Your dream home isn't just the house — it's the neighborhood too. Learn how to choose one that fits your real life.
One of the most important things to consider when choosing a neighborhood is: What is your life like? What do you like to do, and where do you like to go, in terms of restaurants, shopping, schools? Those answers are going to guide you to the areas that fit the way you live.
There's a lot of nuance that goes into figuring out how to choose the right neighborhood. But you have to consider your lifestyle first.
Let me give you a New York example, because that’s where I am. If you were my client and you said to me, “Well, I really want to be close to Central Park,” but then you describe a life that is upwards of 8 miles and a 30-minute subway ride away – downtown near the financial district. Your job is downtown, and your social club is downtown, and all of your friends are downtown, and your kids go to school downtown … I’d have to ask, “Why Central Park?” What’s your motivation for choosing a neighborhood that isn’t really the center of how you live?
What will happen, ultimately, is that you’ll wind up frustrated. Because let's be real: Buying a property is a big decision. You're not just going to buy something today and then a year from now go, “Oh, wait a minute, I don't actually like this.” It's a very expensive change, so it’s better to get it right at the beginning.
Neighborhood Is Everything
Many people tend to understate the importance of neighborhood. But the neighborhood you buy in makes a huge difference in your enjoyment of life. You have to ask yourself, “What is this going to look like on a day-to-day basis?” I think that that's what sometimes causes people a lot of angst – when they don't really think it through.
I've had this happen with clients. They pick a neighborhood, but nothing in their life is in that neighborhood. So then they start to get really frustrated that they always have to leave their neighborhood to do things. And while we all think that we want to leave our neighborhoods to do things, honestly, that’s rarely the case in real life. At the end of the day, we all work hard, and when we’re exhausted, we want our lives to be convenient.
To put it in New York City terms, you want the major factors of your life to be within, say, 10 blocks. In non-New York City terms, you probably don't want anything to be more than 10 or 15 minutes away from you. It's just logistics.
By major factors, I mean the major places where you and your family spend your time:
Work
School
Childcare
Social activities
Close friends or family
Church, temple, or house of worship
Public transit stops
These are the places you travel to, stay at, or visit frequently. If they’re not close to your new home, you’re going to be tired and frustrated.
Visit Early and Often
If you’re not already familiar with, or even living in, a particular neighborhood, you need to find ways to explore it before you buy. I always say that you should drive around, or ideally walk around, a neighborhood that you're considering moving into. Visit at different times. Go to some of the local coffee shops and restaurants. See if you could imagine the people there being your neighbors.
My mother used to say a now-famous maxim: that you should be visiting at different times of the day, different times of the week, and different times of the year. You could be driving down the street and you're like, “Wait a minute, there's a street fair that happens every month?” You won't know what it’s really like unless you are visiting often.
You should visit at different times of the day, different times of the week, and different times of the year. You could be driving down the street and you're like, “Wait a minute, there's a street fair that happens every month?”
Consider Your Budget
Neighborhoods with great amenities and services command higher prices.
If you’re considering several different neighborhoods, you may find that your dollar goes further in one than it does in another. It may mean buying a home that has more or less space, or that has been more or less updated. You have to consider how much you are willing to compromise to be in the neighborhood you want.
Taxes Should Be a Major Consideration
Taxes may play a part in your decision, too. High property taxes are often linked to excellent schools. That’s especially important when looking at some of these suburban towns, where being on the border means you can live in a home with a lower tax basis, but your child has the ability to go to some really great schools. Think about how that might affect your purchase price.
However, you also have to think about how that affects your life when your children are all grown up and moved out – but you’re still paying astronomical property taxes. You have to decide whether it’s something you’re willing to shoulder long-term.
I can think of one instance off the top of my head where my clients had raised their family in a particular neighborhood, but it was time to sell. The main reason they had wanted to leave for a very long time was the property taxes. It didn't make sense for them to be paying as high taxes as they were, because they no longer had kids in the schools, so they weren’t reaping that benefit.
But as it turns out, the neighborhood is perennially popular because the schools are extraordinary. So they were able to sell relatively quickly, despite what they thought was going to be a hindrance — the fact that the property taxes were so high.
