My wife and I have been looking at new homes.
Now that we are near retirement age we want something a little bit out of the city.
A house near the water would be nice too. However, we are in no rush to buy. It has to be the perfect home for both of us. Last weekend we spent some time looking at houses near the bay. They are expensive but we can afford it. But, in this area, we get the occasional hurricane so that is a concern. The fact that many of the houses were up on stilts reaffirmed that concern for us. I am not sure we want to be quite that close to the water. Still, we toured the listed houses and got a more extensive list of things we do and do not want. For example, many of the stilted houses didn’t have central heating and cooling. Instead, they had big windows with good airflow plush, maybe, an air conditioning unit in the window. I just assume they use space heaters in winter but I didn’t see any lying around. We definitely want central heating and cooling. That is not optional. I don’t care how good of a breeze you get, sometimes you just need cooled air. Other times you need warm air. 2 houses we looked at did have central heating and cooling. I felt it was strange that the compressors were on stilts too or otherwise attached to the wall of the house at the 2nd story level. I guess that makes sense though. After all, you would want to keep the HVAC unit from flooding too.