![\"Tally,](\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/tally-sniff.jpg\" "\\"Tally,")
<\/p>\nThis morning \u2014 because the sky was clear and I hadn’t anything better to do \u2014 I let the dog lead me on a six-mile walk. For two hours, we wound our way through the streets of Corvallis. We sniffed drains, barked at squirrels, and in every way had a merry old time.<\/p>\n
If I’d allow her, Tally would spend hours every day sniffing drains around the city.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As we walked, I reflected on how fortunate Kim and I were when we decided to move here. We were deliberate about our choice, sure, but it was still something of a gamble. Sometimes research and experience don’t align. In this case, they have.<\/p>\n
After four months Corvallis seems like a perfect fit for us. There’s so much we love about this place, such as: <\/p>\n
There’s so much more we love about Corvallis: the traffic (or lack of it), the people, the parks, the wildlife, the culture, and more. Plus, to balance things out, there’s another town of similar size (Albany) just twenty minutes away \u2014 and that town provides some of the things that Corvallis doesn’t (Costco, etc.). Suffice it to say that we feel like we made the right choice when we elected to move here.<\/p>\n
During this morning’s dog walk, I also recalled the rating system I developed during last summer’s home search. I had intended to write a GRS blog post about this in July, but then got distracted by the actual process of, you know, buying a house.<\/p>\n
Here’s how my system works.<\/p>\n
When evaluating a potential home, I rate it in five categories: region\/city, neighborhood, property, structure, and “other factors”. These categories are very much subjective. And, in fact, your personal preferences might change over time. (Mine sure have!) I score each category with a letter grade: A, B, C, D, or F.<\/p>\n
Once I’ve rated a potential property in all five categories, I convert the letter grades to a standard GPA. In the case of our current home, the five grades (A, B+, B+, A-, B+) average to an A-\/B+ (3.52 gpa). Not bad.<\/p>\n
With this system, perfect 4.00 homes are tough to find. In fact, we didn’t see a single one during the five months we were watching the market. Part of this was due to price, of course. When home prices are high, it’s tough to get an A in the “other factors” category. Even so, it was very rare for us to see a house that had full marks in city, neighborhood, property, and<\/em> house. This leads me to believe that a “perfect home” does not exist.<\/p>\n \nJust for kicks, I decided to grade each of the homes I’ve owned in the past. These grades are based on my experiences living in each place, not on pre-purchase impressions and expectations.<\/p>\n Kris and I bought our first home soon after we were married. It was a solid little ranch house with a good location in my hometown. Our second home, where she still lives, was a hundred-year-old farmhouse in a scrappy neighborhood.<\/p>\n After our divorce, I bought a riverfront condo. That place was fantastic<\/em> except for the expensive HOA and the lack of a yard for pets. The country cottage that Kim and I just sold had an amazing yard, which was almost enough to redeem the place. Almost.<\/p>\n It’s early days yet on our Corvallis home, but so far we love it. The next two years will be telling as we work to upgrade both the house and the yard.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As I used this rating system to guide our search this summer, Kim and I found it useful to take a “top-down” approach. That is, we began our search by looking at the Big Picture, then gradually refined things until we found homes that we liked.<\/p>\n So, for instance, we spent the first three months of the homebuying process driving to dozens of different cities. Our aim was to find places where we really, really wanted to live. By being ruthless about eliminating options, we were able to only<\/em> consider those towns that earned a grade of A or A-.<\/p>\n Once we picked Corvallis, we spent two weekends down here during which we simply drove around to get a feel for different neighborhoods. We wanted to figure out which parts of town worked for us.<\/p>\n Picking the right neighborhood can be tough. To really know where you should live in a city, you need to spend time there. This fact created a big debate between me and Kim, actually. I was keen on a neighborhood just south of the high school and close to downtown, but she was afraid it would be filled with noisy college students. We never could get a clear answer on the neighborhood’s character, so we eventually eliminated it as an option. (And after four months here, I still don’t know what that neighborhood is like!)<\/p>\n Once we had some neighborhoods picked out, only then did we begin viewing available properties.<\/p>\n I know this might seem silly to some of you, but this nerdy approach to homebuying really helped me. Combined with my spreadsheets filled with facts and figures, grading properties helped me to keep things in perspective.<\/p>\n Ultimately, we’re pleased with the choice we made. Kim frets that we paid too much for this house (but I think she’s ignoring the fact that we sold our existing home in the same high market), while I wish we were ever-so-slightly closer to businesses. Other than that, however, I think we made a good choice.<\/p>\n One thing’s for certain: The city of Corvallis is almost ideal for us and our family of beasts. I expect us to be here for a long time \u2014 perhaps forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning \u2014 because the sky was clear and I hadn’t anything better to do \u2014 I let the dog lead me on a six-mile walk. For two hours, we wound our way through the streets of Corvallis. We sniffed drains, barked at squirrels, and in every way had a merry old time.<\/p>\n If I’d allow her, Tally would spend hours every day sniffing drains around the city.<\/p>\n![\"Grading](\"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/home-grades.jpg\" "\\"Grading")
<\/p>\n<\/span>Final Thoughts<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[484],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}