These are all highly personal considerations, but they also have really significant financial implications, too. I always tell people, think about how long you think you want to live in this house. And whatever you're telling me, it’ll most likely wind up being longer than that. If you're telling me five years, it's probably going to be seven. It might even be 10. So, is this a place that you can see your life unfolding and evolving in? Will it also be affordable for you over that time?
Related: How Property Taxes Can Make or Break Home Affordability
Think About the Long Term
As you’re evaluating a neighborhood, you want to think about your life as it is now, but also how it might change in the future. That means thinking about:
School districts
Commute time
Crime rates
Overall vibe
Do you (or are you planning to) have children? Do you plan on putting them in public school or private school?
When I think about my nieces and my nephews, who are all solidly in their 30s, I think about the cost of private school and boarding school when they were young compared to what it is today. My word. Of course that property tax bill is going to be less than putting three kids in private school. But if that’s a priority for you, it needs to be part of the calculus you’re doing as you consider particular neighborhoods.
Potential Future Commute
Think about your potential commute time as well. Not only with your job as it is today, but as it could be in the future. We’ve seen how employees are moved around, from the office to remote to hybrid and back again. If you needed to be at work five days a week, what would that look like? Or if you needed to change jobs and commute to the city, how would that work?
People think, “Oh, I can always just hop in the car,” or “It's fine that I'm not super close to the train station. I don't go into the city that often.” But what happens when you switch jobs and now you have to commute every day? Consider what public transportation stops you’d need access to, or what the drive might be. Depending on your location, it could start to have a real impact on your day-to-day.
Crime
In terms of crime, it’s useful to just have an idea of how a certain neighborhood has been doing.
Is it the kind of place where you need to take precautions that go above and beyond? Or is it one of the places that has seen falling crime rates, which could positively affect your property values? You can check crime rates based on government data, but you might also want to chat with some locals.
Consider Future Growth and Development
Some areas are constantly changing; others are gentrifying from one thing into another. You want to think about how that is going to impact you.
Suppose you fall in love with a neighborhood, and you learn there’s going to be a major development going into that empty area across the way. You have to consider how that’s going to affect A.) your quality of life, and B.) your property value. If that new development is going to be the great new thing, then your property might not be as valuable in the future.
It’s worth asking around ahead of time and doing your research to see what major plans are in the works for a neighborhood you’re interested in. It might be nothing, or it might only be in the early stages, but it’s information that would be wise to know.
Find Your Local Coffee Shop
You always need to find your local coffee shop. One of the best things that people can do, when they when they have the time and they're going to go tour something, is go have a cup of coffee in the neighborhood. Go have a brunch, have a dinner. Really go and explore, because that's really the only way you are going to be able to gauge potential neighbors.
Start a conversation and say, “I'm thinking about moving into the neighborhood, and I'm just trying to get familiar with things.” You'd be amazed what people will tell you when you start a conversation with them. You'll either get all the best tips — or you may get some intel that may lead you to decide, “You know what, I don't want to do this.” And that's fine. Because, better now than after you’ve purchased a home.
My mother also used to say that buying a home is expensive. It's not like buying a pair of shoes. You can’t just return it. So you have to do your research ahead of time.
When I was younger, we had a relative who bought a house, and then they didn't love where they were living. This came up with some frequency in conversation as I was growing up. My mother would say, “Well, you know, you really should have visited multiple times to really get a sense of what was going on, but you didn't. So there you go.”
That advice is so ingrained in my brain now, it's kind of hilarious. But just as I said earlier, it’s really the best way to get a feel for a neighborhood and the people in it before you spend all that money on it.
Conclusion
When you’re looking for a neighborhood to call home, you have to think about what your life is going to be like. You need to focus more on that than the actual home sometimes, because at the end of the day, you're trying to find a place to live and sort of hunker down for a number of years. If you’re looking to buy something where you’re going to make a quick exit, that’s potentially a different consideration.
But when you're thinking about where to live, what you’re really thinking about is, how is your life going to be when you choose to live in a particular neighborhood? That’s the question you need to answer, and that’s going to guide you in making the right choice.
