I am literally in the middle of selling my current house and buying a new one! Here’s what was important to me in my search:
Location!
- My current house is almost an hour’s commute from work; my goal was to have a commute of 20 minutes or less. The house I’m buying is 13 minutes. Yaaaas. (And my job is attached to a university. It ain’t moving, and neither am I unless something really tanks. I love my job, and my job loves me.)
- Reasonably close to shopping. New house is ten miles or less from umpty gazillion stores (including Aldi’s and Trader Joe’s!).
- Semi walkable area. New house is about a 15-minute walk to various stores, eateries, library, and parks.
- Quiet road. Some noise is audible from nearby roads and a train track, but not much. (I was standing in the back yard when a train went by and blew its horn; I could hear it, but it was very quiet. Inside the house, I probably wouldn’t hear it at all.)
Price! I’m paying for new house with the proceeds of selling old house; new house is just slightly under my max target price.
Property tax! No lie, I’m paying just over $10,000/yr at my current house, which was the face punch that set me on the road to moving. New house is roughly $6,000/yr--not as cheap as some that I looked at, but tolerable.
Amenities! These were wants more than needs.
- Size. My current house is around 1,100 sq ft and is already tedious to clean, so I didn’t want anything much bigger. (This one was hard to stick to; I kept finding myself looking at houses in the 1,700-1,800 range.) New house is 1,312 sq ft.
- Number of rooms. Current house has two bedrooms and one office-that-can-also-be-a-bedroom. New house has three bedrooms. Just right.
- Was hoping for a garage and got one.
- No fixer-uppers. I’m interested in learning how to be handy, but don’t want to start with a whole-house project. New house is pretty much move in ready.
- Single-family detached home only. (I don’t want to share walls with neighbors. I also don’t want to pay HOA fees.)
- Preferably no septic (dealing with current house’s septic inspection failure right now, ugh) or oil heat. New house is public water/sewer and gas heat.
Stuff that I let go....
- Central AC would have been nice; I would have lived with window units (or had central installed). New house has mini splits, which I’ve never had before. Should be fine, I guess?
- In theory, I love ranch houses--current house is a ranch--but in actual fact nearly every ranch I looked at had tiny, stupid windows that made it feel like a bunker and an awkward boxy layout. New house is a two-story Victorian.
- Lots of natural light. The living room has a big east-facing “sunroom” section, but most of the rest of the house seems fairly shady. I’ll have to see how it actually is in the different seasons as I live there.
Anyway, I feel incredibly lucky to have found the house that I did, which checks off so many elements of my wish list! We’re still in attorney review, so it’s not 100 percent locked in yet, and I still have to see how the inspections go, but I’m praying hard. :D