  It seems to be one of the few places on the island thats still "affordable" without making over 120k a year.

get yourself the school survey info and see how many kids receive free lunch. Thats a pretty good indicator of what you are surrounded by.

I know a co-worker that GTFO of Rocky Point and moved upstate. All I kept hearing him complain about was the raising of taxes because of the schools.

www.city-data.com/city/Shoreham-New-York.html

Wading River here...

The Miller Place/Rock Point area is great. I worked as a first responder for the FD in RP for a while. I wasn't aware of any 'bad' areas, just areas with smaller homes and maybe more blue collar incomes and maybe some vaguely red necky neighborhoods. There are some very densely packed neighborhoods with small cottage type homes especially in RP in the Terraces area. The schools are great. The district to the south mentioned above is Longwood. My neighbor taught there and it's not horrible and not your district. You want horrible go to Hempstead or Roosevelt. The police blotter reports are pretty benign but as with all of LI no area is immune to some notable crimes every so often.

The taxes are more notable in the Shoreham-Wading River SD and can sometimes border on ludicrous for the home. Brookhaven has high taxes like most other districts. If you're house hunting and are inclined on looking further east look into the Riverhead side of Wading River. A comparable home in Shoreham to mine would probably have taxes around 12 to 15k. My taxes are 10k with STAR and a town non combat vet credit(3200sf home with an in-ground pool on an acre.) The R'head school district doesn't have a good rep but its actually pretty good and getting better. SWR has a great rep there are actually some huge deficiencies that are only going to get worse over the years. There's no money for text books from 1st-5th grade, they get handouts, overcrowding, no program for gifted students and very heavy expenses for the administrators that eats up a good percentage of the budget.

Buying or renting?

Quoted: Quoted: Wading River here... The district to the south mentioned above is Longwood. My neighbor taught there and it's not horrible and not your district. Parts of Rocky Point are in the Longwood school district. My wife and I were considering moving there and did a lot of research on it. You have to be careful with the zoning. Longwood has gone downhill over the last 5 to 10 years, and it wasn't exactly great before. If you don't consider sending your kids to school with MS13 and Crip gang members horrible, then have at it. Take a drive through Gordon Heights (also Longwood) to see who their classmates will be.

Riverhead is no prize when you hit the high school either. With all the development out here things are looking up. But gangs are a pandemic. Short of moving to Orient you'd be hard pressed to find a district that doesn't have some degree of gang problem. Ah, who am I fooling. Greenport has gangs too. There's always Cathlic school.