The Most Important Factors When Choosing A Place to Live
August 22, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Real Estate
If you’ve graduated college recently or you have a baby on the way, you may be thinking about making a transition to another city or state to settle down and start the rest of your life. You don’t want to move for at least another 5 to 10 years once you pick a place to settle down. This is a big decision and the wrong decision may cause you to be packing up and moving again, which means you’ll be frustrated that your uprooting your fam nily, and it’s expensive to move. So check it out, we all know what areas SEEM like the most glamorous places to live, but you need to get out of fantasy land and think about what place suits you the best. Sure, California has great weather, tons of jobs, and plenty of activities to keep you busy, but you can’t afford it. No, don’t fight with me, you can’t afford it. If you’ve lived there all of your life, left for a couple of years and want to go back, then you might have a valid reason to move to California. Here are a few major factors that you need to consider when choosing a place to live for a longer period of time.
Job Market:
Housing Market: The housing market has been a hot topic lately. Subprime mortgage lenders are going belly-up and the market is turning into a buyer’s market. However, that doesn’t mean that every area in the country is affordable. CNN Money lists some of the most affordable places to live in this article. Although, some of the areas listed aren’t the most glamorous places to live such as Indianapolis, Detroit, and Cleveland. Just because the city is affordable to live, doesn’t mean you should live there. Detroit and the surrounding areas are going through horrible economic times, and its hard to find a job there right now. There are some nicer areas of the country that are fairly affordable. Northern Florida, The Carolinas, Tennessee, and even some parts of Virginia are still affordable to live, and you can find many growing and vibrant cities in the southeast.
Safety: If your thinking of raising a family in the area you want to move, then you need to be checking into the crime rate of that area. Just because you live in a nice, suburban area doesn’t mean that you’re in a safe area. You need to pick a place that has a good criminal justice system. You can’t prevent crime, but you can take steps to contain it. Make sure the community you choose is taking steps to be proactive against crime.
Stuff to do: Yeah, you need some stuff to do if you’re going to live there. The beach, the mountains, theme parks, museums, historical sites, theaters, and other recreational places are important for making a great community. Make sure you pick a place that is going to keep you entertained and happy. You’ll never enjoy life if you don’t have fun in the area that you live. Jacksonville has the beach, a growing nightlife downtown, golf, a ton of shopping, lots of great restaurants, and it’s an easy 2 hour drive to Orlando.
I’m quickly starting to realize why young people are attracted to Jacksonville. It has all of these four attributes of a good city. The crime thing is cleaning up, especially on the west side and south side. the north side of the city is still plagued by crime, but I think Jacksonville is aware of it. It has a lot to offer, and you can by a nice, starter home for under $200,000 which is hard to find in Florida right now. So make sure that you pick a place to settle in that won’t make you fall asleep thinking about it.
Great Article! And very timely for us because my wife and I (both 25) are in the process of moving from the east back to the midwest while expecting our first child. We are moving to Cincinnati, OH to be closer to my in-laws and to be able to afford a home. A few years of saving every spare penny and living simply allows us to be able to afford a nice home in Ohio (we can barely afford an older townhome in Philadelphia).
I’d like to add that when looking at a house, drive past it! Our realtor drove us right to the house and right back to her office. It looked great and the houses around it looked fine. Crime rates were great, yet the town line, which ended 40 feet from our back door, seperated our crime for the county crime. A quarter-mile from our house is some government sub-housing and has all kinds of crime problems. Now that we are selling, we are having problems because others are driving past our house and looking around the neighborhood. That was one lesson learned the hard way!