[Windswept]

You need to sit down and do some serious thinking about just what sort of dwelling would suit you best.

You are young and single, I'm assuming. Are you interested in buying a family home with three bedrooms and 2 baths in an established neighborhood? And are you willing to devote every weekend to mowing lawns and doing homeowner maintenance on your older home? Or would you want to shell out to hire someone else to mow the lawn?

OR... would you rather have a townhouse or condo, where the landscaping is taken care of by the homeowner association, and where you have a monthly maintenance fee to cover these expenses? In this case, you'll have no private lawn, but you may have a smallish patio of your own for outdoor barbecues, and not much maintenance.

If you are a homebody type of person, and think you might actually enjoy having a family-size house, and plenty of yardwork on the weekends, then such a house might be a good investment for you - especially if you buy something you might care to stay in after you marry and start a family.

For whichever type of house you choose, the location and quality of neighborhood are *extremely* important in maintaining and increasing the value of your home.

When I was shopping for a house and neighborhood, I saw one brand-new neighborhood with really attractive homes being built. This neighborhood did NOT have a homeowner association destined to take over once the builder finished all the houses and left.

Now, not all that many years later, this once nice neighborhood is very depressing and almost like a slum in some ways, because scattered throughout are houses that are run-down and ill-kept, that have become rentals. Just a few shabby homes can simply ruin a neighborhood, and drastically drag down the value of the nicer homes.

Honestly, it's so sad. I can hardly bring myself to drive through that neighborhood. The decline of these homes would have been completely prevented had there been a homeowners' association with rules and regulations.

The neighborhood I 'did' buy in has one, and still looks very, very nice, because homes are not allowed to become shabby and ill-kept. People are fined if they allow their landscaping to die or get filled with weeds, or if they allow the paint to start peeling. These protections preserve the value of all the homes in the neighborhood.