When you are house hunting....

[ZachnElli]

What's most important?? Partially inspired by the school voucher threads.

1. House itself
2. School district
3. Yard or lack there of

I ask because we are moving back home and we've sold our house here and will be living with relatives until we find a house. We are looking in one particular area because of the school. Not only is the school excellent, but my kids' cousins go there and would make for an easier transition for them. But the backyards are tiny. Having a yard is important to us, we have 3 kids and 3 dogs and to have a tiny backyard backed up to another tiny backyard, well, you end up looking right at your neighbors. It's all that's holding us back. So anyway, what's most important to you?

 

[kpm76]

DH and I just bought a house in September and we looked at probably 75 houses...it was a process! The most important thing to us was the house itself...we didn't want to have to do alot of work and we wanted something that was well maintained and in good shape structurally. The neighborhood was extremely important to us as well.....we wanted the right house in the right neighborhood for the right price (hence the reason we looked at 75 houses before finding the one!).....a yard was not something we really considered though we did want a nice one and fortunately, we got one. We don't have children yet but schools were not a consideration for us because when we do have them we'd like to send them to Catholic school....hope this helps and good luck with your search!

 

[keepinitreal]

When we bought!

1) School District
2) Amount of land
3) House itself.

You can pretty easily change #3. 1 & 2 are pretty much set.

 

[CEDmom]

I think it depends on your situation. For us the ONLY reason we're moving is to get into a better school district. The house itself was important but not as much as the zipcode. The yard doesn't really matter to us because we only have 1 child who's not the rough and tumble type.

 

[Bob Slydell]

Our preferences were:

1.) House
2.) Neighborhood (we wanted one with a lot of kids)
3.) School district (more for future resale purposes than anything)
4.) Land (we didn't want a big lot, just a decent sized property)

 

[lecach]

We are going to list our house in the next few weeks. We've been checking out neighborhoods to see what we like. For us its a combination. We need more square footage, want a flat yard, and dont want to be on top of the neighbors. I also want a new or nearly new house. We also need to be in the same town because DH works for the newspaper and cant be too far away. The biggest problem we're finding is the yard. Most of the houses that are good houses at a price we can afford and not far from where we live have either tiny or nonexistent yards. And many of them are not flat. We're going to see a house tomorrow that has a huge, flat, back yard and all the other requirements - except its 4 1/2 years old. Its hard to find the perfect home.

 

[NMAmy]

We looked within the school district we wanted first, then the house. The yard was not a big deal to us but we got a great one--beautifully landscaped with big pine trees all along the back and sides so even in the winter, we're not looking right into someone else's yard.

This was only the third house we looked at--the price was too high at first for our budget but 4 months later we started looking again and the price had come down. I love my house & couldn't get excited about any of the other ones we'd seen.

Good luck with your house hunting. We rented until we found something we loved instead of just settling for something just so-so because we needed a place to live.

 

[canwegosoon]

"server issues"

 

[canwegosoon]

For me...it is the house. I send my kids to private school, so the school one is less important for me. The yard, you always have options, go to a park, play sports etc...if anything a small yard means less yard work. But a small house or poor house, leads to many other problems. My choices.
1)House
2)school district(if all around are about the same)
3)yard
Only exception is if you only have one good school in the area...I would purchase there...since that is a tangable selling point, and a house could always be expanded if needed.

 

[Chicago526]

A balance of all three, I'd say. I wouldn't buy a crummy house just because it's in a good district, and I wouldn't buy my dream house in a horrific district, and if the house doesn't meet my basic "must haves" I'm not going to buy it no matter where it's located unless there is TRUELY no other choice (like it's a really tight buyers market and there just isn't anything available and I'm in a position that I must buy right away and can't wait for something better to come along).

 

[barkley]

when we move (hopefully this summer) the first priority will be what the area offers (not school district but schooling options-are the private schools in the area any good? when kids get to college age is there the opportunity to commute localy if that's what they want to do? is there the likelyhood that job opportunities will be such that if they choose they can stay vs. having to relocate?-don't want a town entrenched in one type of industry).

second will be the property-we want open space, a few acres idealy.

third will be the house-we can have reconstruction done on one with "gone bones" or in absence have one built.

as for our current house-we had our pick of lots when the development opened. we chose one that not only met our needs but we felt would have the widest appeal at resale (on a cul de sac, and the larger 1/4 acre lot-huge by california standards. did landscaping that met our needs but would'nt intimidate someone from buying or could'nt be easily renovated).

 

[dcgrumpy]

For us the school district was most important. We narrowed it down to several school districts and didn't look anywhere else.

As for the other two it was a combination of both. We didn't need a huge yard but wanted something that was big enough just in case we ever decided to add on. There were 2 houses we looked at that we really liked a lot, but neither had a garage and the lot was too small to add one later on so that was the deal breaker.

