OT - What Made You Choose Your House/Apartment/Condo?
Mates,
Housing is going through quite the shuffle these days. Prices have jumped, now interest rates have jumped, rentals can be hard to find, etc. Choosing a place to live can be at least as much an emotional decision as a financial decision. Sometimes it's simply convenience: close to job or the in-laws; Sometimes it's because you/your spouse fell in love with the kitchen or the yard or the neighborhood. Maybe its the school system that closed the deal for you or maybe it was simply because that was the only place you could afford.
Today's questions are these:
1. What were the key factors in choosing your living space? What do you like about it, what do you wish you could change?
2. Assume that the state you live in is closing and you have to leave to go live somewhere else. And assume that wherever you move you can make some reasonable accommodation for work, kids, etc. What state/city do you move to and why?
Have a great day,
XM
1. Space (two adults, two young kids) was important. Neighborhood had to be good, obviously. We looked at a lot of different houses with varying levels of quality, but we found a good size house in an awesome neighborhood, and then won a dog-fight to get it.
If I had to change one thing, it would be the backyard. I always envisioned having a huge backyard, but we settled for a tiny one. I've gotten over it.
2. If we had to move, I'd like to move south just a bit. Not deep south, but somewhere where the winters aren't quite as miserable. I've pondered what living in Tennessee would be like.
i know a couple of U of M grads who have recently relocated to tennessee for the same reason.
Been in Knoxville for 8 years. TN is a good place to live from a weather stand point. Also no state income tax.
So here's a question. If there's no state income tax, what funds your state government? Do you feel like you have fewer services than people in states with income tax?
54% of state spending is funded by the 9.25% sales tax. Couple that with very low gov’t spending per capita. Sounds great, but the state could do a lot more for the people. Big gaps between have and have not.
A higher sales tax. It ranges from 7 to 10 percent in the state and food is taxed there as well. They generate a decent amount from tourism.
They put the tax burden on the poor people. Smart.
Golfing in late January was a perk my buddy shared after moving to Tennessee. It’s largely not terribly expensive cost of living and there’s some fun cities. You could do worse.
Lived in TN for 8 months n the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Was beautiful but the summers can be unbearably hot and humid. I'll take the cold. Can always put on another layer but there's only so much you can take off without going to jail.
Living here in FL where it gets pretty steamy in the summer, the mountains of North Georgia/southern Tenn have been calling my name.
One of the first things we did when we moved to Tallahassee was identify the parts of the Smokies that were within nearest reach. For years we went to Asheville at least once a year. In time, it became a bit full of itself; now we often go to Sylva. We were this close to buying land there 4-5 years ago, but I'm glad we didn't. I'm too restless--over time we'll use that precious scratch to go a lot of places.
Location and schools were important factors in choosing our house.
If I could change a couple things: I wish we had one more bathroom in the house, especially with 2 teenage daughters right now. I also wish I knew one of my ex-girlfriends from college lives across the street and is now one of my neighbors. It can be a little akward sometimes.
Oh, how did Mrs. Boner react when she discovered that?
Not well at first, but over time she has realized there was nothing there. It also made me realize that I made a good choice marrying Mrs Boner over the girl from college.
+1 for "Mrs. Boner."
Her first name is Peg.
School district was important, but I have to say that our house chose us!
When we started looking, we used our real estate agent's search tools and sorted by NW Atlanta suburbs. Smattered in the list were houses in Woodstock, that I frustratedly deleted without viewing. After four months of this, I got the hint and started looking in Woodstock. Schools are great and we were close enough to the expressway to help with the commute downtown.
We chose a house, sold ours in IL, and drove down for the closing (moving van full of furniture included). The house we selected appraised $50k below asking, we rescinded our offer, and were in a bind. Our current house was only on the market for a few days and right down the street from the house we selected (then cancelled), so we bought this house! They say if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans!!
We bought our current place because we wanted some income from a basement apartment (which is very much a thing in the older neighborhoods of Toronto) while living in a very walkable neighborhood (also very true for many neighborhoods in Toronto).
Our house was remodeled before we bought it into two apartments. Our tenants live in the bottom apartment, consisting of the basement and first floor of the original house. We live in the top apartment, consisting of the second floor and attic of the original house. The renovators did a reasonably good job; I'm particularly impressed with how well the HVAC works in a house this old.
Space is at a bit of a premium; my office doubles as my gym. We do have a backyard but we have to park on the street; the house isn't on an alley so no garage and no opportunity to build laneway housing down the road.
Overall, though, we're pretty happy.
Space is at a bit of a premium
Pretty universal truism inside of the greenbelt, as I understand it.
