The realtor came last night
He said the market is “soft” and one house in our neighborhood has been on the market for more than 250 days. Yipes. But he also said our house is one of the prettier (curb appealing) ones available (should we make it available) and that we also live on one of the nicer streets in the neighborhood. I knew this because, heck, almost five years ago we were looking for a house and I remember how this one showed better than the others. And that was before the new kitchen and all.
I’ll be sad to give up my new appliances but this is a starter home and I know you sell appliances with the starter homes.
I don’t know if we shouldn’t wait until spring to put it up. We’re looking at basically going on the market just as school starts and then there are the holidays…
I’m going to have to trust Brett on this. He’s pretty cautious and he’s doing more research than I am. But he was also interested in a bridge loan and there’s just no way I’d agree to that.
Our realtor, like my mother, thinks that we ought to consider the neighborhood where my sister lives. We could get a lot of house there. But I don’t like that neighborhood. I don’t dislike it — it’s just an awful lot like this one so why bother to move? We could get a bigger house but I’m not moving just to get a bigger house.
I’ve also been talking to people about our chosen area — how conservative is it? How diverse? It looks like it’s more diverse than the other area we like although less diverse than this area. I can live with that because it’s close enough to this area that we can still pick up activities at the rec center or library and as long as Madison gets to some see other brown faces in the course of her daily living, I’m not keeping a quota. Our window guy who came yesterday to take measurements lives in the district we’re eyeing and he said (and I quote) that things around those parts are “pretty mixed, I’d say, pretty mixed.”
As to conservative, well, yes, it is. Myabe not as conservative as this neighborhood although it depends on which street, exactly, we end up moving to. Our neighbor across the way here — he’s a good neighbor. He keeps an eye on our house when we’re gone, he checks in when the street floods, and they send over cookies at Christmas. He also told Brett that when he got his driveway resealed, he had to “Jew down” the guy on his price. He’s a good neighbor but I don’t want to hang out with him. I can take some of that in a neighborhood but it would be nice to find some people I like, too. I don’t need to fall in love with my neighbors or even become best friends as long as I can trust that my son won’t be proslytized to if he’s hanging with the kids. Or at least not by everybody (how to handle proslytizing is probably a good skill for every non-Christian American to have).
Yesterday I said to one of my friends, “Maybe living next to Republicans isn’t so bad,” and she said, horrified, “I can’t believe you just said that!”
Depends on the Republican, I say. And besides, I can’t afford the liberal neighborhoods, which seems awfully not very liberal of those neighborhoods. And Becca says she heard that my favorite one was filling up with conservative yuppies anyway. (By the way Becca? I’m totally with you about the sex tapes.)
Oh and on one street that’s kinda sorta a tiny bit near where we’d like to live there are currently four homeschooling families living there, two of whom I’ve been talking to about the area and who seem like lovely people. I was asking one about the politics around there and she said, “I wouldn’t know because I don’t discuss them.” Probably a good policy to have but not nearly as much fun.
I am going to sound like a total bigot. When we were looking to move out of the too expensive liberal area, (that we loved but couldn’t afford to buy bigger)we would drive through neighborhoods and look at cars in the driveway. If there were lots of pick-up trucks with gun racks, we weren’t going. Ditto yellow ribbons. I don’t want my kids going to school and playing with only conservatives, so I was determined not to live surrounded by them. I live in a red state, so it’s hard. Luckily our charter is 90% liberal.
I did find that the move down in size of house was really worth living in the liberal part of town for 10 years. We really loved it. I would still be there if it hadn’t been for adding a 4th kid.
Which neighborhood does your sister live in?
Jeez, are Republicans really that bad? I’ve known a lot of them in my day (hey, I’ve lived both in rural Tennessee and in rural Michigan) and, while there are certainly stinkers in every group, most of the ones I know aren’t bigots.
I just don’t talk politics with people I don’t know. It falls into that whole ‘don’t make assumptions’ category…I haven’t a clue what my neighborhoods’ political leanings are, but so far, they are all wonderful, neighborly people. And if we ever get that far and it turns out we don’t have anything politically in common, I’m sure we can find something else to talk about.
