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One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything.

One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything. I've rented my whole life and spent my entire adult life in cities. The idea of having to get in the car to get milk or something from the corner store, or have to drive to ANY restaurant, or not have some type of walking/running path within a few blocks of my house is foreign. Part of this is from living in a cities and in mixed zoning areas rather than neighborhoods but it just seems to odd that to get ANYWHERE one needs to drive. Even living in a city, but just a bit further away from a major area, you can run into this issue. Wife and I have looked at the Netherlands as well for similar reasons. Jobs/visas are the main concern. Family is the other big one.

dont__panic 4y ago
Any success filtering for walkability in the US when buying a home? As far as I can tell, "walkability" scores are borderline useless -- the small town I currently live in has extremely low "walkability," despite being able to walk or bike to everything I need, whereas the large city I just left has extremely high "walkability" -- despite the fact that walking around town was not pleasant due to high volumes of car traffic. Manually checking or restricting the search is not really a scalable option.
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  What metric of walkability are you finding that is not reflective of reality? I've had at least some luck (in Canada) with https://www.walkscore.com/ https://www.walkscore.com/
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I mean, you just can't have a walkability score for an entire large city. There's a lot of variation. You have to look at specific neighborhoods. This is especially true in north America where cities all went through a huge conglomeration effort in the second half of the 20th century and absorbed their suburbs.
  - dont__panic 4y ago
    Of course I'm referring to the address I lived at in those places. I'm mostly complaining that Zillow's built-in "walkability" scoring based on addresses is abysmally inaccurate for the places I've lived in.
    - egypturnash 4y ago
      https://www.walkscore.com/ https://www.walkscore.com/ has aligned with my experiences pretty well.
- robrenaud 4y ago
  Manhattan has a lot of car traffic. Short of the urban core of Philly, DC, Chicago, SF, or my favorite parts of Brooklyn (which also have a lot of car traffic), nothing seems nearly as walkable in the US. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see congestion pricing and fewer cars on the streets in Manhattan. The best walkable suburbs I've visited, Montclair and Red Bank in NJ and Ardmore, PA seem pretty sad, small, and boring in comparison. Fine for a visit, but I wouldn't wan to spend three days in a row there.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Sometimes, people are looking for small and boring, like some parents who are raising kids and are no longer partying every weekend. (There are also pros and cons to raising children in cities; growing up in NYC I got a free transit pass in middle school and was able to take myself to places like the Met and the Guggenheim pretty effortlessly, and you certainly can't get amenities like those everywhere.) There's nothing wrong with small and boring, the major issue is that generally the overwhelming majority of US housing stock and zoning laws are geared towards picket-fence suburbia, to the detriment of people who don't necessarily want that. Plenty of people certainly want that, but it's probably not anywhere near like 90% of people in the US.
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      Nothing wrong with small and boring, but even boring suburbs should have a grocery store within walking distance of most houses, which they mostly don't in the US.
      - AlwaysRock 4y ago
        Really? What do you call walking distance? Most suburbs I've spent time in will have a grocery store in driving distance (~5 miles away) but that isnt really walking distance if you are trying to carry any significant amount of groceries or trying to make the trip in less than 2 hours.
    - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
- novantadue 4y ago
  walkscore.com has heatmaps, theyre very accurate for MN
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Filtering by neighborhood and knowing the neighborhoods. Not that helpful if you are moving from somewhere else but pretty easy if you live in the area already.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Town around 50000 is a good bet then. If you can work remotely, find a college town and live outside the center, about a mile. You can bike to anything, take the bus, or just walk. I did this. I have 100 restaurants, too many bars to count, music and theatre (three!) and festivals and arts within trivial distances. No car needed.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Even smaller towns are viable, too. My New England town has around 5,000 people in it. Aside from the early closing times for restaurants and breweries, (8 or 9!?!?!?!), I have access to exactly the same amenities I had in cities before. And lots more outdoor-oriented things as well. Plus... no traffic.
  - scruple 4y ago
    My wife and I are seriously considering our options in smaller towns in New England. Many of them predate the automobile and have the sorts of qualities that are being talked about in this thread.
    - dont__panic 4y ago
