• Things People Don’t Consider When Choosing a Town to Live In

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    Looking for a home or apartment is more complicated than it may appear. For someone who has never done it before, it may seem as though you simply look for places you like within a price range you can afford. In actuality, however, there’s a lot more to it. Similar to selecting a destination to travel to, you want a location that encompasses everything that accommodates your needs and interests. You look at more than just the hotel or vacation rental, but the local culture, activities, attractions, and more. 

    Though on a larger scale than choosing a vacation destination (you’ll be living in your home or apartment a lot longer than you’ll be on vacation), it is important to be thorough in your research about the property, the neighborhood, and other factors to ensure it is in fact a town where your immediate and long-term needs and interests are met. 

    With that being said, beyond finding the perfect home or apartment in the right price range, here are some other things to consider before deciding which town to make your new home: 

    Local Government

    You don’t have to be a political person, but you should know about the local government wherever you plan on moving to. These are the people that make decisions for the city you choose to reside in. They are responsible for the parks and recreation, housing services, emergency medical services, public works, public transportation, the police and fire departments, building codes, and much more. Though no local municipality is perfect, moving into an area that doesn’t line up with what you believe or a government that does not provide adequate services and treatment for their residents can make living there a lot more challenging.

    Cost of Living

    Sure, you can afford the home or apartment you’re interested in moving into, but can you reasonably afford to live in the town you’ve chosen? The cost of living in a particular area is the ballpark amount required to cover basic necessities like housing, taxes, healthcare, food, etc. If you can afford a place to stay but can’t afford to keep up with the taxes, buy groceries, or obtain adequate health coverage, chances are moving to this town will put a financial strain on you.

    Public Transportation and/or Walkability

    Whether you drive a car or not, when deciding which town is best to move to, you should find out about the area’s public transportation or walkability rating. You never know when your vehicle could breakdown causing you to have to use other means of transportation to get around. So, you want to know that there is public transportation that would get you to and from places like your job, your house, a school, or a shopping center for groceries and other necessities.

    If public transportation isn’t highly accessible, then at the very least, things should be easy to walk or ride a bike to (walkability rate). If you wanted to live in Cypress, California, for example, can you easily walk to work, walk the kids to school, or ride your bike to shopping centers or gyms in Cypress? Or, would you have to carpool or use ridesharing services to get to those places?

    Employment Opportunities

    Unless you’re planning on keeping the job you currently have, you’ll need a new one once you move. Before putting a down payment or deposit on a place, find out if you’ll be able to secure a job in the area you’re interested in moving to. There would be nothing worse than getting a place and then going into foreclosure or getting evicted because you couldn’t find a job to keep up with the expenses. Do research to not only see if there are opportunities available, but that these opportunities are aligned with your skills, education, and professional area of expertise.

    School Systems

    If you’re relocating with children, doing a thorough investigation into the school systems is also recommended. It is not enough that a city or town has schools, but how effective are these schools in providing an education to their students? What resources do they have? What’s the teacher to student ratio? Where do they rank in the local and national standardized testing each year? How large are their graduating classes? What type of curriculum do they use? These are all necessary questions to have answers to before deciding to move into a town where your children will essentially grow up.

    Your next home purchase or apartment rental is more than just about what you like about the property and what you can afford. It is essentially choosing a place for you and potentially your family to reside for years to come. In order to ensure that your immediate and long-term needs and desires are met, it is imperative that you go beyond the purchase or rental price and look at factors like the local government, transportation, school systems, cost of living, and employment opportunities such as described above.

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  • preservation status debated in Decatur

    Paul Donsky has an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the seemingly endless conflict between preservationists and those who fear that historic status will restrict their ability to alter their own property:

    Residents in the Oakhurst section of Decatur are proud of the tidy bungalows that line the neighborhood’s streets.

    Run-down homes, many dating to the early 20th century, have been
    painstakingly restored, preserving the clean lines and sturdy porches
    that typify the Craftsman bungalow style.

    Some residents say the
    modest, boxy houses are such an integral part of the neighborhood’s
    character that they must be protected, particularly at a time when
    "teardowns" and "McMansions" have become part of the real estate
    lexicon.

    Now, three residents have filed papers asking Decatur’s Historic
    Preservation Commission to make part of Oakhurst a historic district,
    which would prevent most of the older homes in the area from being
    knocked down. Several old homes have already been bulldozed, they say,
    and many others are at risk.

    But others in the neighborhood say the protection would come at too
    high a price. They worry that new rules might prevent them from
    expanding their homes as their families grow, and they grouse about the
    prospect of having to get approval for run-of-the-mill home improvement
    projects.

    read the entire article

  • Woodland CA home tours: September 8, 2007

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    Woodland is a small bedroom community just outside Sacramento, and several of my colleagues live there and commute in to the Capitol and other downtown offices. I was gratified to hear that the city is hosting a home tour – I’ve always been very impressed with the number of beautiful old Craftsman homes in the city’s core (although, unfortunately, much of Woodland is now being subsumed by suburban sprawl, identical tract homes in very uninviting gated and anonymous "communities" that are anything but).

    Several free guided walking tours of the town’s several historic neighborhoods, house tours of a number of important houses in the area, music, a pancake breakfast and plenty more (including guides in period costume) are all part of this year’s "Stroll Through History." Home tour tickets are $25 and may be purchased online. Hopefully events like this will revitalize the historic neighborhoods and maybe even teach developers that there’s a market for well-built, non-cookie-cutter homes with quirky inconsistencies, color, and warmth.

