[quote=asianautica]Neighborhood > price > view > house[/quote]
I’m with asianautica. We live in a relatively small house on a hill in a neighborhood that is somewhere between middle class and upper middle class. We love the view — stretches all the way across the city to the ocean (which, admittedly, we can only see on a very, very clear Santa Ana day with binoculars!). But the twinkling night lights are great and the view is unobstructable…unless someone gets a permit to build a house in the middle of the street that leads to our house.
It is interesting, as others have pointed out, how your priorities change over the years…especially in regard to neighborhood preference. Our neighborhood has virtually no young kids. Everyone is older with grown, out-of-the-house children (in our situation, our kid is away at college most of the year). Our first house was in a neighborhood with plenty of kids, who played in the street and in the many backyards. We wanted that then, but not now.
Disadvantage of our present house: People higher on the hill can look right into our relatively small backyard, so I don’t spend much time out there. When we are BBQing, I always feel self-conscious about what we’re talking about because I know some neighbors can hear us and there is the usual number of nosy neighbors. Paranoia strikes deep!
