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| Where To Live? |
Well, all I knew at the start was that I wanted to move back to Massachusetts. Most of the details were still to be sorted out. But as soon as you start looking at listings and driving around, you notice there are all sorts of things you know you don't want...
I began to realize there was a set of reasonably well-defined criteria lurking in the back of my mind. While I didn't have to find the home of my dreams - my dreams are expensive - it did have to be home. Someplace nice enough, with enough space, that I could bring my whole life together in one place. Condos were unlikely. City living was going to be ticklish, given the square footage I would need.
So I needed a couple bedrooms, a formal dining room, and living room. And a basement for storage, machine room (I am a geek, after all), workshop, et cetera. And a garage that would at least fit one car and have enough room to work on it during the winter. And at long last, a kitchen where I could do some real cooking instead of being limited to whatever I can do in twelve inches of counterspace.
The next question was how close to Boston I could be and still afford a house with these features. The further out, the cheaper the property, generally speaking. But then again, being 45 minutes from the office in one direction, and 45 minutes from the restaurants and clubs of Boston in another direction is its own cost. How close could I get and still be able to afford enough space?
I knew that I would also miss the convenience of the public transit system, from the perspective of someone living in Manhattan. Whichever town I chose, I would want to be within walking distance of the commuter rail, an express bus, or some other way to reach the Boston metro area. And this lead me to realize that I would have to be in a town center. I'd be really irritated if I couldn't walk to a diner and a convenience store, maybe a post office or newstand.
I have some strange notions, aside from the criteria I was mentioning above. Since 1989 I have had this strange resistance to the notion of living South of the Charles River. Brookline, Brighton, Alston - these towns were out of consideration even though I knew there were some very nice areas to live in this swatch. Jamaica Plain had the rep as a poor man's Cambridge in some respects, but for some reason it was out of the question. This strange mania is associated with a notion that the Red Line is also the only part of the T (Boston's transit system) worth using on a daily basis. I'll have to see if there's treatment available for this...
So as I was looking around, I came to realize that there was a narrow band of towns North of the river and West of Boston that would fit the bill. Of these, towns like Cambridge, Belmont, and Winchester were out of the running based on price. Arlington, West Medford, and West Somerville seemed to be viable candidates. Watertown was an option, but listings that seemed worth investigating were rather sparse. The requirement for a garage made it difficult, as it cut out a lot of listings in all of these towns. And that was without specifying that I wanted one big enough to install an hydraulic lift...
I picked a broker in each of the three towns that seemed likely to have listings and talked to them, made arrangements to see some properties. One stopped returning my calls before we even saw anything - that included the day I was supposed to go out with him. In the end I didn't really shop around, I just worked with the broker that actually seemed to be doing something to try and find me a house.
At the same time I started to become more familiar with Arlington and Medford. I knew Somerville from living near Davis Square and Ball Square from '89 through '91. It became clear after a while that the parts of Somerville I wanted to be in didn't have any properties that would meet my criteria in my price range. West Medford was still likely, but I was spending more time in Arlington with friends who already lived there. As it developed, I saw more suitable homes in Arlington than in Medford.
I did finally find a home in Arlington. You can see roughly where it is, and what it looks like, using the links in the frame at the left side of your browser.