OOps, meant to add: they also aren’t gun-toting, or even necessarily wal-mart shopping folk!
There’s a really interesting section of the new book Freakonomics on real estate. It could be that the house not sold yet is holding out for more money. Could just mean that a realtor is in ownership, rather than a regular citizen selling with the help of an agent.
Good luck! House selling/buying is so big and scary!
How to handle the evangelical thing is important for EVERYONE to know. Turns out, if you’re not the “right” kind of Christian, they think you’re toast, too.
In our last neighborhood, we were right next door to two very racist women whose economic and professional status was pretty different from our own. We didn’t buy in any of the “faculty ghettos” and definitely felt different than our neighbors. Without kids, it really didn’t matter, and we got a lot more house for our money. But we didn’t look in that sort of neighborhood again (for a variety of reasons–number one being lead paint and asbestos).
Now we live in a complete faculty ghetto, made more ghettoish by being entirely white (with the exception of a few interracial adoptees) but it’s not religiously homogeneous. I’m still getting used to the standard Southern question, “where do you go to church?” but in this area, it seems to carry not proselytizing intent, and most of the answers I’ve overheard are variations on either “we’re Jewish,” “we don’t go to church,” or “we’re still looking.” Only the last comment ever excites any follow-up, since quite a few folks are either new discovers of their current churches (mostly UCC and Methodist in our neighborhood) or trying to figure out whether they should move again. Saying the name of our church pretty much ended the few conversations I ever had with people about it, since it’s not really an open-ended question. What are you supposed to do with the information anyway?
My family lives in a very republican conservative area and there are plenty of pickup trucks and yellow ribbons and even confederate flag bumper stickers. It’s not great but c’est la vie. (I went running for a big liberal city for college) I just want to say that one co-exist alongside people who don’t share your views. Heck you will find lots of things that you don’t agree with your neighboors about, not just politics. I get a bit sick of the whole red state blue state mentality.
I live in a very Republican county in Northern Illinois, though the women who founded our local weekly paper are pretty liberal (liberal press! liberal press! I can hear the crows cawing now). State Rep. Jack Franks came to my door, and when I, one of those contrarian Independent voters, inquired after his party affiliation, he flushed, and whispered “Democrat.” I held him on my front porch as he wept from shame. Okay, not really, but it was interesting to see how this guy is wildly successful here despite being of the minority party becasue people know he gets the job done. They look past the label and vote him back into office each term.
There’s a really great balance between artists, actors, shopkeepers, and 4th-generation farmers, young, educated families, not-so-educated families, oh yeah, and migrant farm workers and their families, too; we have a sizable Spanish-speaking population and a thriving dual language program in the schools. It’s a melting pot. Lots of diversity, lots of differences of opinions. It’s America, and it’s how I envision it. I have conservative friends and family members (oh no, she’s not doing the old “some of my best friends are! line, is she??). They’re all just PEOPLE. And much as each of us believes so fervently that we are in the right, so do they, with every bit as much passion.
Me, I’m like Barack Obama, I’m a “bring on the Purple States” kind of gal. I believe that if we’re to truly, madly, deeply embrace tolerance, then we have to also show it for those with whom we most disagree, and to do so in a way without fearing the pickup trucks and the gun racks and the W’04 signs, because there are just people driving those trucks and living in those homes, doing their best, believing what they believe, and they have a side to their story, too.
I don’t think anyone who reads Dawn’s blog (and I’ve been a reader and ardent fan for years now) would find it acceptable to say “oh, there’s 5 Mexican families on that block, and they display their flags on their cars and etc. so I don’t know if I want to buy a house there.” I just as fervently believe that if any of us, here or anywhere, is to speak of tolerance, then looking past ALL stereotypes and our own worst fears about what they might represent, is the toughest–but most significant–job of all.
One more point I neglected to make - I do understand, and deeply empathize with - not just being “the new kid on the block” but moving into an area where you are the “other,” and I fully acknowledge how intimidating and worrisome that can be.