It’s my birthday today, and I’ve decided that for the big 3-0 what I’d really like is an ocean view. Unfortunately, an ocean view will add oodles of cash to the cost of a house, which means we’re stuck living within walking distance of the sea. Woe is us, right? That doesn’t mean I can’t dream of an ocean view…

I’m not picky or anything; something like this will do quite nicely, thank you.

Perhaps with an exterior rather like this? Something where I can walk out my front door and smell the sea air or even walk directly into the ocean.

And an interior like this would not be remiss! Though as I said, I’m not picky at all. (via)

Hint, hint!

If you can put up with a lot and invest yourself in your neighborhood, buying in an economically depressed area can mean getting more bang for your home-buying buck. An article in the NYT profiles economically hard-hit Flint, Michigan’s Carriage Town neighborhood, which has its issues, but is for all intents and purposes on the upswing. Once the area with the highest crime rate in the city in the 80s, it has benefited from the presence of urban homesteaders and people with a talent for renovating the many Victorian-era houses still standing on its streets.

That’s good news for buyers looking for a deal, though like I said it takes a certain degree of commitment to live in Carriage Town.

Ms. Caudell, 31, a horticulturalist, has focused her search on Carriage Town, the neighborhood where she leases a blue two-story house with pink and purple trim that she shares with three friends, paying $300 a month for her rent and utilities. Ms. Caudell hopes to find a home that won’t cost more than $50,000, including renovation expenses.

No more than fifty thousand? Makes me wish I hadn’t been so picky when it came to deciding where to live!

Then again, the new Carriage Town is still recovering from a lengthy downturn, which means that those with the fortitude to find the perfect (read: renovation-ready) home have to fend off speculators, cope with more than a few abandoned houses, and accept that code-enforcement isn’t a priority because the money just isn’t there. That said better days are obviously on the horizon for Carriage Town, as more and more dedicated neighborhood fixtures are making it their life’s work to take back the area’s former glory.

Inspiring, no?

Studies show that while homeowners aren’t any more or less happy than renters, they experience more negative feelings related to their domiciles. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that female homeowners weigh more than female renters.

Researchers discovered homeowners, on average, outweighed renters by 12 pounds. In addition to excess weight, female homeowners were also carrying around more aggravation, making less time for leisure, and were less likely to spend time with friends.

Apparently the researchers controlled for age, as it would seem logical to assume that homeowners are on average older than renters and people tend to put on weight as they ride the chronology train into the future.

Fat House by Erwin Wurm (2003)

Alas, age has nothing to do with it. Researchers speculate that homeowners spend less time doing things like socializing with friends, walking, and playing sports because they are too busy fixing roofs, installing new wainscoting, and walking the aisles of Home Depot looking for deals on pedestal sinks for that half-bath they plan to install one of these days.

The findings present a chicken-or-the-egg question for social scientists, who are unsure if home ownership causes these patterns or if people prone to less sociability, less interest in leisure activities and higher stress are simply more attracted to owning homes.

Full disclosure: I am a female homeowner. I may be carrying around an extra pound or two, but not necessarily twelve. That said, I walk every day. And I wasn’t all that social to begin with. But this smacks to me of one of those “correlation does not imply causation” situations.

I have a good but casual relationship with many of my neighbors, especially since having a baby. Nothing encourages crossing the street or popping around the fence more readily than a fresh-out-of-the-womb infant! We chat about the weather and gardening and the baby, of course. We wave hello if we are in our cars. We occasionally lend one another implements like wheel barrows, and once, my neighbor Paul even took pity on our snowblower-less butts and plowed our driveway! And yet, there’s a closeness lacking that might be nice to have. If I needed a cup of sugar, I’d drive to the Stop & Shop rather than knock on a neighbor’s door.

With that in mind, I was intrigued by a post over at The Simple Dollar that explained how one could set up a simple neighborhood cooperative.

Household equipment Why not share a lawnmower with your neighbor? How about a snowblower? One great model for this exists in our neighborhood, where one person owns a snowblower and provides fuel for it, but is not in good enough physical shape to operate it. Thus, one of her neighbors actually operates the snowblower, using it to blow the snow out of both driveways (and often doing a large swath of the block’s entire sidewalk as well).

Gardening If two or three neighbors all have gardens, why not specialize the gardens and freely share the produce? This allows one family to focus specifically on a crop or two, making garden maintenance easier for all of the people involved. You can even carry this to the level of canning and/or freezing, agreeing to swap prepared garden products with neighbors.

There are other ideas in the post, though I’m not sure how readily I’d leave my baby with a neighbor or share cooking duties on a weekly basis. I would like to get to know my neighbors, however, as previous to this, I’ve been living in apartments for years and years. This was in the cheapest possible sections of Brooklyn, so there was a lot more wall banging and language barriers than friendly interaction. Now I’m curious to know how well you are acquainted with your neighbors.