I live in an efficiency apartment in a "transitional" neighborhood. There are former crack houses down the street, and there have been multiple armed robberies over the last year (same guys), but I like it. Everything I need is nearby. I'm close to downtown, Medical District, the lake, music venues, museums and bars and restaurants. Plus, I'm mostly surrounded by young professionals and students. For me, it's an ideal location and affordable rent.
Since nobody has taking me up on the whole photo thing and I am spending a lazy Sunday morning online house shopping, I'll share with you what is more what I am looking for. Unfortunately, this beauty is already sold, but status is "contingent" so there is always the chance that it will fall through. You can click on any of the pics for a slideshow. LOVE IT. (and the price has been reduced)
Oops, forgot the link....here it is. <a class="postlink" href="http://bignamebrain.com/1009/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://bignamebrain.com/1009/</a>
We currently live in a 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bath house on about 1/2 an acre outside of Philadelphia. I love the house, particularly the kitchen and upstairs, but hate the yard. We have a walkout basement, which means our back yard is on a slope. It was supposed to be more level, but the builder didn't do what they were supposed to do (yes, we brought it to their attention, but this is the same builder when I brought up another point started with, "Listen sweetheart..." Blood started boiling with that comment. Not very customer friendly.) We moved about 3 years ago and I loved that house also. It was about the same size, but we had about one and a quarter acre. WAY too much property since it was mostly grass. We had a wet summer one year and practically spent all our time mowing the yard. We moved for two reasons--the school district was going down the toilet and the taxes were going up and up and up. So we got a little bigger house, but the taxes were much cheaper. I like our new area better. I miss the laundry room in our old house though. Our kids swim and throw their swim bags in the kitchen. Problem is, I don't know where to really put them otherwise. Laundry room hides lots of crap. We also made the mistake in our old house to landscape everything. Looked great but we would order at least 15 yards of mulch and it still wasn't enough. Every spring spending over $500 on mulch got old pretty quick. We were fortunate when we moved as it was right before the bust. Sold our house in 11 days and walked away with about $200,000 after only living there about 6 years. Our new mortgage is pretty cheap. I'll bite on the picture. Here's a picture of our old house. I picked one that shows all the landscaping (and that's just the front--we landscaped around our shed, deck, side of the garage--what were we thinking??!!). Our new house isn't much different. Not as wide but deeper.
I live in an apartment in a complex so well hidden on the residents really know it's there. I want to live in a house, but frankly, the idea of purchasing a home terrifies me. I literally flushed and started itching when I typed that sentence. The idea of being locked into a location for more than a couple of years is one my free spirited nature has problems grasping. There are kids playing everywhere here, which is nice, but one or two "bad" kids can make the situation a bit hairy. I suppose that's what happens though, and it isn't anything too difficult to overcome. I live 1 mile from my mother-in-law. We haven't spoken since the wedding, and I'm almost assured that we won't, barring holidays, so I have zero fear of the "drop-in", and my apartment's too small for my family to come and stay overnight. Like was mentioned above about the white walls and zero charm - ditto. They've tried to make up for it by having windows with shape to them, and the natural light let in through my two living room windows (almost) makes up for the fact that NOT ONE SINGLE ROOM IN MY ENTIRE APARTMENT HAS OVERHEAD LIGHTING. Not one. Wait. Just looked up. My kitchen has one. And there's a ceiling fan with a light. Otherwise? Lamps. Lots of them. And natural light. It's kind of annoying because if you open up the blinds to let light in, during the summer you're also letting heat in, and during the winter the draft will shiver your ass crack. When I left my second marriage, I didn't have...anything....really. So the furniture I have is by accident rather than design. Explicitly DO NOT WANT a zero lot home. Or a home with one bathroom. Must be two. At least. And privacy. I prefer a fenced in back yard with an 8' privacy fence. Pool or not is irrelevant to me, though I admit that I enjoy pool time. I prefer for the kids to have their own rooms, though sharing won't kill them. The Husband and I intend to have a child together in a couple of years...maybe. It'd likely be nice to have room for that too.
What is your living situation? We currently live in a 2000+ square foot, 4 BR, 2B ranch with just over half an acre in a rural area of NC and we LOVE it. It has everything we could have wanted, and my mortgage is only $96,000 right now. No. It wasn't a fixer upper, I just had to do some painting, other than that it was move in condition. The neighborhood is great, the schools are awesome, at least so far anyway, and we have a lot of privacy. The house is situated down a hill and there are woods behind us and county land on one side that will more than likely never be developed. What do you want in your living situation? The only things I would change are not having the house down a hill because it makes mowing and landscaping a pain in the ass, and actually another half acre or more just because it's good to have land, and some day I hope to have a couple of horses. What do you explicitly not want? No corner lots and nothing off a main road.
What is your living situation? We own a condo in the city of San Francisco in an upscale, desirable neighborhood. Well, condo is the technical term - it's more of a flat, as we are the 2nd floor PB&J in the sandwich of a 3-story Edwardian built in the 19-teens. I absolutely adore it. It was sold as 3 bed/2 bath, but really it's more like 2 bed/2 bath/solid office, and that's how we use it. Nobody got to the place with money to burn and bad taste (you should have SEEN some of the remodel jobs we saw when we were in the market) so it still has tons of original details like fireplaces, molding, built in cabinets, etc. It's perfect for our DINK lifestyle: we can walk, cab, or bus it to everything we need; there's enough room for us, our dog, lots of dinner and cocktail parties, and frequent overnight guests; and it's just so freaking full of charm. I love decorating this place for Christmas. What do you want in your living situation? We have not one iota of outdoor space. Not one speck. That, and we have to rent a parking spot in an apartment building across the street because nobody was putting in garages in the 19-teens. Neither one of these things really matter now since it's just us and a very obliging dog who is perfectly happy going to play in the park 2 blocks away, but should we decide to procreate we will be looking to upgrade to a single family with a garage and yard, ideally staying in our current neighborhood. We're very lucky that this may even be an option, everyone I know beats it for the East Bay once they have kids because it's so expensive here. What do you explicitly not want? I would rather die than move to suburbia. Ok, that's a little harsh, but really, I loathe it. I grew up in classic suburbia and the total smallness of it all got to me. The people were small people with small lives and small dreams, and it felt really confining. And this was in a city of 300,000. Give me a vibrant urban environment or total beautiful rural open space and I'm happy (we throw around the dream of a ranch house in Wyoming as a second home quite a bit...).