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Bought current house new in late 2011, expecting it would be the 'forever' home. Funny how much difference 9 years can make in how well you tolerate the south Texas summers... and how willing you might be to take care of a 1/2 acre lot! That combined with the ever rising taxes is sending us north. Bough the retirement house 18 months ago. Much smaller (1/2!), and much, much smaller lot. Unless the market here goes to completely to hell in the next couple years, we'll take the equity from this house, pay the other one off, and still have a chunk left over.
About 22 years, first house and hopefully last house. It’s a beautiful, historic house just the right size with a lush, terraced garden and forever views through the canyon to the sea on a compact lot. Great walkable neighborhood, great city, great beaches - why move? Also could not really afford to. You can stick a one in front of our purchase price and that would not quite be its valuation today and the house is long been paid off with cheap property taxes. Not something that is at all able to be replicated here today.
We've lived here in FL for 2 years now. Previous was 32 years (2 houses, side by side 16 years each) NW of Denver. Starter house in NW Front Range suburb 7 years before that.
I could easily move back west if/when the opportunity shows itself. Will wait, trying to be patient.
We've lived in this house for a year and a half. We'll likely stay here for quite a while. We love where we live, for now it's rural enough, though it's building up quickly. We love our house and property, though our house is bigger than we need. We have almost 2 acres, so it's very private even though we are in a neighborhood of about 15 homes.
Our previous house we lived in for 3 years. It was in the mountains and we enjoyed our three years there, but needed to move back to the area we had left in order to get my dad into an independent/assisted living.
The house before the mountain house was smack dab in the middle of the busy suburbs of North Raleigh. We lived there for 14 years. We loved our house. The property was tiny at less than 1/4 acre. My favorite time was Halloween because we had so many kids come by every year (we were known as the house with the good candy, LOL). It was noisy because of all the traffic, sirens, alarms, etc. I had gotten used to it and didn't realize HOW loud it was until we moved to our mountain house.
The house (townhouse) before that we lived in for 4 years. It was a good first "house" to live in. I'd lived in a singlewide in the country for 13 years before we bought the townhouse.
It will be five years this November of being in my current house. I moved from my old one for several reasons:
1.) I hated the HOA, they were a bunch of jerks.
2.) It was a townhouse, and I lived next door to a woman who complained about *everybody* over *every little thing*. Her complaints were so ridiculous that even the HOA started trashing her complaints.
3.) I was tired of having to run downstairs from the living room just to answer the door if somebody came.
4.) My sister had moved out to Colorado and was living with me, and the parking situation was a bit of a mess.
5.) I wanted something with a bit more yard for my dogs.
I'm now in a paired house with an okay-sized yard (not huge, but not postage-stamp sized either), and four doors down from a huge, wooded, open space with 25 miles worth of trails. I like the layout of the house (except for the crawl space, not a fan of that part.) Two car garage with a driveway, so parking isn't the issue. Dogs have a place to run in the yard, and my sister can do some gardening there as well.
I bought this place, thinking it'd be the forever home, but I'm reconsidering. I still love the house, and the area in general, but they're building this area up--when I moved out here, there was a lot of open land, but now two new housing developments have been built. Plus, when I moved here, all the neighbors were pleasant and nice, which was good, since the houses are still fairly close together. But the neighbors to the east of me moved out (the husband couldn't go up and down the stairs anymore, so they moved into a one-level home), and the new family....I'm mixed. They have two teenage boys, so there's a lot of hearing the parents yelling at them, but on the other hand, every so often I'll hear the parents yell, "And go mow Indigo's yard for her, I'm sure she's had better things to do than listen to us yell at you guys all day!" So I think they're sort of aware that they're causing a bit of a disturbance, and try to make up for it, if that makes sense.
The new neighbors to the west of us....ugh. They don't do anything *huge*, but they do a bunch of little things that just add up and annoy everybody around them.
My sister has expressed that she wouldn't mind a place on a larger parcel of land, so she could do more gardening. We'd both like a little more space between us and our neighbors. And with this area getting built up, I wouldn't mind being a little further out. I don't want to be *too* far from things we need, but I wouldn't mind some distance.
But I haven't fully decided yet. The day may or may not come. Meanwhile, I do improvements and upgrades on this house, because I do love it.
15 years and no plans to move. It was intended to be our forever home, and I don't see that changing - unless we win the lottery or something.
It is still a really great house for us, and it's almost paid off.
Edited to add that I would happily move out of Texas and back to the Northeast where I'm from when the kids are out of school. So if my husband were to get onboard with that, I would happily sell it and move.
Last edited by CarnivalGal; 06-21-2020 at 04:35 PM..
Been here 10 years, will be here a few more years, youngest is a rising HS junior. Honestly don't see myself moving before she gets out of college but you never know. My mindset is more common where I'm from - but around here it's not unusual to see people put the sign in the ground next to their HS senior's sign.
Moved because the house was no longer what I needed. I had no room for my dog, cars and the area became very busy traffic/people/shops/new construction.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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It will be 27 years in August. Why so long. Never had any reason to move. We love the peace and quit, lack of crime, 80-100’ old growth trees, wildlife, lake, mountain and valley views in our small city of 60,000. Easy commute to work in Seattle. Of course we do plan to move in 2-3 years When we retire, we just don’t need 3,000 sf any more, and while we can afford the property taxes easily now, that $8,000/year will be more significant on just our pensions and social security. Then there is the equity, currently about $600k, we can go an hour or two away and pay cash for a smaller house so no mortgage.
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Also could not really afford to. You can stick a one in front of our purchase price and that would not quite be its valuation today and the house is long been paid off with cheap property taxes. Not something that is at all able to be replicated here today.
