He starts by talking about interest rates and inventory, which is very sensible, but not something I particularly connect to.
The rest, I really relate to. Especially this part:
For me, our house is primarily about peace. It’s a place where I’m not forced to think about anything I don’t want to think about. It’s quiet, where we bought. There are trees; practically nothing but trees as far as you can see out the windows. There are no noisy neighbors in the hallway, no drunken revelers screaming outside the window, no roaring trucks or blaring sirens. A city used to energize me, but now it leaves me drained. I’m happy to be a ten minute drive from downtown Portland in the new place, but happier still that I won’t hear anything but the breeze at night.
Seriously.
And:
Both DC and SF have urban cores with a ring of suburbs. If you live in the core, homes are tiny and prices are astronomical. Prices dip just a bit in the suburbs, and you’re likely to spend a fair portion of your day commuting over aging and overcrowded transit infrastructure. Some try to beat the system by living in remote exurbs, sneaking into the city at ungodly hours and dashing home before rush hour sets in. Those people look tired.
Portland isn’t perfect, but it’s possible to buy a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood for a reasonable price here and still be close to a vibrant downtown that boasts world-class food, shopping, and more. Many neighborhoods have everything you need within a twenty minute walk. As above, I valued quiet and privacy over neighborhood amenities like a pub or coffee shop, but I didn’t have to move to the boonies to find that.
That perfectly captures how Elina and I felt after a year in Jerusalem — we didn’t want to return to the suburbs of Baltimore and its car-based lifestyle. There were other reasons, and it’s not as if Jerusalem doesn’t have its issues, but we really enjoyed living in relatively quiet neighborhood near the center of a dynamic city with a great public transit system. That’s one of the reasons we moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn — we thought it might be similar. In many ways it was, but it turned out to be too loud and crowded for us. At this point I’m beginning to feel that Baltimore and New York both suffer from similar geographical issues as Alex ascribes to DC and SF.
