My husband and I are looking to buy a house in the next few months, since we are currently renting. We disagree on how important neighborhood amenities are. I would like to live in a place that has at least a swimming pool, but also tennis courts and a playground would be nice too. These neighborhoods tend to be more expensive, or they aren't in the location we like. If you live in a neighborhood with amenities, do you use them? Would not having amenities be a deal breaker for you?
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Not having the amenities isn't a deal breaker for us. I really didn't want to live in a planned community. It would be nice if there was a playground close by, but that's the only thing I miss (the closest one is a 5-minute drive/30 minute walk away).
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Not a deal breaker. We have a playground/park that's walkable distance; but we also will choose to drive ~10 min to bigger parks. There are several town/county pools close by; but so far since DD is young, we drive 20 min to my parents to use their community pool.
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I like the social aspects of having a pool in the community, but at the same time, I prefer to have my own. We have a 20,000 gallon pool all to ourselves and I have to say it's glorious to not have to be splashed on or just walk out for a quick swim. We also have our own small play ground in our yard, my son loves it and it's been great for him to practice things that he wouldnt have the confidence to do at a public playground (which we also have down the street as part of the elementary school).
The thing is though, that I have to make an effort to invite people over so my son has a play mate.
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I definitely wanted at least a park within walking distance but anything else I didn't even think about. We moved 4 months ago to an older neighbourhood and have a larger yard now. We walk our dog and son to the park a lot but also use our own yard way more than we did at our old house. If you will have more yard space that you can fill with your own stuff and drive occasionally to somewhere else, I think that would work.
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I don't need amenities, but once we were moving to the burbs, I figured I may as well get more for similar HOA fees. We have so many amenities, and we use them all the time. We have 11 pools/water parks, and we went to at least 2-3 each week over the summer. We use the trails every week for runs, walks, and feeding turtles and ducks. There's a ton of green space, lots of parks, bike paths, splash pads, tennis courts, etc. It's not necessary but it's really nice. Our city is such a driving town, and it was nice to find we could walk much more once we were in the burbs than we could downtown when I had to drive 5-10 minutes just to play at a park.
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Not at all, but there are no neighborhoods around here like that. It's just not a thing here like it is with other areas of the country.
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Those are pretty uncommon here. So it might be nice but it would be expensive and really limit our search. We have a good yard for a swing set. I was more worried about an actual neighborhood aspect.
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I wouldn't rule out a neighborhood if they don't boast them in that community.
We live in an older community that doesn't have an HOA so we don't have any amenities. But there are county parks within walking distance and community pools that you can pay to belong to.
We don't have kids yet so we haven't used them, but when looking, we were interested especially since the house we liked had a smaller back yard with no where to put a play structure if we did have kids.
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We have all of that but are in the city so it's just rolled into taxes not HOA.
It's important to me because we couldn't afford to have those things privately and have a small yard. -
A good walking location is better than amenities. We have a playground 2 blocks away but it's public not part of a HOA.
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Our subdivision has a pool and tennis courts. After owning and maintaining our own pool it's definitely a treat to have a community pool. The amenities were not deal breakers though. I am more interested in what else is around that makes living where I am convenient.
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Our first house was bought in an area that had TONS of new subdivisions w/ HOAs. Amenities weren't a deal breaker for us (and we ended up without them), but by the time we moved, I really wish we had had them. I think with kids, it just makes it really easy to meet people!
Our house now is in an area that doesn't have many HOAs. It's like a normal neighborhood, but we have a park and other things near us.
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Not at all. I tend to associate those things with newer subdivisions and those aren't my style.
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It wasn't something we were looking for initially but we wound up renting in a neighborhood that is walkable with all of those amenities and we wound up buying. We say all the time that it would be so hard to leave, it's an awesome community. It's about 50% the amenities and 50% just awesomeness of the community- super walkable, low crime, great schools, community minded citizens. All this to say, the amenities are great and we use them a lot but community is really critical too.
ETA- these things are part of our taxes and we are not in a sub division or whatever, I would pick other things over amenities in a sub division, especially if I could get walkability and a good community. You can always join a pool.
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Not that important that I would disregard a house we love over them. We are house-hunting now again, and for sure our biggest priority is the house itself (we are looking in a small town so there is only one school district...the one we want, but houses are limited right now.)
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We don't really have communities like that where we live (the ones I can think of are mostly for retirees), but I do think that "neighborhood amenities" in a general sense are very important. We live in the city and we love that we can walk to several playgrounds, a large open grass field, a full-scale shopping mall, tons of restaurants and coffee shops, and two public transportation lines. That is a major reason we don't live in the suburbs (that plus commute time). I don't think we'd be happy in a neighborhood where it was just residential and you had to drive everywhere. We chose a much smaller house in order to get into our location.
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We wouldn't choose to live in a planned community, but we do choose neighborhoods that offer a lot of conveniences and amenities within walking distance. Having a park/playground, pool, grocery stores, and restaurants very close by is really important to us.
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17 comments