Yes, but what kind of premium varies fairly widely. The suburbs, and the areas like Etobicoke and Scarborough that used to be suburbs prior to amalgamation in the nineties, are cheaper and have more space available.
Having said that, prices have gone up dramatically in the burbs as well. A friend of ours moved back to the area in 2019 and bought what used to be a typical suburban house in Ajax for significantly less than we paid; her neighbors were selling nearly identical houses for two or three (!) times that last year. The real estate market has apparently been cooling off because of recent interest rate increases, though.
My aunt in Caledon East bought the house they still live in in the 80s. It was middle of nowhere then and isn’t really anymore, with staggering levels of development up there. Her house has appreciated roughly 1000% if I recall correctly. Cheaper, I’m thinking, is a relative concept?
Few of my cousins can afford to live in TO. I don’t think any of them own. It’s rather startling, a very visible generation gap.
I know they were technically separate, but I don’t think my dad ever considered Etobicoke or Scarborough burbs when I was growing up. When we went to Scarborough we thought of it as going to the city. But he grew up in Bolton, which is where we stayed when we travelled up there, so perhaps my perspective is a tad skewed.
Pricing is admittedly all relative. We were admittedly lucky enough to be able to buy after the crash in 2008 and in another downtown a few years ago.
I don't really consider the southern portion of Etobicoke or North York to be suburbs, either, but I used to work in Etobicoke and where we are it's still the most accessible of the city's former suburbs. The northern portions are pretty suburban, though.
They were closer to the old part of the city than Scarborough, which feels entirely suburban to me. Having said that, for whatever reason I've had fewer customers in that area and I've consequently spent less time there.
Somewhere close to 100 years ago I traded my junior red wings jersey for an etobikoke Canadian jersey at a silver stick tournament in Toronto.
Location, size, schools, and budget were our main factors. I wish we didn't back up to a somewhat main road, but we've gotten used to it.
I feel like Colorado would suit me and my family well if Michigan went away.
1) At least 3 BR, 2 bath was a requirement. Somewhere to park the boat (a lot of municipalities around here have rules against leaving it in the driveway), at least a partly finished basement, fenced in yard a plus. We had a small list of school districts we were interested in.
The house we ended up in was the one that got accepted after 10 offers and probably 50+ tours. It checked almost every box (and went above and beyond several), but we really don't care for the galley kitchen. Someday we hope to expand it, but it's gonna require a fair bit of work and a lot of dollars.
2) For our family's sake, probably somewhere a bit warmer. Maybe the Carolinas? I'd personally get a small cabin on a trout stream in Minnesota, but my wife would not approve that decision.
1. The key factor for me is whatever my wife wanted. Honestly, I had/have little say. After the 2020 riots/looting in Chicago, my wife said we need to get out of the city. I wanted to stay since I thought it was a minor blip, but she said otherwise. Now we live in a Chicago suburb.
2. I’d probably move to Colorado or Texas. My wife is Hispanic so she’d pick Florida and I’d have no say.
Time to change your username so you aren't making false representations.
Yea, I used to laugh at all the Hoke-related usernames, knowing they'd be obsolete soon. Then again, I'm still in the Chicagoland area, so my username still applies...for now.
I can relate to this a little bit. At the beginning of the pandemic I relocated from Chicago to the Traverse City area. (This was back when there were a lot more unknowns with COVID-19.) I've been WFH ever since and have been in the office only a handful of times.
There's still no clear end in sight for that arrangement, but if the brontosaurus at the controls decides that we all need to be there every day, I'll probably jump ship. (I might be classified as a "knowledge worker" and my work typically involves minimal interaction with others. At least in my case WFH beats the shit out of the office environment.) Would I bother returning to Chicago? Probably not. Relative risk (which has spiked significantly in the last couple of years) aside, I realize that the absolute risk of carjacking or armed robbery is still really low, but do I want to even bother thinking about that?
Chicago city is getting better, but its been slow coming. I work in the city everyday, so I get my fill. But I have more space now and some quietness (I used to live on a major street in Chicago), so I don't missing living in the city.
What's my point? Unless you love your job, I wouldn't bother returning to Chicago from Traverse City if you had to.
On the world stage, Chicago doesn't have a stellar reputation. Obama helped, but Chicago is still considered a very unsafe place to live (which is not true). And I've defended Chicago for most of my life because of this, but it's really hard to defend Chicago now.
Neither your four years living on Wells street nor the thing you overheard on your flight to the Atlantis two years ago give you the credibility to opine on Chicago's world standing.