  • McMansions bring tensions to old neighborhoods

    A good article by Kytja Weir in last week’s Charlotte Observer, on the constant butting of heads between historic preservationists who look at a neighborhood as an organic whole and selfish me-firsters who want the freedom to do whatever they want with their own property, damn the neighbors and everyone else. Gee, can you tell which camp I fit into? An excerpt:

    Tim Griffin, the association president, had invited builders,
    architects and others, trying to inspire his neighbors about how to
    renovate their homes without changing the feel of the newly popular
    neighborhood.

    "I’m just so adamant about no more McMansions," he said.

    But
    he knows his neighborhood has no power to restrict renovations. "We’re
    not a homeowners’ association. We’re not a historic district. So the
    next best thing is to educate."

    The neighborhood of small homes,
    many dating from the 1930s, is starting to feel a tension already
    experienced in Charlotte’s older neighborhoods around uptown such as
    Dilworth, Myers Park, Elizabeth, Plaza-Midwood and Wesley Heights as
    people with bigger tastes move in.

    Today Americans seek more space than their parents. In new developments bigger homes can be built without hindrances.

    But
    the desire for more space creates a tension in some older
    neighborhoods, built for the needs of the past. Neighbors there find
    themselves walking a line between preserving the past and maintaining
    property rights, promoting growth yet controlling how it takes shape.

  • “like watching Ann Coulter debate Al Franken”

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    Neighbors in the Decatur, Georgia neighborhood of Oakhurst are definitely not agreeing to disagree about a proposal to turn their area into an official historic district. Scott Henry fills us in on the story, something that may not be all that hard to imagine for many of you who live in historic districts, whether recognized or not:

    Threats. Intimidation. Yard signs. Snotty e-mails. Yes, the knives
    are out in Oakhurst, where the proposed creation of what would be
    Decatur’s largest historic district has resulted in a nasty
    neighborhood-wide squabble in which many homeowners have been forced to
    choose sides.

    Terry Michel, a real estate agent who says she supports voluntary
    design guidelines rather than city imposed building restrictions, says
    she’s stopped discussing the issue with neighbors because the rhetoric
    on both sides has become too overheated.

    “The vitriol is off-putting to me,” Michel explains. “It’s like watching Ann Coulter debate Al Frankin (sic).”

    So what is it about a historic district that has so many peoples’ knickers in a wad?

    Mainly, the argument comes down to control over one’s own property.
    If a house is included in the district, then the owner would need to
    get a “certificate of appropriateness” to tear it down, build an
    addition or make significant exterior changes. Construction plans that
    aren’t seen as keeping within the historic character of the
    neighborhood – say, replacing a 1920s Craftsman bungalow with a
    modernist stucco triplex – may not be allowed.

  • Bungalow Relocation in Fort Lauderdale

    One of the most central tenets of the Arts & Crafts movement was the situation of a home in its landscape – even a kit house needed to be picked to be a good match with its surroundings. But better a well-built old house be moved than be demolished for a parking lot, I suppose. It is sad that people would rather go with ugly urban blight than a pretty old house, though, but I suppose we will eventually learn. Maybe.

    Here’s an article by Brittany Wallman in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on the upcoming move of a 1916 bungalow which had to be moved once before to make room for a parking lot. No, I’m not kidding. Maybe we do drive a bit too much. Maybe raising the gas tax to $5 a gallon would solve this problem:

    Progress is chasing the Annie Beck house around town.

    Historic preservationists are preparing to move the 1916 bungalow to its third location, again to avoid demolition.
    The cottage was home to
    one of Fort Lauderdale’s prominent pioneer couples, Annie and Alfred J.
    Beck, and is a "traditional Craftsman style, front-facing gable
    bungalow" characteristic of the vernacular-style houses of early Fort
    Lauderdale, according to a city memo.

    Its
    original location, before downtown boomed into a high-rise district,
    was at 334 E. Las Olas Blvd. But in 1977, the house was relocated to
    310 SE 11th Ave. to make way for a parking lot.

    read the whole article

  • how to live within history – not on top of it

    This is one of the most delightful things I’ve read in a newspaper since long before the current war began, and it’s almost enough to distract me for a few minutes from Kurt Vonnegut’s death, the rising toll of wounded and killed overseas and the idiocracy we seem to have saddled ourselves with in Washington.

    For today’s Los Angeles Times, William Deverell, a history professor at USC, has written a quiet and beautifully moving paean to his home, his neighborhood and how he has learned to "live amid history:"

    Houses and neighborhoods seduce us. They always have. What
    starts with limitations — cost and location — often blossoms into
    habits of living and cherished memories. Our love affair began in
    Pasadena eight years ago.

    It was the fall of 1999. We knew we
    wanted to be close to Caltech, where I was teaching at the time, and
    near the Huntington Library, where my wife, Jenny, works. So we drew an
    imaginary rectangle on a map of Pasadena, hoping that somewhere inside
    this space we would find our perfect home and our perfect neighborhood.

    When we first saw it, the house hid behind 20 years of benign neglect.
    It was a Mission Revival with old wooden awnings sagging atop wrought
    iron braces. In the yard, worn-out grass fought a losing battle with
    brown spots and weeds. Here and there, a few succulents hung on.

    Built
    in 1923, the house was tired. The bathrooms needed work — a lot of
    work. Every window had heavy iron bars on it. An apartment attached to
    the garage was decrepit, and a freestanding building out back, with an
    incinerator plunked down in a corner, was a mess.

    The owner
    had been in the leather business in downtown Los Angeles. He had
    retired years earlier and brought his inventory home with him. Bolts of
    leather stood stacked in rooms and corners of the house: raw leather,
    finished leather and leather in some stage in-between. A couple of
    rooms were off-limits because we couldn’t open the doors; leather was
    in the way.

    Our real estate agent apologized to us on the sidewalk as we left.

    "I really like it," Jenny whispered to me.