How To Pick The Right House According To Your Family Requirements

Reflect on your youth. Perhaps your family owned a house, or perhaps they didn’t. Regardless, your experiences likely seemed utterly normal to you. This is how the perspective of a child often works: They seldom understand how their circumstances stack up against the broader picture.

If you have kids, you want to give them the best home you can. But what is the best home? Is it a big one? A home near trees to climb? Something near a good school? How do your own needs and desires factor into this? Are roads safe? These are all good questions to ask.

But they are also too numerous. So, let’s focus them down. 

What is Best for Your Kids?

As we mentioned at the outset, the main focus of getting a home is your family, primarily making sure your children have the best upbringing they can. A good home can provide three things for children: It can provide friends, exercise, and good access to education.

All of these tie together too, so you cannot really have two of these unless you also have the last third to complete them. We will go over each one in turn to explain what we mean by that.

Friends

Basically, children need to grow up in a social environment. Modern society is already trying to get them to think of the internet as their main way of interacting with other humans. A good home will prove that wrong by giving them neighbors they are not afraid to talk to.

Ideally, that means neighbors with kids their age. But since that is not always possible, the best you can sometimes do is find neighbors who have had kids at all. This will help those neighbors understand the idiosyncrasies of children, and thereby be patient with them in talking with them.

Exercise

Surprising to many parents, whether or not your children exercise is much more dependent on the opportunities their environment affords them rather than just their natural interests.

For instance, a house with a pretty playground across the street will attract children to it whether they are born digital natives or not. The same thing can be applied (roughly) to lush soccer fields and stylish skate parks. Kids want to move around. It is natural for them. 

Education

This one is the most obvious: A good home for your kids is one that is near a school. It does not take a genius to figure that out. But you might also start to see how this aspect ties the others together. Other parents will want to leave near a school. And city planners will want to build their parks and playgrounds near schools as well. This means school zones are highly desirable.

That also means they are more expensive, however. Oddly enough, this is not the biggest thing that will inflate the price of a home. But it is definitely up there. And since we are talking price…

What is Best for You?

Looking out for your kids is, naturally, your top priority. But you do not want to try to give them the world only to break your hands in the process. The three things you want to consider for your own wellbeing are your budget, closeness to amenities, and access to civilization.

Since we were just talking about it, we will first focus on budget.

Budget

Budget is a strange factor to think about, as it takes just about every other factor in simultaneously. That means you have to know your own financial limitations, at least in the short term, in order to really know what you are working with. Everything else is adaptation.

For instance, choosing a school might mean deciding between a cheap public school and expensive private school. But choosing the expensive private school might also mean getting a cheaper house. Remember, your children come first. If getting a cheaper house means sacrificing neighbors, exercise, or education for your child, then send them to public school.

Amenities

Not enough people think about amenities. To understand what we mean by that, imagine you have two houses: One is a mansion in the countryside. Not only is it huge and beautiful, but it cleans itself and has tutors on-staff to teach your children. 

And then another home is a normal house that is on the same street as a library and a grocery store. This is actually the better house. The reason is that having things outside your home can be good for both your kids and you, as it encourages getting out into the world and living in it.

Civilization

This initially sounds like the most abstract of the three criteria. But while it is broad, what you will find is that the more you think about it, the more obvious it is. So, what is civilization?

Civilization is closeness to roads. It is streetlights and crosswalks. It is speedbumps and wide sidewalks. And of course, it is the ability to never be far from an internet connection or luxury.

Basically, civilization is access to the places and things that people need to live. It is also the assurance of safety at the same time. It is what makes it worth it to live near other people.

Without civilization we do not have most of the simple pleasures that make life worth living.

Conclusion

Now, let’s ask a reasonable question: Are these six things the only things you should consider? Should you be thinking of these things at the cost of all others? Of course not!

You know your family better than anyone. What we are trying to communicate to you is not that there is some optimal way to raise all families. Our goal is much simpler: We are trying to tell you to listen to your family’s needs. For children, those needs are social, physical, and mental.

You have those same needs. But you also have more complex ones. And if you need advice on how to handle those needs, you know where to look (at Teifke Real Estate).