I'm highlighting Money magazine's excellent resource on how to find the perfect home. Today, we'll talk about considering the home's convenience. Their thoughts:
Cities offer great job and cultural opportunities, but they generally come with high real estate costs. To get more house for your money, you might look along the edge of a hot neighborhood or in a smaller town nearby. But will you miss the pace? Will you end up with a longer, pricier commute than you'd prefer? Will family and friends ever visit?
Money goes on to note that the average commute in 1990 was 22.4 minutes but in 2005 it was 25.1 minutes. That doesn't seem like a big gain, but when you consider you spend an extra 2.7 minutes each way for 250 days a year, that ends up to being an extra 22.5 hours a year! (not to mention the extra gas and car maintenance costs.)
Money also suggests you look at other factors like the nearest hospital, supermarket, pharmacy, and airport as well as the quality of the schools as a factor of convenience.
These are all factors to us with distance to work, distance to church, schools, and distance to supermarket being the key factors. It's a series of trade-offs for sure -- and we're yet to find the right mix.
I agree. I have been living ~15 minutes away from work the past three years. Prior to that, I commute for 45 minutes (barring no traffic). I love the one hour that I could have used for other activities rather than driving every day.
Posted by: guniadi | August 30, 2007 at 02:35 PM
I'm not sure I agree 100%. I used to work 1 hour away from work and now I am only 10min. I miss the time to relax either listening to music or learning 4 languages from tapes. I also learned about different grass seed and what's best in certain applications.
I think the next time I look for a job, I will make sure that my commute is at least 25min one way.
Posted by: Crystal | August 30, 2007 at 03:08 PM
For a year, we rented a house that was very convenient to one job and about 10 miles from the other (still pretty convenient in central Massachusetts)... we looked to buy in that general area, but couldn't afford it.
We ended up with a choice of three neighborhoods where we could afford to buy a house, all at least 25 miles from our jobs; one in the small city where we went to college and met (still have lots of friends there), and two suburbs in the same area. We picked one of the suburbs, for a variety of reasons, but one is that we are less than 2 minutes off of two major highways. Work is 30 & 35 miles away, respectively, but it's a straight shot on a toll road. We miss not being able to bike/walk to work, but we weren't going to get that with any of our choices. This way, we spend the least amount of time on the road while still affording a quiet neighborhood.
Posted by: Anitra | August 30, 2007 at 05:33 PM