The Partner and I have finally made the decision to relocate. After three years in our first place, we're ready to set up shop further downstate in a town built on the importance of education and community. As my Internet browser history begins to overflow with Realtor.com and Greatschools.net searches, I'm slowly getting a better picture of what that town will look like. Still, the image is fuzzy. One thing I know for sure is that the implications of any moving decision we make won't be clear until we get there.
The mistake we made in buying our first home was basing the purchase totally on the house itself. We loved it then and we love it now. It has over 200 years of character seeping out of every crevice in its stone foundation. The rooms are spacious, if you don't count the kitchen. It's insulated with history.
Open the doors, though, and there's highway as far as the eye can see. Our own street is a state road running parallel to the Interstate, and it's filled with municipal vehicles, cars that go 60 miles per hour past our driveway, and motorcycles that wake babies and dogs as they thunder up a slight incline. Beyond the road and the highway are schools against which the most vocal of taxpayers rally with a noise that rivals the traffic.
We weren't looking or thinking forward when we moved here as a newly engaged couple with only the haziest notion of family. Even though we figured that we'd be here five years at most as we saved up for something bigger and better, that conservative estimate proved short sighted. We got a canine. Then there was a kid. Three years has been plenty to help us figure out what we want, and maybe more importantly, what we don't want, in our next home--the place where our child(ren) will grow up.
We want safe streets and good schools and neighbors who appreciate the same. It's not enough to call a building "home"; we want a whole community that applies.
It's going to be an exciting search.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
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7 comments:
Wow, Binky! This is big news. How exciting. Isn't it hard to be rational when buying a house? I know it was hard for us the first time. The second time? We bought a new cookie cutter house, but it has a family room, a big kitchen where The Poo can help me make brownies, and a yard, however small, that she can play in.
May the force be with you in your search. And an excellent Realtor.
PS- thanks for the great schools link.
Wow, I knew this was coming, but didn't think so soon! Eventually, we will also think of moving, but for now, we are content with our choice for a school for the kids. Are you still thinking of staying in the area (just a few towns away?).
I'll be reading with interest. We're looking at moving in the next several months ourselves. Our reasons differ slightly, but we also intended our current house to be a "starter" house. We have a couple projects to finish before we can put our own house on the market, but hopefully this spring, we'll be gearing up for a move also. And thanks for the link to that greatschools.net website. That'll come in handy.
woo hoo. and approaching it in such a grown up way, too.
i've never even come close to owning a house. but i love hearing about people who do. i'd paint like a madwoman if the walls were mine.
Hooray! I love house hunting.It's absolutely exhillarating walking in and envisioning what you can do to a place. I wish you good luck and a fabulous bathtub!
Too bad it's insulated with history instead of... insulation. Good luck with the move, let us know if you need any help.
I love looking at real estate. It gets my blood pumping. The wonder and newness of the unknown.
But I was very fortunate when the hubs and I bought our first property. (Where we live.) I was set on the fancy house and great yard but my husband refused, saying that the community was much more important. He wouldn't budge. He was damn lucky we found an acreage that I fell in love with in a community he loved.
The fact that it was a shack on 20 acres was hard to overlook for the first five years I was stuck in that tin box. But now, as I sit in my new home on my acreage in the community that my husband insisted we live in, I'm glad he won that war.
Because it was the community that supported (and still supports) me when Shalebug died. A fancy house couldn't have done that.
Good luck, and I can't wait to hear about your quest. No chance of you relocating to another country eh?
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