Neighborhood Watch

We've been exploring neighborhoods here in Houston, as we try to figure out where we would buy a house if we stay here.  We have a pretty good idea about what the market looks like at the higher end of our budget, but I am trying to get a good sense of what we could do with the lower end of the budget.  

With an eye toward that purpose, we went looking for a very well-priced property that we had seen online.  We had to see where it was, and how it could be such a deal.  After a few wrong turns, we got within a block, and then a train held us up.  While waiting for the train to pass, we realized we were looking at the back of the properties in question:

So, we moved on to other things.  But I love these weekend drives we've been going on.  Usually we catch an open house or two, and then check out the neighborhood around it.  I realize that this is normal behavior for many people who have bought houses, but I myself have never bought a house, so it's all new to me.  I'm obsessed.  Normally when we move, we have one week or less not only to select a neighborhood in an unfamiliar metro area, but also to decide what home we want to spend the next year in.  We like the place we are renting, but I am not convinced that we want to buy it.  We have eight months until the end of our lease, which seems like a nice amount of time to be allowed to solve the puzzle.  I want to cry when I think about the cost and effort of moving household yet again in the foreseeable future, but on the other hand, it is not sensible to buy a house merely because I'm too lazy to move out of it.

So, we are probably not going to buy the house which shares it's backyard with train tracks.  But, we did discover a cool part of town where lots of artists have studios, and we happened upon these enormous presidential heads and way-larger-than-life Beatles reproductions.  So that was fun.