You decided to leave, you left, stop slandering us from beyond. You don't know what you're talking about so stop acting like you do.
Some of us (e.g., me) are city lifers and will defend it to the ends of the earth. People like you make me physically ill.
Yikes! Looks like a struck a nerve.
I've never lived on Wells St. and I've never been to Atlantis, so I don't know where you got that from. Until several months ago, I've lived in the city of Chicago for over 20 years. I also went to high school in Cook County. I'm by no means a Chicago expert, but I've seen a thing or two in Chicago.
Secondly, if you read my previous post, it wasn't my decision to leave Chicago city, it was my wife's decision. My wife is a Hispanic immigrant who grew up in a unsafe South American nation where she constantly had to worry about car bombs and not having electricity. Several of her family members are here in the Chicago area under political asylum. That summer of 2020 was scary as shit for my wife because it reminded her of her childhood.
So I have no problem with city-lifers such as yourself, but I hope you realize that everyone is not you or has had a similar life experience as you have. No need to get physically ill over it.
My issue with people like you is that you feign some knowledge about Chicago but you really don't understand Chicago. You went to high school in the burbs. You're from the burbs. Nothing wrong with that! But you cast aspersions at Chicago and it makes us look bad. Some of us believe in the City and have stuck with it. You lived here and never took the time to understand it. To contribute to it. To advance it.
We, as is the case with every city in America, have challenges. What we don't need are people like you bloviating without a real understanding of Chicago and making us look bad. Luckily I don't think you personally have any tangible net of influence so it doesn't really matter but I still think it's important to stop these things in their tracks.
Unless you're a Daley, Pritzker, Lurie or Zell, you know no more about the city of Chicago than I do, so you should probably stop casting aspersions. I lived in the city of Chicago over half my life, then I moved to the suburbs. There's nothing controversial with that, in fact its quite common. My experience in the city of Chicago has been 99% of the time been fantastic. It's just hasn't been recently.
Seriously, I think you are over reacting to what is a pretty even-handed and honest opinion post about Chicago. I mean, I've sat here on this blog defending Chicago-style pizza to death!
Lastly, your username avatar definitely does NOT check out!
Brother, I can tell you with 1,000% certainty that I will forget more about Chicago than you will ever know.
1408, I've never lived in the Chicago 'burbs and have plenty of Chicago years behind me. I think your post is a mess.
"... you feign some knowledge about Chicago but you really don't understand Chicago."
Based on what, exactly?
"But you cast aspersions at Chicago and it makes us look bad."
If I were to assert that carjackings have gone way up in the Near North neighborhoods would I be "casting aspersions" or stating a fact? (Hint: It's B.) Seems to me a real Chicagoan would own that things aren't always great (and, in the short term, have been getting worse).
You lived here and never took the time to understand it. To contribute to it. To advance it.
Wholly unsupported x 3.
Are you from the City?
as big cities go, and if i had to live in one, chicago would probably be at or near the top of the list. but the issue might be what is perceived as a somewhat extreme reaction to a pretty mild post by windy. chicago, like virtually all cities of any size, has its problems. chicago's problems are more publicized precisely because chicago is a big deal. windy says he tried it for decades and ultimately decided he didn't prefer it. not sure why that is overly controversial or worthy of angst.
fwiw, last time i was in chicago, granted it was many years ago, we had ourselves a whale of a time.
For me? 4 car garage, large kitchen and 3 full bathrooms upstairs. One for the wife and I and the 2 kids each have their own. For the wife? The schools. The backyard isn't huge, but it's large enough.
So many places I'd move but probably somewhere around Seattle. That's where my company is headquartered and I love water and there's a good bit of it over there.
So you’re saying you have a 4 car garage and you’re still adding on? I’d recommend Luckenbach, Texas, in that case.
this successful life we're livin' has us feuding like the hatfields and mccoys...
No, never said I'm adding on. That was one of the reasons I wanted this house.
We bought while we were pregnant with our 1st child...but the main thing we wanted to do was to avoid moving again so we bought bigger than we needed at that time. A 2nd angry little child came along and the space issue has worked itself out.
If we were to move (which we might) it would be out west somewhere. I have lived in the east all of my life. I detest humidity. While nothing is perfect (namely, many western states not having water) we love the landscapes and openness of the west
Did the same. We bought our house before we had any kids, and it was definitely more house than we needed at the time. But we knew we would be wanting to start a family, and didn't want to buy a starter house just to move within a few years.
We've been in our house for 7 years now, and with our 3rd on the way, it is the perfect size for us. We have enough room for the kids, and can still host family when they come to visit.
