Town of the Week: Pleasant Valley

  |  April 1, 2013

pleasant valley ny

We have to hand it to Dutchess County; they sure know how to hide adorable towns amongst loads of green and lush countryside, like so many multicolored Easter eggs in a big ol’ grassy basket. In fact, two such towns recently found their way onto Hudson Valley Magazine’s Top Towns of 2013: Millerton, and Pleasant Valley. The Pleasant Valley profile uses such descriptive words as “walkable”, “safe”, and “desirable.” There might have been a “friendly” and “comfortable” mixed in there, too.

The town is made up of Washington Hollow, Salt Point, and Pleasant Valley, all hamlets we plan explore this week, and we’re already overwhelmed with the selection in Pleasant Valley (town and hamlet) and Salt Point. It’s a healthy mix of farms, modest country homes, fixer-uppers, and impressive estates. There are also quite a few foreclosures. Trulia.com gives Pleasant Valley an average listing price of $360,758 and a median sales price of $206,750. For a Dutchess County town with amenities, that’s not too shabby. Our search mirrored those numbers, with most of the values between $200-300,000. As far as property taxes are concerned, we randomly chose a property that costs $228,000, a fairly average price in these parts, on a bit of land (10 acres, to be exact. A lot of the properties in Pleasant Valley have some land under them) and discovered it to cost about $4,700 a year in taxes.

Newcomb-Brown_Estate,_Pleasant_Valley,_NY

Newcomb Brown Estate, Pleasant Valley, via Wikipedia

Pleasant Valley is located within the Arlington School District, a school district that, quite refreshingly, places a high value on arts and music education, with an overall Greatschools.com ranking of 7 out of 10 (most schools in the Arlington district score around a 7 or 8; Poughkeepsie is the outlier with a score of 2. Ouch).

Location-wise, Pleasant Valley is located about 77 miles from NYC (that’s about a 90 minute drive, discounting traffic) and about 5.5 miles from the Taconic Parkway.

Overall, we think we’re going to enjoy life in the Valley that is Pleasant this week. Got something to say about the Town of the Week? Let us know in the comments section.

pleasant valley capture

Town of Pleasant Valley Website

GMAP

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

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