smaller house in 1st choice city or larger house elsewhere?

[joyinthejourney]

Originally Posted by kaday

I'll just throw this out there because someone mentioned it to me recently. If you have a big house you collect things...if you have a small house you collect experiences.

nice! we've lived our entire married life in 1100 sf or smaller. esp after we moved to a small apt up in WA we've really learned to minimalize. sometimes i imagine buying 2000 sf and wonder how i'm gonna fill up all that space, lol... altho i'm sure once we're in, it'll be filled up in no time.

[Kayela]

Well - as two people who typically share a 900 sq ft condo, and recently lived for a couple months in an 1800 sq ft house (which seemed huge to us), I'll say that we got further apart - literally. When you share a smaller space, you have to use it more efficiently, have less crap, and you come into contact with each other more often. When we were in the larger house - it felt like we were always on opposite ends. I missed those unplanned moments of casual contact, and felt like we were a little less in tune with each other as a result.

I also agree that when you have less house in a better location - you get out and enjoy it more. At least that's been our experience.

[Gardyloo]

Seattle is constantly flirting with higher densities - "transit-oriented development," "urban villages," etc. You are going to see continuous increases in overall densities, particularly on or near main transit corridors or near existing commercial or employment nodes such as South Lake Union or Northgate, but Seattle is still very much a city of single-family neighborhoods, most of them quite self-contained. And practically speaking, you aren't going to see huge density increases in those areas once you're a block or two away from the arterial/transit streets - land and housing prices are too high for a developer to purchase and redevelop properties into net higher densities. Not to mention huge and effective NIMBY opposition to virtually any up-zoning action proposed by the city or private developers.

If your husband's job might move from Bellevue to Seattle in the near future, you might also look at Mercer Island. MI has a reputation of being super-expensive, but the averages are thrown off by multimillion dollar waterfront dachas. There are (reasonably) affordable single family homes and condos on MI, convenient to downtown OR to Bellevue either by car or transit. It's a safe, attractive area, with a good and growing commercial core, some fabulous parks (Luther Burbank Park on MI is one of the region's best) and excellent schools. You could do far worse.

[GraceKrispy]

We recently had to make a decision about staying in the city where we loved the schools for the kids but could barely afford or move to a new area where we could afford much more space. We chose to stay in our current place. The schools and the fact that we had already moved our kids thousands of miles and didn't want to uproot them again at this stage in their education means that we stayed here. We rent a fairly small apartment (not tiny) rather than rent a bigger house, and we're really happy with our decision.

[joyinthejourney]

Originally Posted by gkrispy

We recently had to make a decision about staying in the city where we loved the schools for the kids but could barely afford or move to a new area where we could afford much more space. We chose to stay in our current place. The schools and the fact that we had already moved our kids thousands of miles and didn't want to uproot them again at this stage in their education means that we stayed here. We rent a fairly small apartment (not tiny) rather than rent a bigger house, and we're really happy with our decision.

yeah, we have moved twice in the last 16 months. it's heartbreaking to think about the kids starting over yet again -- so three new schools within 2 years. and each time is really, really hard. but i'm hoping wherever we move to, we will stay there at least til my youngest gets to HS.

[GraceKrispy]

and each time is really, really hard. but i'm hoping wherever we move to, we will stay there at least til my youngest gets to HS

That's what I decided this last time around. They had moved schools once in our former community (but we were in the same general area), then we moved up here and they started 5, 6, and 8th grade. So I will do whatever I can to keep them in the same schools through high school graduation. 6 more years after this one....