 

[mickeyfan2]

For us it was the yard first, then the house. School was not important. Paying less taxes would enable me to send the kids to private school.

 

[Tink&SquirtsMom]

We chose first on location, second on the house and 3rd on the yard.

Location is kind of funny, because opposite what most would say we chose to be OUTSIDE of the "best" school district. There is one here that has signs out front of the high school promoting how many students that year got accepted to the Ivy League, and is nationally recognized. But having graudated myself from the district 10 yeards ago and seeing my littlest brother graduate from there last spring, I had no desire to send my children there. Another good reason for avoiding that district is they are constantly rezoning, and because so many people want to be in that district the value of your home can easily vary $100,000 if you are in the district or not. So many people have seen their homes rise and fall in value that much literally overnight based on the latest rezoning and it has caused many lengthy legal battles, etc. We chose to live on the new side of town and have a good (but not the best) school district. As important to us was having a family friendly neighborhood (having lived with HORRIBLE neighbors before), so when we shopped we payed close attention to the neighborhood and looked for kids outdoors playing, people outside, etc. We ended up with a idealic neighborhood where we know everyone, people call before running to the grocery store to see if you need anything, or offer to watch your kids if you are going, we get together for dinner at least once a week, etc. We have 7 other kindergartners besides my daughter on our street alone (it helps that 3 are triplets, lol). And while one may discount the importance, our neighborhood has made all the difference for myself and my kids making the transition to moving here (we moved back to where I grew up, but only after having lived elsewhere since I had graduated college). Also in location was our actual location in the development. SOme house back to businesses and some are on busy streets. It was important to us to get a quiet street, with no views of local buisnesses and as private a lot as possible.

The next was house. And again I'm probably different then most in that I wanted a smaller house. We shopped mainly 2-3,000 sqft which is common here and ended up buying a 1650 sqft (cheaper to heat and air condition and less time to clean, lol). I wanted a 1 story, and had certain layout requirements that this house met. It was very well built and had very nice upgrades that we could actually use (some had upgraded granite etc, but they would pick an ugly granite I would never keep anyways... so i didn't really consider it an upgrade). My mom had always said buy the smallest house in the nicest development that you can afford. And without meaning too, thats what we did. We got the smalllest house in a very nice development (biggest house in our development is 4,600 sqft).
Yard was our lowest priority. We were moving from a townhouse and have never really cared about a yard. Our development is centered around a great park and we have 2 others besides that within short walking distance. We got what a first looked like a tiny yard on a corner lot. However after we moved in, our landscape designer (the yard wasn't done) convinced us to push our fence out and expand out backyard (which we could do being on a corner lot). So we actually ended up with a fantastic backyard, and one of the bigger ones in our neighborhood. It ended up being like a U shape, which our designer took advantage of by creating outdoor "rooms" which creates a very different feeling (actually more spacious) then just a big open yard and is wonderful for entertaining. He created a tiered design on our front yard so it amazingly looks nicer out there too even though we took room from the frontyard (on the side) to expand the back. So take a look at which lots may allow for options like that.

 

[jwsqrdplus2]

School district was our #1 priority on our last move. House and lot were equal.

In fact before looking at any houses, I spent 1 day going around to several elementary schools in the area. I asked every school the same question, "We are moving to the Tucson area with school aged chilren. Why should we buy a house in your school's district?" I got quite the myriad of responses from dumb founded looks to getting a bunch of papers handed to me to a 1-hour meeting with the school principal and a guided tour of the campus.

After that day, we called our realtor and said we want Marana first and Oro Valley Amphitheater second. We looked at 22 houses in one day. Settled on 2, went back the next day with a more critical eye, and picked the one we liked best. We are districted for the best Middle School and High School. I wasn't really happy with the elementary school we ended up with, but through open enrollment, I was able to move my girls to a better elementary school.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Since we do public school...

1. School district
2. House
3. Lot

 

[disykat]

I would also say school district first because we moved specifically to get into a certain school district and didn't look anywhere else. We are, however, at one of the "less desirable" elementary schools in the district. We felt we'd be happy with almost any elementary school and were more interested in the secondary schools because we felt those would be more of an issue.

 

[binny]

School would be most important to me.

 

[Microcell]

I think you need to like where you are going to live, but my best friend the teacher says you should live in a shack to live in the best school district you can afford. Unless you go private.

 

[chrissyk]

For us, the #1 thing has always been the reputation of the schools that the neighborhood was districted into. This is strictly a tactic for resale...people will pay for good schools. It doesn't matter if you don't have kids. Good schools sell houses IMHO, so that should be a huge factor on anyone's list if they ever plan to resell the house in the future.