This is fun, and pertinent to my current state of affairs.
1. Bought in AA area 10 years ago with no kids, mainly b/c we fell in love w/ a house and a location relative to jobs/parents/lifestyle we live. Love the house and neighbors (not really a neighborhood per se). Two kids later 3 bedrooms is somewhat less than ideal. Considering buying land and building (our tastes have grown with age as well), but prices and they why are really deterring me. I really do love our home and we have updated it tastefully and regularly to make it our own and accommodate our needs and style. Currently spouses divided on what our goals should be. I've constructed a first floor master addition plan that would give us the 4th bedroom, create a dream master for us, add square footage, and solve a few issues we have while maintaining all of the things we love about the house/location, but will not fix all of the "issues" we/she has with the house. In my opinion the "issues" are part of the give and take of home ownership and building is no guarantee to solve them and possibly create issues that don't exist with our current setup.
2. My favorite option, when considering a major life/location change is to put life in SE Michigan on hold to move up north to slow things down. Experience a real winter w/ winter sports, less friends/family to focus on our family. Spend time together skiing, biking, hiking, exploring. So if Michigan doesn't exist, somewhere out west, mountainous and somewhat remote (basically not Denver). Give us mountains, the great outdoors, sunshine and less yardwork (in theory).
Mostly space and schools. Went from starter house to forever house back in summer of 2020. 2019-2020 was always our target "move" dates. Of course as we were in the process of preparing our old home to sell, Covid hit and put our plans on hold for at least a few months while we waited to see what happened with our jobs, housing prices and everything else. It was incredibly stressful.
Thankfully everything worked out in our favor and we landed our dream house. I'm also glad we bought when we did as a house just around the corner recently sold for about 25% more than what we paid for ours.
My wife. She made me “choose” our house. I wanted something different. She was right, I was wrong in retrospect. Not the first time or the last. Lol
It sounds like it might be a good thing that...
...wait for it...
she's the bos of you.
We lived in NYC and SF before my wife got her first tenure track job, and then--when a record company I had worked to start collapsed--I made the decision to follow her, first to Illinois and then to Tallahassee. This required a reshuffling of most of my earthly dreams, but I didn't like the publishing and music worlds I had been moving in (though I loved the fruits), and becoming an ecologist and obtaining a PhD had become my goals.
At the time we moved here, my wife had been offered two other jobs. Tallahassee was a sleepy place, but she was offered the most money here, and the most latitude in her work; it wasn't hard to see that we could be pretty decently off here while still having a somewhat relaxed life.
The advantages for us have been: Florida's relatively low taxes, and living in a pleasant college town (not without its problems) that was beginning to come of age. The climate is about as good as one can hope for--cool nights and warm days--for nine months of the year. (Mid-summer to early fall are very hot.) It's pretty. A college town, with a relatively tolerant social and cultural climate, turned out to be a good place to raise my adopted mixed-race daughter; indeed, we live in a neighborhood that happens to be part of the most liberal voting district in FL, which is full of kids who look like mine.
I loved NY and SF, and grieved over the lack of--well, lots of things--when we first came here. I had gone to high school in Ann Arbor before entering Michigan, and thought of it as pretty ideal; I struggled to adjust. But the world has caught up, and of course the internet connects you. . . The food sucked when we got here, and today there are lots of good options. Tallahassee has almost 200,000 people to A2's official 115,000, but Tallahassee feels less crowded, partly because it's surrounded by nature (it's 20 miles as the crow flies to the Gulf), while A2--though I will always cherish it--has come to look pretty foofy to my eyes.
I think that college towns may be one's best bet in an age when our cities are so gentrified, have kind of (IMO) lost their soul. College towns tend to be less industrialized and therefore less polluted. And--speaking from the POV of culture and the arts--once Wayne Shorter had played here during our very fine Spring Arts festival, I decided that Tallahassee was good enough.
Our house has almost doubled in value since we got here--it seemed crazy cheap at the time. I hear young people now saying that the American dream is over, and in some ways that could be true. I am gratified that my daughter--who is going to school in D.C.--is eyeing coming back here, and loves our house too--I've planted fruit trees around it, and they are starting to mature. She's active politically, and Tallahassee is, of course, Florida's capital. Florida politics are nuts, and sometimes discouraging (to me), but after 20 years I feel like I know what the fight is. We happen to have a house that will be relatively safe to age out in, which is surprisingly helpful for my outlook. We have kind of made it all ours.
If Tallahassee closed tomorrow--or if things got too ugly here--I would move to Missoula. Or to the island country of Grenada, where you can purchase citizenship, where we have friends.