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I want to keep my monthly payments low,at around $1200/month,but as this is Jersey,they do not come hand in hand. Of 1200 taxes will surely eat away 1/2 my monthly budget for a home.
So i could either choose the beautiful home in the nice part of an extremely crime ridden city(the neighborhood itself is ok) or a run down shack in a nice town.
It sort of depends on your life situation. If you have kids or foresee kids in the 5-7 year future, you also have to take schools into account. Another factor to consider is your lifestyle. Are you the stay in and cook dinner and watch a movie type? Get the nicer house in the worse neighborhood. If you like to go out and do things, go for the nicer neighborhood.
Consider whether the worse neighborhood would not allow you and your family to walk around outside at night safely and to safely park your vehicles and is one where there needs to be vigilant neighbors and anti-crime watch and meetings which some find nice but some find stressful keeping that eye out.
In the good area, consider whether you are able to fix up that house to look nice....not as big as the other, but at least nice. Or whether that would cost a lot of time and money in repairs.
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I had the same choice once, and I bought the beautiful home in the bad neighborhood. After living there for several years, I finally had to get out. There were two murders within 3 blocks of my "beautiful home", countless burglaries, carjackings, drug dealers just two blocks from me.
I loved that house. It was built in 1910, it had a beautiful, mature yard, gorgeous hardwood floors, a magnificent fireplace, huge kitchen, luxurious master bedroom, etc. I even had pretty nice immediate neighbors. But, all that just did not make up for the lack of security and peace of mind. When a woman was carjacked and murdered two blocks from my home..at the gas station I used ever week...I put up the "For Sale" sign. The week the house sold, a cop was murdered during a robbery..again, two blocks from the house. When I had to give someone directions to my house, I would add "You know when you are getting close when you feel like you need a body guard".
Ironically enough, the house sold on the second day it was listed...for full price (3 times what I had originally paid for it). The single woman who purchased it sold it two years later, for the same reasons I sold it.
Safety is more important than the ambiance.
Last edited by FlightAttendant; 06-10-2014 at 07:09 AM..
There's a widely varying scale of responses here that would determine my answer to the question. Generally speaking, I'd vote for the good neighborhood every time, but it would depend on the actual state of the house you wish to buy.
I think you're allowed to post realtor.com listings, but maybe someone else could verify that for sure?
Bad neighborhoods can be in very good locations - especially in the Northeast!
I just came across a house I looked at almost 15 years ago. It was in a completely horrible location - no subway, next to restaurants with trash, lots of crime, projects, was not close to gentrifying at all. Not what I was looking for at the time as I was single.
Two years ago, I was looking at homes 1 street over!
Prices were almost the same even with 13 years between them!
Older, larger, not upgraded, more money and then higher interest rates and weird real estate market
versus
New house had just been gut reno'd by a realtor (superficial aesthetic upgrades, shoddy construction) and a still struggling real estate market. A new train stop to downtown had just opened and heavy investment by the city and private foundations occurred over the past 10 years.
Still a transitional neighborhood, and will take another 10 years for a Starbucks ( or equivalent) to appear IMO. But, the volatile real estate market really artificially pushed prices up over a decade -so, I'm glad I didn't take the place then.
I ended up almost 1/4mile away from both houses because the location I ultimately chose would hold its resale value better regardless what the house looked like.
For you, I'd suggest defining what makes the neighborhood "good"? Location to trains/commuting? Next to beaches/easy to commute to beach? Universities? Now, can the other location ever match the same criteria? Will the house in the goodish neighborhood but bad city ever truly improve??? Will it get over its bad "rep" and will others move in to invest when priced out of other markets?
Could be the land in the "good" neighborhood will be worth more than the house in time...
It is why the argument "you get more house for your money" is shortsighted because it only factors the actual structure, not what is outside the front door.
I would go with an older, plainer house in a good neighborhood. You can slowly work on remodeling the house, but you can't change your neighbors. Safety is so important in this day and age. Good luck making a decision!
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But, the volatile real estate market really artificially pushed prices up over a decade -so, I'm glad I didn't take the place then. 