      I highly recommend. Hanover/Lebanon, Burlington, and Montpelier are decent places to start if you want access to arts, music, theatre, etc. If you're willing to compromise on some of those things in favor of outdoor activities, there are a LOT of great small towns in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine that let you walk and bike to the basics. If you enjoy biking to establishments, it's worth it to actively think about dirt roads and rail trails in your search -- dirt roads cut car speeds to safe levels, and rail trails let you avoid cars almost entirely. Both make biking miles better.
      - scruple 4y ago
        I've spent quite a bit of time looking at Vermont, specifically Burlington and Montpelier. I have a very good friend from who was born in Burlington and who moved back there to raise his kids. Those two cities are at the top of our list, but I'd also like to explore/research more of New Hampshire, Maine, and western Massachusetts. We spent some time in Maine, on the coast during the early fall, and really enjoyed it.
falcolas 4y ago
> One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything. That's because if you want an individual home, you're giving up the customer density required to make those amenities viable. In a world with the internet, at-home delivery, and yes, cars, it's simply not economically viable to create a grocery store that only caters to 100ish families.
- Xylakant 4y ago
  That’s just wrong. The village I come from in germany has 8000 inhabitants, pretty much only single/double houses, practically no flats and perfectly walkable. Multiple bakeries and grocery stores, never further than 15 minutes walk. It’s just that these small groceries cannot outcompete supermarkets once people are in the habit of going everywhere by car.
  - pif 4y ago
    Parent wrote: > it's simply not economically viable You replied: > t’s just that these small groceries cannot outcompete supermarkets So you are confirming what he said.
    - Xylakant 4y ago
      No, I’m not. The stores are economically viable unless you have a car centric culture. Car centric culture makes walkable mid-density neighborhoods unviable.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        Cars are no longer the only way to bring in goods from outside walking distance. Online orders can also supplant the need for cars in suburbs, while producing a significantly more options than a mom&pop grocery store. And with Covid restrictions and work-from-home, deliveries and online ordering were cemented as normal behavior.
tjr225 4y ago
We moved to a smaller city(Tacoma) inside of a big city metro(Seattle) for about half of the cost of a SFH in Seattle proper and it’s great. Can walk and bike to multiple grocery stores, beach, parks, etc. If I get the big city itch it’s easy enough to scratch it.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Tacoma's nice. I lived there for a few years, and wouldn't mind moving back to that area. That said, where I lived (an apartment on the top of the knob west of the docks), I couldn't realistically bike or walk to anything of value other than the bus stop.
  - tjr225 4y ago
    Yeah I can’t really speak outside of the north end in the past couple years or so, but proctor, stadium, old town, Ruston and even around 6th all have a nice mix of local and chain stuff now.
nightski 4y ago
Hot take - walkability is super overrated. I don't want to go to the same 5 resturaunts I can walk to. I like variety. I work from home and don't commute, but when I do go out I want to explore. Another hot take - Being in the middle of a city doesn't make one more social. Actually it can be more lonely ironically. You are surrounded by strangers. In my current suburb I am good friend with all of my neighbors. We share vegetables from our gardens, have block parties, let children play together, it's extremely social.
- fassssst 4y ago
  E-bike then. I can get anywhere in a 2 mile radius in Seattle faster with my e-bike than with my car, and I always get a prime parking spot right outside where I’m going.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- whymauri 4y ago
  I live in Cambridge, MA and there are over 80 restaurants and bars within my 15 minute walkshed. We also have block parties, lol.
- soledades 4y ago
  im sorry to tell you but this take is simply ignoring the fact the amount of restuaurants you can walk to increases with the square of the density.
  - nightski 4y ago
    I understand there are a few places in America you can live where there are a lot more restaurants densely packed. These also are the highest cost of living places in the world to live. It's not practical to think everyone could live like that. They also are miserable with homeless people, drug addicts, and crime. It also relies on a huge network of people commuting to those jobs to support that area. You can't have 30 restaurants within a few square miles with all the people to support that living there in homes. You'd need a combination of super dense housing and people commuting. It's really inefficient.
atyppo 4y ago
Check out Portugal's golden visa program especially if you can WFH. Either way, the real estate program provides instant residency and only mandates 7 days of residency per year before citizenship (14 in the last year). After five years, you'll have a passport issued by a Schengen country that will allow you to work anywhere in the Schengen area.
- ocschwar 4y ago
  I've been checking Ponta Delgada out on Zillow for a while now.

