subject: The Problem With City Home-hunting [print this page] Did you ever wonder why many people living in big cities would rather continue renting a place than buy themselves a home and lot? The lack of money can be a factor but another reason is the limited supply of wider lots. This doesn't mean that there's no lot wide enough to accommodate an average-sized home. There may be many but they also happen to have shockingly high prices. Because of this, people tend to be content with their apartment or condominium units.
Nevertheless, if you've been renting your own place for more than a decade, you won't be able to avoid entertaining the idea of buying a home. The troubles you may have experienced with your landlord should be enough to fuel such a notion. Searching for a place to build your home in a city is like trying to hunt a nearly extinct beast though. What most likely happens is that you find yourself pondering over a narrow lot that is for sale.
This can be an unavoidable situation when you begin hunting for a home lot, unless your city is still at the stage of infancy. If the city where you reside is old, the tendency is that it can only offer you a narrow lot for your home. Still, if you're firmly decided in liberating yourself from the woes you experience as a tenant, you should be partial to such lots.
Nobody will tell you that a narrow strip of land is not a predicament at all. Nevertheless, you should know that at the other side of a predicament is a solution. The solution actually is in the way that space is optimized with the home's structural design. But you have to accept the fact that some whims have to be sacrificed. You have to settle with smaller room sizes or have a second storey so that your living and dining areas can be wider.
A narrow lot is already a common fixture in any modern metropolis. That's why home construction firms already have designs available that accommodate such lots. You don't have to sketch your own plan since you can just approach such firms and get a good look at their plans. They'll provide you with interesting details on how your home can still have the feel of a big one despite the inadequate land size it's built on.
As cities become more congested, the natural tendency is for vacant lots to vanish and for those that remain to be narrow. Urbanites will certainly have to get used to this phenomenon. However, it's actually just a matter of adjustment. If you've been born and raised in the countryside, with its wide and opens spaces, a city's narrow lot may surely look suffocating. But if you're city-bred, then you can easily get accustomed to the space that you get.
