calling all bostonites

[patentman]

I won't bore you all with the long story here are the cliffs:

-4 years ago, wife and I get married... We live in DC
-Plan was for me to go to lawschool, relocate to New England (here family is from Maine)

-I went to law school at night while working full time during the day, effectively giving up 4 years of my life and relationship with my wife

-I graduate law school, everything hunky dory, prepping to take mass bar as we speak

-We start looking for houses, we are utterly shocked at home prices when compared to what you get (e.g., 650k for a pretty crappy house on no land)

-Wife decides that based on housing options within reasonable commute north of city, she now wants to look in the city...

-I REALLY do not want to live in the city, or any city for that matter... I like to play golf, I like seeing trees more than buildings, and I get pissed off being amongst a lot of people... City life and I do not mix. Wife knows this, apparently does not care.

-Whole purpose of moving to Boston is so wife can be closer to her family (they are in Portland Maine, 90 minutes away).

-Given housing options, and the fact that Boston makes me feel poor even though we collectively make a very large amount of money, I am having really hard time justifying uprooting everything we have in our current town (Alexandria Va) to go pay 400-650 thousand dollars for a crappy house outside of Boston or a closet in the city, just so my wife can be two hours from her family by car, rather then 2 hours by plane.

-I need to hear something positive about Boston, because I feel as though this move is absolutely the wrong decision for us right now. At the very least, it seems to be completely the wrong decision for me, and while my wife is the most important thing in my life, I don't know i I can give up everything in my life to move to a place where I don't even think I will even slightly enjoy my housing conditions.

Note: this is not a rant about Boston. I'm sure the city is great. This is a rant about what to do when spouses collectively agree on something, only to discover later that one wants very different things then the other, and only after almost all the plans have been set in motion to effect the plan.

 

[EagleKeeper]

If you can get a postion in the Eastern Mass area and are willing to drive from 30-60 minutes to work you have a large area to choose from.
Anything westward to Worchester and northward in an arc toward Lowell.

You could look into sourthern NH in the Nashua/Manchester area.

Continue eastward toward the Portland & Seabrook area.

Staying outside of the Rt 128/I95 will save you some $$

Staying outside of the Rt495 area will put you into the true suburban area

Worchester to Portland Maine is just slightly more than 2 hours on the week-end

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I'm sorry but your instincts are not wrong. Stay the hell away from Boston.

 

[tyanni]

I live in Salem, work in Medford. About an hour drive each morning to work, but I could afford to buy a condo in Salem, whereas I could not afford to buy closer to the city. Definitely look north shore - you get a lot more for your money. 600-700k will buy you a great house, and potentially on the water too.

Tim

 

[patentman]

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
If you can get a postion in the Eastern Mass area and are willing to drive from 30-60 minutes to work...

Thats the issue. I am going to be working as a patent lawyer, and I have to bill 2000 hours a year, which translates to something like 2400-2500 hours in the office. The last thing I want to do is spend 2 hours in a car each way.

We are looking in Waltham, Watertown, Belmont, Arlington and Medford right now. Wife went on an initial househunting trip today and hated every last one of our top ten listings on paper. My rant is basically stemming from the fact that she has done 0 research and thus has no clue that there are no listings available in those area which have every single feature she wants. Boston is not like where we live now, where if worst came to worst, we could move 5 minutes farther out and have a custom house built.

 

[patentman]

Originally posted by: tyanni
I live in Salem, work in Medford. About an hour drive each morning to work, but I could afford to buy a condo in Salem, whereas I could not afford to buy closer to the city. Definitely look north shore - you get a lot more for your money. 600-700k will buy you a great house, and potentially on the water too.

Tim

Thanks for the tip, I really like some of the north shore towns (especially Marblehead and parts of Saugus), but they are way out past my commute time limit (see my post above). A lot of the listings we've seen closer in have been fine, but my wife just shoots them down because they are missing what I think are relatively small features, i.e., an eat in kitchen.

 

[imported_nerve]

Marblehead would be a crap commute.

Saugus isnt a bad commute.
How would you be commuting?

