Finding a home with great neighbors can be the luck of the draw.

When we help Buyers find a home many are concerned about who their new neighbors might be, I’m reminded of my childhood experiences trying to lay claim to the perfect campsite.

When I was a young, like so many of our generation, our parents took us on summer camping trips as a frugal way to enjoy a vacation. As we entered the campground, finding the perfect campsite was always a moment of great anticipation. Competition was fierce for the great sites; as with most people who want to get away for the weekend they also want to get away from other people—being a social society, we want to be close, but not too close. We’d drive through the entire campground before selecting the perfect spot—one with seclusion, beauty and because we had a camper, it had to be level. Of course we’d check out who our nearest neighbors would be too. My parents wanted to avoid parking in a spot near a bunch of rowdy kids, which was where the interests of my parents and I parted.

Settled in on the perfect spot, we began to enjoy our week-long vacation. As would often happen, we’d wake up Monday morning and see that our weekend neighbors had vacated to return home. That left us with a new dilemma—who would be our new neighbors? We knew we had no control over who might choose to park next to us and wondered if they would evaluate us as we did our neighbors, (looking back I’m sure many seniors chose to drive on past our campsite after spotting three active kids playing around).

I was always interested in who would we get as our new band of travelers. Of course we had no control over who our camp fellows might be, and often provisionally contemplated moving to a new campground should our new nomadic neighbors prove too loud.

Finding a home with great neighbors is reminiscent of these camping expeditions. Like finding the perfect site, you quickly learn that the neighbors you have today may not be the ones you get tomorrow as like you, they too can move. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to get the quietest neighbors in the world and then they decide that Johnny needs a companion and the next thing you know you’re waking up during the night to Rex’s midnight pangs of loneliness.

While it’s prudent to pay attention to a neighborhood and who your new neighbors might be, keep in mind that you should not rely on today as a constant —good or bad. Your neighbors could easily be here today and gone tomorrow.

 

Care to rate this post?