I was in your spot about two years ago when I moved here. I worked at the Cira Center and lived in Fairmount, even found a nice apartment for about $1000.00/mo. I could walk to Cira in 20 minutes. I'd definitely recommend Fairmount if you are looking for someplace with no kids and not a lot of students. There's Wholefoods, a nice gym, and it's close to the Art Museum and Center City. Center City, either the Gayborhood (around 12th and Walnut), Grad Hospital or South Street are also great neighborhoods to look into, since the Cira Center has a bus that runs to center city about every half hour or so - or it did when I worked there. Anything close to downtown is very walkable. University City - up to 50th- is pretty nice around the Baltimore Ave areas, but can also be kind of sketchy, so definitely take a look at the block at night before you sign a lease. West Philly in general is different block by block, as far as crime rate goes, and crime is a serious issue. If you are looking for someplace quiet, and don't mind moving a little further West, I recommend Cobbs Creek, as being close to public transportation, good shopping (slightly outside of Philly), relatively safe and very attractice, since it's close to a lot of parks. It's not as walkable as neighborhoods closer to Center City though.

I'm not sure that Fairmount's any better than Cedar Park and parts of Spruce Hill, as far as "having kids but not so many students."

Fairmount's a great neighborhood, though. I really wanted to move there at one time, but think it's underserved by public transit. The Spring Garden neighborhood (South of Fairmount Ave) might be a better fit.

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Thank you all! Very useful Information

What area on the map (street wise) is considered the fairmount area?

Fairmount is from Fairmount Ave, North to Poplar St and from the river to around Corinthian Ave, although 20th St a block down isn't bad. East of there is Francisville, which is sort of "in transition."

Spring Garden is from Fairmount Ave, South to Spring Garden St and from the river to Broad St (the Western portion is nicer than the Eastern portion).

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If you really want to invest in a great neighborhood that's still "up & coming" I would highly recommend you look at SWCC (Southwest Center City) a.k.a. the "Graduate Hospital" neighborhood ("G-Ho" sometimes for short).

#1 it's not an unreasonable commute for you...
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=e...7&ie=UTF8&z=14
I'd call that a good healthy walk on nice/energetic days, and on lazy/bad weather days, you could take the #17 bus (which has fantastic service), connecting with 3 different other buses, according to SEPTA's trip planner...
http://airs1.septa.org/bin/query.exe...28263&OK#focus

I just did a quick search & there are tons of places for sale for under $300K in this zipcode (19146)...
http://www.realtor.com/map/search/se...=2&bth=2&typ=2

SWCC is just a 10 minute walk from Rittenhouse Square (arguably the nicest part of Center City) & all the wonderful surrounding areas, while still being very affordable.

When I referred to it as "up & coming" what I mean is, it's still a bit rough around the edges right now, but undoubtedly well on it's way to becoming one of the best investments I personally think you could make in Philadelphia right now.

On top of that, though the real estate market really hasn't crashed here like it has in much of the rest of the country, sales have slowed down a bit so there's a lot out there to see, which means you should be in a very good position to negotiate right now.

In the 2 years my husband & I have been living here we've seen a tremendous amount of positive change, and there are definitely no signs of it slowing down.

So for all those reasons (and more) that's why I'd say, if you have the money to invest now, I would go for it. We just love it here & I seriously don't think you could go wrong. Do it now!

Okay, that's the end of my shameless plug for what I think is a terrific neighborhood.

Good luck & let us know if you have any other questions.