Mathias Baden reports:

“A ways out there, but an appealing combination of pastoral and urban.”

Sound familiar, like someone is mentioning a little town you might have in mind?

In the July edition of Mpls St Paul magazine, Brian Lambert, Shawn Gilliam, and Sarah Howard combined to write an article about the best places to live in the Twin Cities, and Jordan made the list of 20 “great neighborhoods.”

The writers took into account crime statistics, school quality ratings, subjective insights of real estate industry professionals, and historical home sales.

Another key factor in their outlook was the existence of stable, strong home values.

The magazine’s stats show that Jordan’s home values are up 44.3 percent since 2001, but only 0.4 percent from 2006 to 2007. The median price of a single-family home is $251,000 in 2007, an increase of $1,000 since 2006.

Property taxes on an average house cost $2,850 in 2007, according to the stats compiled by the League of Minnesota Cities.

Houses stay on the market for an average of 168 days.

The magazine’s stats pointed out Jordan extraordinarily low crime rate – one violent crime and 217 nonviolent crimes per year.

Here’s what else the article said about Jordan:

“Small-town Scott County requires a tough commute to Twin Cities business centers, but for now that’s OK for residents here. House prices in thoroughly planned Jordan cover a wide range and are holding their values much better than in other exurbs. But the icing on the cake is the 155-year-old town’s charm: a quaint downtown with antique shops and other small businesses, most of it still surrounded by quintessential Minnesota pastoral scenery.”