If you moved to a much more expensive housing area w/o a salary increase,

[ourbabygirl]

how did you adjust your expectations for the house you were buying, & what did you compromise on?

We're moving to be closer to my family, but the city we want to live in has much higher home values than where we live now. Basically what we're selling our house for, it would cost us 200K or more for the same thing in the new city. All of the houses we've looked at there for the past 6 months have been major disappointments, but we really don't have the money to increase our budget. We've considered renting, but there's almost nothing for rent there, and what is for rent is way out of our monthly budget, too.
I'm wondering which of the big areas we should compromise on, since all of them are important to me. It's so tricky, since we have a family to provide for, so I feel like we really need space inside the house and a usable yard. I don't want to be on a busy road or so close to one that we can hear the traffic from it. And I also don't really want to settle on the school district (there are two school districts for the town; the better rated one has more expensive houses, of course, but it's not like the worse rated district is dangerous or has a lot of crime or anything).... we may end up not even sending our kids there for high school, though, so I don't want to pay more for a house now if we end up not using that school district.

Anyhow, just wondering if any of you have BTDT, and what area(s) you would be willing to compromise on. This is our forever house, so I really can't undo a mistake that we make now.

Poll coming...

Thanks for your help!

[happymom]

My parents did this 15 years ago. They ended up with as many bedrooms as before, but all of the rooms were just smaller. Smaller kitchen and living room too. A big loss was storage space, and my mom still struggles with this. Their old house had a large unfinished basement and my mom used it for everything...laundry, storage, crafting/sewing, etc. Now, she uses their garage for storage and maximizes whatever closets they have.

They went from a much larger yard to a smaller one, but we were older and not using the yard as much so it wasn't a major issue.

[sariana]

I voted for bad layout because it is the one thing on your list you can control. Theoretically you could gut the house, but you can't change the school district or move a road or control the make-up of the neighborhood etc. I would have control over how to utilize indoor spaces and would know that they COULD. Be changed. So that would be the first thing I would compromise.

[crl]

We compromised on space (3 bedrooms instead of 4 and no den or family room), the house needs quite a bit in terms of remodeling (some things had to be done right away, others we are saving for), and we have a tiny yard. I didn't want a big yard so that's not a huge sacrifice, but it would have been awfully nice to have about double the size so we could play catch and such in the back.

We did not compromise on the school district, but we plan to use the public schools all the way through for two kids partly because we'd rather have the money in the house (where eventually, hopefully, we or the kids will get it back when it is sold) than in private school tuition.

We don't mind some noise--that's part of living close in for us. We don't really have much traffic noise, but we do have some airport noise and some train noise.

Catherine

[hellokitty]

DH is looking for another job, so we've given this a lot of thought, since we are in an extremely LCOL area, most likely almost everywhere we go will be a higher COL.

My priorities are:

1) Good school district (I don't want to pay for private school for 3 kids).
2) Must be within 20 min from DH's work (this is a requirement for him to make call for his job)
3) Kitchen and bathrooms must be remodeled. We've remodeled two houses in 10 yrs, we are sick and tired of it. No more big remodels for us, I want a house that might just need some paint or a small project, not a big project.
4) Family friendly area (ie: I don't want to move to a neighborhood full of DINKS or retirees, or a college campus area, lower crime rate, etc.).

I am willing so sacrifice on sq footage, although my dh is not quite on board. I think that our house now is about as big as we need, and to be quite honest, we do NOT utilize our space well, so I have actually thought that if we buy again, we'd go smaller this time. We probably only really use about 2/3 of our house and in 9-10 yrs, my older kids will be both off to college and they are already outgrowing the phase of needing much toys. I told dh last night that we don't even need a real playroom anymore if we move and he agreed. The kids could just keep a few toys in their bdrm and it would be adequate. There is a lot of stuff that we could just get rid of. DH is not convinced, but he even said that if we move, he wants to just get rid of a crap load of stuff and not drag it with us. I think he will be surprised once we get rid of stuff, how much less room we really need. We have some stuff from our previous move 10 yrs ago that are just still sitting around in boxes. I'm not willing to sacrifice on the house layout, esp if it's an issue, where you can't do anything about it. I hate that our master bedroom as RIGHT at the top of the stairs of our current house. It isn't something we can do anything about, kwim? We've lived here for 10 yrs and it still bugs me. Our mudroom is awful, it meets with our garage access, a bathroom and our kitchen... such a stupid design, it is the #1 area that bugs me about our house, but I can't do anything about it. We've done a few things to make it more usable, but it still sucks.

Living in a more rural area or crowded area isn't a big deal for us. We already live in a more rural area, I'm actually anxious about how we'd fare in a more urban environment. We lived at a house next to a lot of traffic before (didn't realize it until after we moved), and it was horrible. So, i refuse to move somewhere with a lot of traffic, esp one with a bus line right next to it.

[AnnieW625]

We compromised on space (3 bedrooms instead of 4 and no den or family room), the house needs quite a bit in terms of remodeling (some things had to be done right away, others we are saving for), and we have a tiny yard. I didn't want a big yard so that's not a huge sacrifice, but it would have been awfully nice to have about double the size so we could play catch and such in the back.

We did not compromise on the school district, but we plan to use the public schools all the way through for two kids partly because we'd rather have the money in the house (where eventually, hopefully, we or the kids will get it back when it is sold) than in private school tuition.

We don't mind some noise--that's part of living close in for us. We don't really have much traffic noise, but we do have some airport noise and some train noise.

Catherine

I could have written the exact same post except our kids will most likely to go Catholic school through at least the 8th grade. I am hoping if we stay in this area they will be attend public high school. If we move out of this area back to nor cal the high schools in the areas we'd move to are excellent, or if we move out if state I will be very picking about choosing a state that funds public education well.

The houses we would consider forever houses in most other low to med. col areas were close to 900k when we bought in 2005. If we had found an idealic condo in a great neighboring city with awesome schools we would have bought that, but we couldn't find a 3 bed, 1 to 2 bath condo that was an end unit so we settled for a not so ritzy "let's keep up with the Jones'" city (1950s tract suburban area, but it has good schools and the people are really nice) so we settled for 1 bath, 3 beds., and 1100 sq. ft. vs. the 1400 we might have been able to find in that idealic condo. . Our yard is 5000 sq. ft. .

[mommy111]

The single biggest expense you will have outside of the house itself is private school, so I would not compromise on good public schools. Outside of that, anything is OK

[BabyBearsMom]

I would compromise on everything but the school district

[SnuggleBuggles]

What's wrong with the "lesser" school district? Is it an absolute deal breaker; you wouldn't send your kids there? I sometimes think people get wrapped up in a better school but the alternative(s) still provide a very good education. I'd really be considering the other school with no intention of private school n

[crl]

What's wrong with the "lesser" school district? Is it an absolute deal breaker; you wouldn't send your kids there? I sometimes think people get wrapped up in a better school but the alternative(s) still provide a very good education. I'd really be considering the other school with no intention of private school n

This is a good point. We actually deliberately avoided the "best" school district in our metro area because it is also known as high pressure. That environment would not work for ds, IMO.

Catherine