We've been house hunting for a year now! Now that we've found the ideal house, it's time to take a look back at the whole journey and sum up what we've learned along the way.
So I'm gonna start with the criteria we have for our potential house. It's a pretty sophisticated list, including everything we can think of. And the formation of these took a long long while.
Here they are:
Location: Currently my husband and I both need to commute to Manhattan (midtown and uptown). And we want the commute to midtown less than 45 mins; the shorter the better. Of course, the area has to be safe. It also has to have grocery stores, other convenience shops, banks, restaurants in walking distance. We like parks in walking distance too. We need daycare in a short commute.This means few areas in few towns can satisfy our needs. We looked at many towns but narrowed down our target areas later to Van Vorst Park and Harsimus Cove neighborhoods in downtown Jersey City (within 10 min walk to Grove St Path station) and Weehawken (the shades or the bluffs).
Types of property: From our target area you might have already figured out what type of property we want. Yes, we want houses, not condos. We have looked at many condos in Jersey City, Weehawken, and West New York. And they aren't for us. We are highly cost-conscious persons (Who aren't in such a bad economy?). We can't stand paying common charges (at least $550 for the condos we've looked at and almost $900 in so called "luxury condos") every month. Yes, they offer swimming pool, gym, even sauna. But it only costs $150 a month for the two of us to go to a sports club with all of these sports amenities. And yes, condos offer theaters, common areas, and kids playrooms. But seriously, how often do you use these areas? Once a month? We're not paying hundreds of dollars for something we use once a month. Plus, if you have a big enough house, you'll have all these in your own home.
The other thing we don't like about condos is their layouts. Newly constructed condos usually have the kitchen in the living room and don't have window or exhaust ventilator in the kitchen. Believe me this is not the type of kitchen you want if you cook Chinese food. You have to have exhaust ventilator at least. Also, a lot of condos only have one side exposure, which we don't like. This is not good for air ventilation in the rooms. We also prefer southern exposure because we like a lot of natural light in the rooms. This leaves very few choices for us in the condo pool.
As we observe the housing market in these areas, we did find that the prices of condos are going down, in some buildings dramatically. But houses kept their value much better. In 2010, I believe the sales price of houses in downtown Jersey City even increased.
Now condos are out of the picture. We then eliminated single family house too. This is our logic: the property we buy will be our biggest liability (not asset! because we will borrow a lot from the bank!) We'd like to have tenants helping us pay back the debt. So at last we decided we only want multi-family houses. We'll live in one of the units and rent the other(s). This way, we can enjoy a decent sized apartment at a reasonable monthly payment. If the market ever goes up (hopefully soon), we can reap a bigger appreciation. If we move out of the area, we can easily rent the house and use the rent to cover our mortgage.
Other criteria:
We have to have southern exposure, preferably in the living room. A lot of sunlight is important to us.
We need at least 1200 sqft for the owner's unit, with at least 2 bedrooms.
The house can't be at a major road (yellow ones in google map) or near a highway. This is to keep the noise level and pollution level down.
No utility pole or huge trees right in front of the house. The house can't face the edge of a big structure. The house can't face an incoming road, so that the road is like a spear stabbing in. It can't be located at the outer part of a bow-sized road. These are according to Chinese Fengshui theory.
Considering all these, it was really really difficult for us to find an ideal house!
