Same-Sex Households
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Real Estate Related Poll
C and I are house hunting and it's a lot more intense than I anticipated. We've seen about a dozen properties and are set to see at least that many more this weekend.
I'd love to hear about your real estate experiences. Feel free to complete the poll and/or elaborate in the comments.
[Poll]
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Re: Real Estate Related Poll
I'm torn about the *most* important factor.
In terms of location, we've narrowed our search down to North Seattle and Shoreline (the small city just North of Seattle). A big factor was that the schools are better up here than down South (which has to do with a lot of socioeconomic, racial and political factors).
In terms of space, we could probably get a "better" home in a "better" location if we'd consider 2 bd, but we really want 3 bdrms so we're keeping that a priority (which seems reasonable since there's still a lot to consider). Also, one of the cons for townhomes is that they usually have less yard space (some have none).
In terms of style, C's preference leans toward brand new, which translates to townhomes (which are all fairly similar in design and layout and usually built in less residential areas). My preference is a SFH, many of the ones in our price range are bungalows built in the 50s and usually a bit farther North.
As far as specific features, I really like basements (C doesn't). Some of the SFHs we're looking at have them and it's definitely something we're considering.
Right now, of the dozen homes we've seen, only one is really a contender. I hope our all day search tomorrow will give us a short list.
Having bought a house as a single person as well as with my DW here is what I find important:
- space, including storage. You'll want at least a 3 bedroom once your baby(ies) arrive.
- attached garage and two car driveway (I loathe our detached garage, but of course that has to do with the fact that we get snow here)
- a fenced in yard
- central heating and air
- the kitchen - will you need to remodel in the future?
- the bathrooms - I must have at least one tub, and again how much work do they need?
- location - I don't want to be directly on a main street w/ lots of traffic
California homes don't have basements so having one is new to me. Honestly if it wasn't finished we wouldn't have bought the house. It's our game room now but if we didn't have it we could live without it.
Personally I would not get a town home. They just aren't my style. If I wanted neighbors that close I'd still be in an apartment
SFH are great because of the space and yard. Even if it's a bit older I think you'll love having the space later on. Maybe just budget a bit more for repairs or upgrades.
I dont know that I can pick one thing that was most important (though for the purposes of the poll i chose schools). We started our search with a very short list of towns and didnt look in any towns but those listed. The towns were picked based on quality of school system, distance from work, and overall "feel".
After that, the biggest determining factor was price. Generally your price point will dictate other things such as size, type of home, neighborhood, ect. So our price point meant that we were looking at an older home (between 1950 and 1970, though we did see one gorgeous 1920's victorian) and 3 or 4 bedrooms - which was okay by us.
Blogs: Our Growing Family - CT Working Moms
We are currently looking as well, and there is no #1 - it's all a tie for #1.
We won't buy a house unless it has the space we need (if we wanted to be cramped, we could stay in our apartment - we need a room for the baby and space for guests since so many of our family and friends live OOT), is in a neighborhood where we will feel comfortable that has schools we would feel confident sending our child to, and is a price that we can afford (and that also means it does not require rennovations that we can't afford - like the kitchen and bathroom). If the house doesn't have all of these things - then it's not worth buying.
Our "must" list actually has us considering a townhome these days. We recently discovered a handful of very nice townhome developments in our town of choice that have more square footage than neighboring SFHs in our price range for much less money. Yes, it would be a bit of a sacrifice not having the privacy of a SFH, but we would still have some yard space, have the living space we want, and be in the town we want to live in - plus, being in a development means snow removal and all outdoor upkeep is taken care of. Those are the things we've been thinking about.
sahm ~ toddler breastfeeder ~ cloth diaperer ~ baby wearer
In our current house it was more about space. While it isn't big - it did have some features that were (are) important to us: 2 full baths, master bath with double vanity, master bedroom large enough for a king sized bed, a decent sized kitchen, and enough room for a child (well, 2.)
in our next more (2-3 years) we'll be moving b/c our neighborhood schools are poor performers. We'll be looking at roughly the same amount of space we have now (I am not sharing a bathroom with school age boys, nor am I giving up my king size bed!) - but perhaps alloted a bit differently (boys bedroom needs to be bigger, we'd love to have 4 bedrooms (one for each kid and then a guest/office), etc.)
We have a townhouse (and our last place was a townhouse) and while we really wanted a SFH - it would have meant big sacrifices (1940s rambler with a tiny kitchen, small bedrooms, and one bath in an okay community vs a 5 year old 2500sq townhouse in a community with biking trails, several pools, playgrounds, etc). We went with the latter. Yea, having a yard would be AWESOME, but we never hear our neighbors (even when are neighbors had 3 kids at home) and we live across the street from a huge playground - so it is almost like having a backyard! Plus, yardwork is so minimal that it takes L 10 minutes to mow! That is great!
Ideally, we'd love a SFH in our next move, but townhouses are so prevelant here that we'd wouldn't rule it out if they had the right space and had amenities that we like (we love being so close to a playground, pool, biking/walking trails - something a lot of older neighborhoods don't have.)
I love looking at houses. I don't like trying to figure out how to pay for them.