Hi
with my husband and kids (3 and 1 yo) we'll move to Basel this March. He will work in Allschwil. I ve never been in Basel and I ve got no idea where to look for house. My idea is to look in or near Allschwill. Is it a nice place? Of course i want a big house/apartment for little money , im looking to spend around 2500. Will somebody help me with some good tips on best neighborhood.
Thanks a lot.
Ari

Living in Basel Land is probably better as the taxes are cheaper, somewhere like Oberwil which is not far away & between Allschwil & Oberwil there is a nice stretch of country with great farms which sell fresh veg.

2,500SFr. per month will get you a 4-5 room apartment but doubtful if enough for a house.

Oberwil

Thanks! Infact when i say "house" i mean "home" indeed im looking for apartments raher then houses.
I thought about oberwill but looked so faraway..maybe is only my prespective.
Thanks for your help

Look at a tram map (www.tnw.ch, www.blt.ch www.bvb.ch). As long as you're close to a stop, there's no problem. The buses are also reliable and frequent. The further away from Basel city, the lower the rents.

I agree, you will get much more space for your money.....the country around Oberwil is also pretty flat so no stress when with the kids & pushchair. Oberwil also has a shopping centre open until 8pm & even on the same tramline that passes the Zoo towards Basel.

Thanks to all
ive been looking for apts in oberwill and reinach in Homegate.com but i see that those matching my price facilities ( supermarkets expecially) are not in the vicinity. I have to add that for the first year we were thinking of not buying any car so i will have to count on public transportation only which is quite good in Basel. Yet again, are these neighborhoods still he best choice for a family without a car?
Thanks to indulge with me

Allschwil can be a little awkward to get to in my experience depending on where you are (Hegenheimermattweg????). But if your other half will ride a bike then there shouldn't be a problem.

I've always lived in Basel Stadt and haven't felt I'd missed out on anything Basel Land has to offer. We lived in Gundeli for 3 years and although many Swiss think it's full of immigrants (they're right - me!) I really liked it. I guess the obvious thing is avoid the other side of the river and the Eastern side of basel and you can't really go that wrong. If you are not getting a car and thinking of collecting the weekly shop, I'd stick to tram travel. Not sure why really but I always found them more reliable (relatively so considering you are in Switzerland) and more stable so your bags of oranges don't end up rolling all over the floor.

Properties come and go on the websites and don't expect the same pressures and factors as somewhere like the UK. We waited nearly a year to find the right place for us before moving. Keep checking and looking.

Good luck

Is that Kleinbasel? OK, I've not been in Basel long (two days!) but it looks OK.

If your husband works in Allschwil, then it's important to know in which part of Allschwil his office is. Tram no 6 is the main public transport to Allschwil but Tram no:8 & Bus nos: 33,38,48,61,64 also go in and around Allschwil from nearby areas. So I would advise to check in www.map.search.ch/basel where your husband's office is located in Allschwil and then you can decide the location for house. In your budget you can get apartment apprx.95-100m sq. in Allschwil. see www.homegate.ch

I think that's from a access to Allschwil perspective.

Though the city parts of Klein Basel are generally viewed as more run-down than Gross Basel. The leafier parts are OK though.

Kleinbasel a few years ago was deemed the worst place to live in Switzerland. But still about "Nottingham" in the scale of things... According to the Basel Panto group, repeatedly, it's not as bad as Zürich. But I suspect some prejudice there.

Try looking over the border, it's an easy commute.
You could even buy there.

Public transport isn't so good, and it might not suit with kids. (but it might...)

Does the eastern side of the city have a bad reputation? You mean, the parts around the Birs? I wasn't aware of that, but I'm also new. And looking for an apartment.
How is Bettingen, by the way? I have heard good things about Riehen, but nobody mentioned Bettingen.

I didn't mean to insult inhabitants of Klein Basel (not all of them anyway - just the pervs with the telescopes looking in to Bar Rouge). I mean it just gets more and more inconvenient and there aren't any real advantages to living there or the Eastern side of town (IMO).

I do know someone who cycles from Pratteln to Allschwil for work everyday but she is a Swedish triathlete and so mental stability is in question.

About the only place I would avoid in Basel is the ghetto by Voltaplatz and the bits in town too close to the adult bars (and the really heavily UK/US populated areas of BL - sorry, I'd live in the UK or US if I wanted you all as neighbours ).

I do know someone who cycles from Pratteln to Allschwil for work everyday but she is a Swedish triathlete and so mental stability is in question.


OOOh bless you! My husband IS swedish (im italian) though not a triathlete, but crazy enough to commute to New Jersey from New York city by bike when we were living there, so i guess i can present him with the Prattlen option.
Jokes apart, thank you all for the help. Ill be in Basel on friday and start the hunt. I sincerely hope will take lot less then a year to find something suitable. Cross fingers for me.
Ciao

Thanks Lunahk for creating this thread. We move to Basel in March with a 10 mth old and I will be working in Allschwil so this thread is very relevant to my interests! Just hope we won't be competing for the same places..

The problem with Allschwil is the plane noise!
Virtually every day, from about 06:15 to something like 23:00.
OK, sometimes the wind changes direction and they take off into France, but more often than not, they are on full power climbing over Allschwil. When they take off into France, then they descend over Allschwil. It's just the lesser of two evils.
They take off heading towards Basel, climb then bank right and fly over the Actelion buildings then roughly over the Dorfplatz area. Maybe Allschwil closer to Lindenplatz is not so bad.
It's bad enough in the winter with the windows closed, but the rest of the year it really blights the quality of life. Especially if you sleep with the windows open, the noise when the maintenance guys run up the engines at 5am is enough to wake a light sleeper as well.
As you can see, it's got my goat.
If you don't mind the noise then Allshwil is an OK place to live. From the Dorfplatz to Barfusserplatz takes about 15 minutes on the number 6 tram.
We'll move as soon as possible, but the ideal apartment is tricky to find.

also you might want to think about a couple of issues. First, 2 small kids make an awful lot of laundry. Many apartment buildings have shared washing rooms and it might happen that your day is once every two weeks and so. So look for apartments with its own washing machine, they do exist.

also, swiss people are very sensitive to noise and small kids tend to fall, drop things and watch cartoons about people yelling and exploding. If you would like to live in an apartment, I would suggest considering ground floor

My brother-in-law just moved his family to Therwil, the area seems to be pretty nice and it is "just" outside Basel.

Reinach, Allshwil, Oberwil - those areas seem to be a sort-of "Swiss version" of suburbs. Different apartment exterior design than what I'm accustomed to in the US but similar in that they tend to be more spacious and more space between buildings.

Living in one of those areas and working in the other is not as easy a commute as living in one while working in Basel or vice-versa... of course. Doable but not as convenient.


Meanwhile - Voltaplatz area may appear a bit slummy if one hadn't been there for a while BUT they've just built a new Coop (grocery store) / shopping area with apartments above. The Coop is fantastic, the tram line has been diverted to run right along there instead of down whichever other street that was. The apartments are just being moved into now.

Having lived in the ghetto in my early 20s in the Chicago 'burbs and driving through another in the Daytona area to get to my river side apartment, I'll say that there is nothing in Basel that really compares to my idea of a ghetto area. I do not live that far off Voltaplatz and never feel unsafe - not even walking home from a friend's house near the Frau hospital at near midnight.


All the same, if I had kids, or a dog (or both), my preference would be to live in one of the more outlying areas. As is, it really is nice to have the option of walking (as opposed to having to drive or take public transport) to downtown Basel if I want.