Your Home’s Location Matters

Your Home’s Location Matters

When you are looking for your dream home, you often have a certain architectural design, square footage, or functionality in mind. 

You want your house to look and feel a certain way, and you want all the amenities to go with your grand vision. 

But often, when home buyers are looking for their perfect homes, they forget that the location of their dream home is just as important - or perhaps more important - than the look of their dream home. 

At eHome America, we want you to find your dream home. We want to help you buy it and thrive in it.

However, we suggest that you look for your dream home’s location BEFORE you look for your dream home.  

You don’t want to risk finding the right house in the wrong location.

How to Find Your Dream Location

So what do you do? How do you decide where you need to look for your new house? 

Many home buyers start their searches based on a set 30 to 60-mile radius. Whether you want to be near work, family, or destinations, you usually know where to begin your search. 

But finding your home’s perfect location is about more than choosing a city or county. It is also about choosing the right side of the city or county, depending on what you need and want.

Here are the questions we suggest you ask to find your home’s dream location:

• How far away is it?

Perhaps most importantly, you need to decide how close or far away you want to be from activities and people. 

Americans often choose their home’s location in respect to how close it is to work, to school, to parks, to playgrounds, to religious centers, to shopping districts, to nightlife, to family members, and more. 

So when you begin looking for the right place to buy a home, start by deciding which person or place you need to be closest to. 

• Will it benefit my family?

After you have decided what or who you need to be closest to, you should then compare that need with your family’s need for well-being.

In other words, based on the criteria above, will you be in a safe neighborhood? Are the neighbors friendly and welcoming or distant and standoffish? What is the crime rate in that location versus one 20 miles up the road?

What about your children? Will they be zoned for the school district you desire? Will they have access to every opportunity you want them to have in academics, sports, arts, theater, leadership, community, and more? 

In that location, will you have access to help and facilities if emergencies arise? Are the city or county firehouses, emergency rooms, and police departments active, accessible, and accountable? 

Your research upfront could pay dividends in the long run.

• How much will it cost me?

Speaking of dividends, you can now begin comparing costs of living between the neighborhoods or communities where you are looking. 

For instance, you may be zoned in city and county lands on one side of the railroad tracks, but if you choose a house on the other side of the tracks, you may only be zoned within the county. That could make thousands of dollars of a difference in property taxes you owe each year. 

Some utility companies charge higher rates than others, some Homeowners Associations have stringent fees, some areas of town charge premium rates for groceries and merchandise, and some neighborhoods even require homeowners to pay for the privilege to park. 

• What are conditions like?

If you have not found your dream location yet, our last recommendation is to analyze the living conditions in specific neighborhoods. 

Drive down the streets if you can and take a look at neighbors’ yards, driveways, landscaping, and facades to see how well homeowners maintain their houses and lawns. 

Is there a general feeling of cleanliness, respect, and calm or is the neighborhood trashy, noisy, and overgrown? Do others in the community raise pets or animals that would raise concerns for you?

Remember, this is all about finding your family’s dream location. So have fun with it. Treat it like a scavenger hunt if you like! Just get out there and do the leg work!