dont__panic 4y ago

Any success filtering for walkability in the US when buying a home? As far as I can tell, "walkability" scores are borderline useless -- the small town I currently live in has extremely low "walkability," despite being able to walk or bike to everything I need, whereas the large city I just left has extremely high "walkability" -- despite the fact that walking around town was not pleasant due to high volumes of car traffic. Manually checking or restricting the search is not really a scalable option.

ghostpepper 4y ago
What metric of walkability are you finding that is not reflective of reality? I've had at least some luck (in Canada) with https://www.walkscore.com/ https://www.walkscore.com/
stormbrew 4y ago
I mean, you just can't have a walkability score for an entire large city. There's a lot of variation. You have to look at specific neighborhoods. This is especially true in north America where cities all went through a huge conglomeration effort in the second half of the 20th century and absorbed their suburbs.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Of course I'm referring to the address I lived at in those places. I'm mostly complaining that Zillow's built-in "walkability" scoring based on addresses is abysmally inaccurate for the places I've lived in.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    https://www.walkscore.com/ https://www.walkscore.com/ has aligned with my experiences pretty well.
robrenaud 4y ago
Manhattan has a lot of car traffic. Short of the urban core of Philly, DC, Chicago, SF, or my favorite parts of Brooklyn (which also have a lot of car traffic), nothing seems nearly as walkable in the US. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see congestion pricing and fewer cars on the streets in Manhattan. The best walkable suburbs I've visited, Montclair and Red Bank in NJ and Ardmore, PA seem pretty sad, small, and boring in comparison. Fine for a visit, but I wouldn't wan to spend three days in a row there.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Sometimes, people are looking for small and boring, like some parents who are raising kids and are no longer partying every weekend. (There are also pros and cons to raising children in cities; growing up in NYC I got a free transit pass in middle school and was able to take myself to places like the Met and the Guggenheim pretty effortlessly, and you certainly can't get amenities like those everywhere.) There's nothing wrong with small and boring, the major issue is that generally the overwhelming majority of US housing stock and zoning laws are geared towards picket-fence suburbia, to the detriment of people who don't necessarily want that. Plenty of people certainly want that, but it's probably not anywhere near like 90% of people in the US.
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    Nothing wrong with small and boring, but even boring suburbs should have a grocery store within walking distance of most houses, which they mostly don't in the US.
    - AlwaysRock 4y ago
      Really? What do you call walking distance? Most suburbs I've spent time in will have a grocery store in driving distance (~5 miles away) but that isnt really walking distance if you are trying to carry any significant amount of groceries or trying to make the trip in less than 2 hours.
  - Ar-Curunir 4y ago
novantadue 4y ago
walkscore.com has heatmaps, theyre very accurate for MN
AlwaysRock 4y ago
Filtering by neighborhood and knowing the neighborhoods. Not that helpful if you are moving from somewhere else but pretty easy if you live in the area already.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Town around 50000 is a good bet then. If you can work remotely, find a college town and live outside the center, about a mile. You can bike to anything, take the bus, or just walk. I did this. I have 100 restaurants, too many bars to count, music and theatre (three!) and festivals and arts within trivial distances. No car needed.

dont__panic 4y ago
Even smaller towns are viable, too. My New England town has around 5,000 people in it. Aside from the early closing times for restaurants and breweries, (8 or 9!?!?!?!), I have access to exactly the same amenities I had in cities before. And lots more outdoor-oriented things as well. Plus... no traffic.
- scruple 4y ago
  My wife and I are seriously considering our options in smaller towns in New England. Many of them predate the automobile and have the sorts of qualities that are being talked about in this thread.
  - dont__panic 4y ago
    I highly recommend. Hanover/Lebanon, Burlington, and Montpelier are decent places to start if you want access to arts, music, theatre, etc. If you're willing to compromise on some of those things in favor of outdoor activities, there are a LOT of great small towns in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine that let you walk and bike to the basics. If you enjoy biking to establishments, it's worth it to actively think about dirt roads and rail trails in your search -- dirt roads cut car speeds to safe levels, and rail trails let you avoid cars almost entirely. Both make biking miles better.
    - scruple 4y ago
      I've spent quite a bit of time looking at Vermont, specifically Burlington and Montpelier. I have a very good friend from who was born in Burlington and who moved back there to raise his kids. Those two cities are at the top of our list, but I'd also like to explore/research more of New Hampshire, Maine, and western Massachusetts. We spent some time in Maine, on the coast during the early fall, and really enjoyed it.

