We've been living in our current home a year now. We love the house - it's newer and has more space than we can use. There was a lot of custom work put into it, and it has features that would be hard to find in a house this size.

But...and this is a huge but...I don't love the area like I thought I would. Everyone bought here in the 90s, and now their kids are grown up. The kids I do see are SO poorly behaved (and I've taught in some bad schools!) partly because their parents aren't around and the schools get out at 2. Partly because it's just the culture here. We have yet to meet anyone 1) our age 2) anything like a younger professional family 3) who knows anything about diversity. On top of it all, we're paying insane property taxes! And we know we wouldn't send a LO to the public schools here (even though they're supposedly decent though not top in the state) so we'd have to pay private school tuition and drive to another town every day.

I love love love my house and don't know how I could leave the work we've put into it, but if it were you, would you give up the house and look for a town you like better? The catch is, there's only one town we'd look at and we definitely can't afford a house like this or even close there.