When you bought your house....

[Amy]

How did you decide on what neighborhood or area of the city to buy in?

I think Im doing things differently. My main priority is school districts. If they don't have a stellar district, Im not interested. I don't care how wonderful the house or neighborhood is because I don't want to live there if I don't think my dk's are going to get the best education they can. So far in NY, where we are looking, I found two districts-one outside of Buffalo and one oustide of Albany. There are two in my hometown too, but can't live that close to our relatives. LOL It also has to be outside a major city so there is some culture and things to do.

What factors were priorities to you when you decided to buy?

[TXmom]

Schools were my first priority when choosing the town. We also considered cost of housing and location relative to dh's job and my school. As far as neighborhoods, I didn't want to live by any power sub stations, land fills, etc. If we saw a house we liked, we looked at the other houses in the neighborhood to see if they kept their yard up, had kids, etc. It gets really complicated, doesn't it?! LOL

[Boons]

We chose our home with a few things in mind. Schools, cost, proximity to DH's work. Unfortunately in just the 6 years we have lived here the schools have had some major unforseen problems so we have chosen to home school for the time being. We did also look at the neighborhood in it's entirety to see how people kept up their property, etc.

[KarlaB]

We bought our house before dks and moved here because of dh's job, so we bascically bought what we liked and could afford at the time in a nice neighborhood. Now that we are house hunting again (in the same town) the above will apply again, but schools will also play a role this time. I also want to make sure we get a yard again...some of the newer developments here don't seem to have room for kids to run without ramming into the neighbor's house! LOL!

[Diane]

Our little one was only one year old when we moved into our house so I hadn't really thought too much about the school but as it turned out I was very lucky. LOL Location, (only a few miles from my parents) Affordability at the time... in a very nice neighborhood. (everybody kept their yards up real well) After living in a very small house it was also very important that the house was BIG and the yard was a good size. I knew when we drove up in front of the house to look at it that it was going to be ours... It just FELT right. LOL

[Mickey]

Dh looked for and found our house on his own (we were moving from another part of the country). He looked in a hoity toity area, but we would have had half the house for twice the money, so we opted for the one we have now, which is big and in a nice neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac, and it's safe and upper-middle class, but but it's not the rich part of town. The school districts are good (not the best), but they are rezoning. However, we were planning to send ds to a private school, so that really wasn't an issue for us.

[AnnW]

We not only looked in a specific school district, we targeted specific schools within that neighborhood.

[RCT]

We knew we wanted to buy our house, it already belonged to my dh's uncle for the last 30 years....it has all kinds of property and great places for kids to run around.....and the Schools here in our "small town USA"...are really great...I can't believe how incrediably lucky we were....so much so that when I tell people where we live they say, "Oh, wow, they have great schools there"....LOL...so we were really lucky...I hear that closer to the city the schools aren't so hot....so I commend you for looking into the schools as well as the neighborhoods....check out the neighborhoods on the weekends too...just to see what people are doing....kinda nosey I know, but wouldn't you hate to find out that they are having big old loud parties....well maybe that's not a good example....LOL...you know what I mean....LOL