Rt 1 goes through saugus. Traffic is backed up to rt 99 in saugus and after rt99 to boston is a breeze 95% of the time.
Toll would be 3 bucks a day.
Parking in financial district would run you about 400ish

Take the subway is the other option.
from saugus to malden center is prob a 15-20min ride. Parking is about 100 a month and T Pass is 59$
Train from Malden to boston is about 20-25 mins.

I drive from Peabody to malden center and take the train every day.


Check out MBTA.com and look at where the commuter stations are.
Swampscott is a nice area and you can drive to salem or lynn commuter.

 

[imported_nerve]

Just looking at MBTA's website. Ill name off a few nice towns/cities imo.

North of boston

Rockport(expensive)
Newburyport
Rowley
Hamilton
Swampscott
Peabody is decent.
Danvers
Andover
Reading
Melrose
Medford

 

[Gibson486]

My only grip about boston is the price and some of the people. Once in a while, you will meet a really dumb and snobby person. I have learned to just ignore them, but i would suspect you would get that in any city or town. the price, on the other hand....with more and more college students moving in, the price will only go up Other than that, I love it here.

if you want to live north of boston, try Woburn(10 minutes) or Tewksbury (20 minutes, but this town is very rural). If you wany cheap housing, look into Lowell (30 minutes), but do not go looking for a really nice area in that city (unless you want to live in the rich area)

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: nerve
Marblehead would be a crap commute.

Saugus isnt a bad commute.
How would you be commuting?

Rt 1 goes through saugus. Traffic is backed up to rt 99 in saugus and after rt99 to boston is a breeze 95% of the time.
Toll would be 3 bucks a day.
Parking in financial district would run you about 400ish

Take the subway is the other option.
from saugus to malden center is prob a 15-20min ride. Parking is about 100 a month and T Pass is 59$
Train from Malden to boston is about 20-25 mins.

I drive from Peabody to malden center and take the train every day.


Check out MBTA.com and look at where the commuter stations are.
Swampscott is a nice area and you can drive to salem or lynn commuter.

Stay way from RT 1 AND any city south of boston at all costs. Why? Traffic is ALWAYS bad when you use RT 1 (either direction) or 93 South from Boston. I learned thsi the hardway. It took me 2 hours to get to Quincy once, and this was around 7PM.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: patentman

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
If you can get a postion in the Eastern Mass area and are willing to drive from 30-60 minutes to work...

Thats the issue. I am going to be working as a patent lawyer, and I have to bill 2000 hours a year, which translates to something like 2400-2500 hours in the office. The last thing I want to do is spend 2 hours in a car each way.

We are looking in Waltham, Watertown, Belmont, Arlington and Medford right now. Wife went on an initial househunting trip today and hated every last one of our top ten listings on paper. My rant is basically stemming from the fact that she has done 0 research and thus has no clue that there are no listings available in those area which have every single feature she wants. Boston is not like where we live now, where if worst came to worst, we could move 5 minutes farther out and have a custom house built.

yea, i was about to say... if you're a lawyer, you probably want to be close to work. are you at one of the big firms, or a boutique? good luck finding the time to play golf btw

i know this isn't what you're looking for, but i think there are few redeeming qualities about boston. the only things i can really think of are the history of the area and bar food.

have you thought about commuter rail? you can live further that way, since you can just work during your commute.

 

[patentman]

Thanks for all the tips and input guys, my wife and I found a plce we like in piety corner area of Waltham.

 

[Felisity]

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer
I'm sorry but your instincts are not wrong. Stay the hell away from Boston.

Isn't that the truth.

Wish the greatest company I have ever worked for (aka the one I work for now) was just about anywhere else in the US, besides Massachusetts.

Stay put, spend money on plane tickets for your wifey to see her family instead of blowing everything to live here in the money pit.

 

[slatr]

Andover, MA 01810


Check this area out. One of our vendors is there. I was there in the summer and it was very, very nice.

I drove a rental car, but I believe the train runs from there into downtown Boston.

EDIT clarification on the train from my rep.

The train runs up to andover. It is called the accela from ny to boston and from boston to andover is the commuter rail north. They are all amtrak.