Would you own a home on a busy street?

For the life of me, I can't figure out why someone would own on a busy street, where it is near impossible to back out of the drive during high traffic hours.

The only plus I can guess is that you get more house for your dollar because they must be cheaper. But to me, it would never be worth it.

Absolutely not. I know what you're talking about Red, those wide, multi-lane, streets that are intersection busy. I imagine that trying to pull out of your driveway can be a big hassle; and if you have small kids, that just makes it worse.

We, unfortunately, live on a fairly busy street. Not busy like a business district street, but it's zoned business and resi and the speed limit is 30. We don't have a driveway so that's not an issue, but we've had 5 cars totaled while parked in front of our house.

When we bought our house it was less busy, and it must have been a Sunday or something when we came back to look at it because it didn't seem busy at all at the time. Plus I never thought we'd have five kids and still live here...

But the reason we bought this house, we had a list of things that we were looking for and a budget of 100,000 dollars.

I wanted:
A fireplace
hardwood floors throughout
more than one bathroom
3 bedrooms
a fenced yard so we could have a dog.

He wanted:
A 3 car garage with a shop.

This was the first house we found that was within our budget and had everything that we both wanted.

We've lived here for 12 years now and although we've definitely outgrown the house, there's no way we'll be moving any time soon so we make do.

We have to be ULTRA careful about safety. We have a fence that we put a padlock on, and we also have a chain lock up high on the door so the kids can't open it and run out...Our old neighbors autistic little boy was always getting out and into the street so we learned through observation that you can't be too careful!

We don't have a driveway so that's not an issue, but we've had 5 cars totaled while parked in front of our house.

See, close friends of mine, that own such a home (but have a small driveway) is what motivated this thread. On Tuesday, I decided to park in the drive vs. on the street for fear of my car getting hit as it was during rush hour time and there were so many cars. But then it was a total bitch getting out of there. I sat there trying to back out for over ten minutes.

RedBedroom wrote:

We don't have a driveway so that's not an issue, but we've had 5 cars totaled while parked in front of our house.

See, close friends of mine, that own such a home (but have a small driveway) is what motivated this thread. On Tuesday, I decided to park in the drive vs. on the street for fear of my car getting hit as it was during rush hour time and there were so many cars. But then it was a total bitch getting out of there. I sat there trying to back out for over ten minutes.

I don't think our street is quite that busy, I haven't noticed people with driveways having trouble with finding an opening...But yeah, now our car insurance is really expensive because 4 of the cars the drunk drivers had no insurance.

Yeah, I didn't think yours was quite as bad as the one I am describing because this particular street is a main residential on the cusp of business in a suburb of my city. So, it is a nightmare.

Sorry to know that your car insurance is reflected by the stupidity of others.

My street is not busy at all, I would not buy a house on a very busy street.

I always wondered why people would live on a busy street....deals on those houses must be super cheap. But hell no. I'd never wanna live on a street with more than one lane of traffic. That's a hazard waiting to happen.

Nope - I want my kids to have a big of freedom. It's fine to be on a busy street when I'm single - and I'm on a pretty busy one - but it's not a place I'd want to raise children. For now, it's convenient, but once I start a family, I want to move.