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So....wondering what most people would do. Would you choose the perfect house with all the bells and whistles in an ok neighborhood or a much lesser house needing some dormers/extensions in the best neighborhood for you/your family?
So....wondering what most people would do. Would you choose the perfect house with all the bells and whistles in an ok neighborhood or a much lesser house needing some dormers/extensions in the best neighborhood for you/your family?
You can change the house, but can't change the neighborhood (as easily).
Now I'm doubting myself.. lemme quantify this... on a scale of 1-10.
OP says the house is perfect (10 points), and the hood is OK (8 points) so all in all it's a great place to live (9 points).
And the house is much lesser (7 points) in the best hood (10 points), so a rating of 8.5?
But in the end, the house can be upgraded, and the hood is harder to change, so maybe move into a 7 point house, and put some work into to make it a 9 or a 10?
We need at least 4 br, but we are finding 3 br houses in our ideal neighborhoods that are below our budget. The houses that are bigger are way above our means, but some of the 3 br houses look like they would be easy to dormer and even when factoring in 60-100k to add another 1+ br, they are still less expensive than the other bigger homes available right now in the same neighborhood. Or we can forget those neighborhoods andd look elsewhere and find the house of our dreams in an ok (average, not great) neighborhood.
As with all things, there are questions of degree to any parameter to the equation.
I had a base line school district which I would not go "below" when looking for a house. I ended up buying in a better performing district than my baseline just out of timing and finding the right house.
I was heavily focused on school district as the first parameter. After that, it was about the house.
If school district isn't your concern, than I would do a similar analysis based on neighborhood. What is the worst neighborhood/area you are willing to live in, and then proceed from there.
You are (hopefully) going to be in this house for a long time. When you talk about an "average" neighborhood, is it one on the way up or one on the way down?
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