Dither, dither...

[jducoeur]

As previously mentioned, we brought Susana on board as a buyer's agent a few weeks ago. Since then, she's been seriously earning her keep, pointing us at potentially interesting houses and generally kicking the moving project into high gear.

Well, one of the listings caught my eye as sounding particularly attractive. On Friday, I went to look at it, and was surprised to find that I liked it even more in person. So we went back again tonight with msmemory so she could take a look, and we continue to be quite attracted to it. A smidgeon expensive, but it has everything we wanted and a couple that hadn't occurred to us to look for. (Like an acre of land, most of it forested wetland, so it isn't adding to the price but provides lots of privacy.) The house just feels really nice. Walking into it is like shrugging on a well-tailored overcoat: from the kitchen to the family room to the basement, it fits us well.

It does, of course, have one snag: it's out in Framingham. We'd talked about location before, and established that anything out to about Framingham or Chelmsford was okay if the house was perfect. Well, okay -- now we've found a near-perfect house, so we need to decide if we're serious about that.

It's an odd psychological barrier, crossing 128. Framingham really isn't all that far -- maybe 15 minutes further out from the city -- but we've heard so many people talk about how far they think of it being that it gives us pause. One of the objectives for this house is to have a good place to start entertaining again (it's delightfully well-laid-out for parties), and there's an odd little fear that no one will make the trek out there.

Of course, it isn't very rational. Everywhere is far from somewhere -- this location is considerably closer to Waltham than, say, Dorchester is, and people go there all the time. Some of it is probably just habit: I've lived in Waltham for over half my life, and msmemory nearly as long, so the idea of moving a significant distance away and having to learn the ins and outs of a new area is curiously daunting. Up until now, the house-buying process has been very intellectual, but now that push is coming to shove, we're learning a bit about ourselves.

We'll see. First we need to decide if we want it. Even if we do, a host of things could go wrong. But one way or another, this project has now taken on a dimension of reality that it didn't have before...

Comments

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Wow do I sympathize - I had these same debates when house shopping. The challenge of finding a reasonable house inside of 128 is immense - and I see lots of people following suit.

Some thoughts:

- travel time - Framingham isn't bad at off hours. I can make it from Framingham to Dorchester in about an hour - any time, day or night. At rush hour - all bets are off. I've tried 9 and the Pike - both are equally bad. 20/30 is too North for me. It's a reason the Dark Place is more likely to see me on the weekends, than weeknights.

- Weather - Framingham does get more snow than inside 128 - I lived in Medway as a kid. The idea that weather patterns are defined by the two rings of highway - 128 and 495 is relevant. Boston/Waltham gets noticeably less snow than Framingham, which gets less snow than Worchester. The upside? Much of Framingham is more geared toward this - people have yards, snow is managed better. It's not like digging out downtown, desperately looking for a place to put all this white stuff.

[jducoeur]

What have you found to be the reality of rush-hour traffic in towards the city? msmemory, at least, would be coming in from 90 to 128 in the morning, and we need to understand whether that's totally hideous. (128 itself tends to be heavy and slowish, but usually moves pretty steadily.)