We did more of the “driving around looking at houses” routine today. One of the places we visited was Kirkwood - and I absolutely loved it! Kirkwood has definitely been catapulted to the top of the list of places we’re considering, no question. I like the little downtown/village area (even the new condo development thing they built isn’t as obnoxious as in some other places) and I just had a good gut feeling from it overall.
East Atlanta is currently second on our list of preferred places, although some of the people who live there are annoying, and I prefer to minimize drama in my life, so I there’s that to consider. It’s the same reason, albeit on a much smaller scale, that we’re not worked up about Midtown. (Rusty mentioned this in his post a few days ago, and Joeventures touched on it in a comment.) Living in Midtown would be nice because it’s close to work and is very walkable, Piedmont Park is right there, it’s centrally located… but so many of the people just suck! For example, here’s their latest trick. Part of me feels like we should move there and infiltrate the MNA, start a counter-revolution, and get Steve Gower thrown out in a coup; but realistically, I don’t know if my blood pressure could handle it. So, I’m torn. I would like to live in Midtown for the location, and if we found a really awesome deal we would definitely consider it; but being surrounded by a bunch of assholes is certainly a huge deterrent.
We’ve ruled out Grant Park and a lot of the North Decatur area, like the area around Northlake Mall and other stuff off of Clairmont and Lavista. We still like Westview and Adair Park, but Kirkwood and EAV win for walkability. Another place we discovered today, that we like and is surprisingly affordable, is the Medlock Park/University Heights area. One downside to it, though, is that a lot of the houses have only one bathroom (that was a trend in the early 1950s, apparently!), and that’s pretty much a deal-breaker for us.
Other areas still to explore: Home Park; Historic West End; Brookwood; Castleberry Hill; northwest/Bolton/Howell Mill area.
Here are some photos of one of our favorite houses that we saw today (which is moot, of course, since it won’t be on the market come January), a renovated 3bd/2ba built in 1928…
(I sized them down to fit my layout, which made them look a little distorted. My bad.)
Aside: the Georgia MLS site uses Ajax in a way that doesn’t suck. There should be an award for that.
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4 Responses to "Houses, again (I feel like I should have titles that are more interesting)"
I wouldn’t be so sure that the house won’t be there in January. My real estate professor this semester says that the housing market is probably going to continue getting worse for the next year (until it stabilizes). You may actually swoop in this January and be able to get a steal!
Is that yet another orange kitchen? I sense a trend. But that house seems very cool. I’m glad you liked Kirkwood!
There are some great neighborhoods in the Howell Mill area, but traffic over there is absolutely atrocious because of all the development in that area. Something to consider.
At first I thought it was another orange kitchen (and Rusty said w/ scorn that the trend is Texas orange rather than Tennessee orange) but looking at it again, I think there’s a possibility it’s red and the lighting/camera just messed w/ how the color came out. We didn’t go inside so I can’t say for sure.
And yeah, re: the traffic in the Howell Mill area… that’s a pretty big concern. We still want to check it out just to see what’s there, but you’re right, traffic sucks over there a lot of the time.
Joseph: the mortgage lender we met w/ said the same thing… she thinks it’ll keep on the same trend for another year and then pick back up in 2010. Something about the sub-prime mortgages still being in effect til then (as usual, I remember only *half* of what someone said and therefore can’t recount it properly).
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