falcolas 4y ago

> One of the hardest parts about buying a home, apart from all the stuff that isnt fun about buying a home, is finding somewhere that is walkable to... anything. That's because if you want an individual home, you're giving up the customer density required to make those amenities viable. In a world with the internet, at-home delivery, and yes, cars, it's simply not economically viable to create a grocery store that only caters to 100ish families.

Xylakant 4y ago
That’s just wrong. The village I come from in germany has 8000 inhabitants, pretty much only single/double houses, practically no flats and perfectly walkable. Multiple bakeries and grocery stores, never further than 15 minutes walk. It’s just that these small groceries cannot outcompete supermarkets once people are in the habit of going everywhere by car.
- pif 4y ago
  Parent wrote: > it's simply not economically viable You replied: > t’s just that these small groceries cannot outcompete supermarkets So you are confirming what he said.
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    No, I’m not. The stores are economically viable unless you have a car centric culture. Car centric culture makes walkable mid-density neighborhoods unviable.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      Cars are no longer the only way to bring in goods from outside walking distance. Online orders can also supplant the need for cars in suburbs, while producing a significantly more options than a mom&pop grocery store. And with Covid restrictions and work-from-home, deliveries and online ordering were cemented as normal behavior.

tjr225 4y ago

We moved to a smaller city(Tacoma) inside of a big city metro(Seattle) for about half of the cost of a SFH in Seattle proper and it’s great. Can walk and bike to multiple grocery stores, beach, parks, etc. If I get the big city itch it’s easy enough to scratch it.

falcolas 4y ago
Tacoma's nice. I lived there for a few years, and wouldn't mind moving back to that area. That said, where I lived (an apartment on the top of the knob west of the docks), I couldn't realistically bike or walk to anything of value other than the bus stop.
- tjr225 4y ago
  Yeah I can’t really speak outside of the north end in the past couple years or so, but proctor, stadium, old town, Ruston and even around 6th all have a nice mix of local and chain stuff now.

nightski 4y ago

Hot take - walkability is super overrated. I don't want to go to the same 5 resturaunts I can walk to. I like variety. I work from home and don't commute, but when I do go out I want to explore. Another hot take - Being in the middle of a city doesn't make one more social. Actually it can be more lonely ironically. You are surrounded by strangers. In my current suburb I am good friend with all of my neighbors. We share vegetables from our gardens, have block parties, let children play together, it's extremely social.

fassssst 4y ago
E-bike then. I can get anywhere in a 2 mile radius in Seattle faster with my e-bike than with my car, and I always get a prime parking spot right outside where I’m going.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
whymauri 4y ago
I live in Cambridge, MA and there are over 80 restaurants and bars within my 15 minute walkshed. We also have block parties, lol.
soledades 4y ago
im sorry to tell you but this take is simply ignoring the fact the amount of restuaurants you can walk to increases with the square of the density.
- nightski 4y ago
  I understand there are a few places in America you can live where there are a lot more restaurants densely packed. These also are the highest cost of living places in the world to live. It's not practical to think everyone could live like that. They also are miserable with homeless people, drug addicts, and crime. It also relies on a huge network of people commuting to those jobs to support that area. You can't have 30 restaurants within a few square miles with all the people to support that living there in homes. You'd need a combination of super dense housing and people commuting. It's really inefficient.

atyppo 4y ago

Check out Portugal's golden visa program especially if you can WFH. Either way, the real estate program provides instant residency and only mandates 7 days of residency per year before citizenship (14 in the last year). After five years, you'll have a passport issued by a Schengen country that will allow you to work anywhere in the Schengen area.

ocschwar 4y ago
I've been checking Ponta Delgada out on Zillow for a while now.