Struggling with buying a house

[shootingstar]

The thing about location, location, location is that both locations have advantages and disadvantages. In terms of making the best investment, I think they both weigh out pretty evenly on the location aspect.

While the house I live in is on a busy road, it's only a 5 min drive into down town for restaurants shopping etc, and it's rideable as well. You're only 1 mile from the most well known trail head for the Post Canyon trail system that isn't functional as the moment but will be again (about 6 months I would guess), and you're less than a mile from 2 wineries, one very well known, less than 3 miles from several with another very well known one in there. The traffic seems like a lot to me, but as my friends that came to visit last night said, it's manageable. To put things into perspective a bit, the property is well treed and has a creek that borders the back property line, so when you're sitting on the back deck, you can't hear the road for the creek sounds and you feel like you're in the woods.

The other house has more acreage and solitude, it's on a dead ending road, and it backs onto county forest so you can access the well known Post Canyon trail system from the property but not at a well know trail head. These are things that are highly desireable to me but that I'm not sure I should weight them so heavily in my decision.

It sounds like a nice location, Wahine where you are. Maybe the key thing is getting the car in and out safely if it's a busy road that runs by the house. Or being near another side street that one whips onto (by car or bike) to avoid the long march of cars. I can appreciate what you mean about trees and setback that gives a wonderful illusion of peace.

I live on a street that is 2 blocks away from a busy 4 lane, one way street downtown...which is only busy for 4-5 hrs. out of each workday with peak rush hr. car traffic. On weekends it's quite dead..and laughable to have long street light waits.

[TrekDianna]

I bought my house specifically because of its proximity to my favorite cycling routes without having to drive. There's nothing wrong with considering the location from a riding perspective, since that is what we do. You will live there; if your only consideration is resale potential to the widest audience, you might find it lacking in some of your own requirements.

sigh... me too. Although it's my vacation/weekend home I did that with.

[Irulan]

regarding the logging--- logging is usually a temporary scenario. An area gets logged, there's trucks, then they finish and go to another area. Once an has been logged, the loggin traffic is done unless it's a route to other logging.

[Wahine]

So I've continued to look as I realized that the house up on the hill was more work and stress than I wanted to deal with and I have the lease on the house that I am in until January. But over the last 3 weeks, I feel like I'm really getting a sense of what is available in my price range. Everything we've looked at besides the house that we are in on the busy street, has required a ton of work. Even if the locations were good, we wouldn't be able to move in until we did a bunch of remodeling or building a separate space for my BFs business. I was getting a bit depressed about it all and I really want a place where I can do what I want with the property without having to ask for permission.

Thursday morning I was getting ready to re-open a conversation with our landlord about buying the place we are in. Just before I did that I went on the rmls listing and saw a new listing that looked promising. I texted my realtor friend, turned out the house was new on the market and that there was an open house that day at lunch time, so we all went up to see it. I think we may have found our house. We're submitting an offer today.

It's farther out than I had wanted to be for commuting but it's nestled away on a dead end road in a lovely canyon with 2.3 acres, the house is cute, very liveable and move in ready! We'd end up doing some work later to expand the bedrooms a bit but overall, it's ideal. And, there is an amazing network of forest service roads out the back door practically. BF and I have been embracing gravel riding lately, looks like we may be doing more of that soon.

ETA: Thanks to all of you that responded to this thread and helped me find some clarity.

[emily_in_nc]

How exciting! I hope your offer is accepted as it sounds like a nearly perfect situation (keeping in mind that there is no perfect home or place).

And, as with buying a new bike, if/when you do move in, photos will be a requirement!

Crossing fingers for ya...

[Koronin]

Good luck. I hope your offer is accepted and you are able to get it. I like the dead end street idea.