Positives and Negatives Of The Place You're Staying (Closed the Distance In)

[CandiCandi]

What are the positives? What are the negatives? I don't mean of the country or city itself, but the actual house, apartment, and what have you that you are living in now. I close the distance next Saturday (well, I arrive on Sunday, but I will be leaving Saturday afternoon) and one of these MAJOR positives of where me and my fiancé will only be thirteen minutes away from where he works at and it will help me apply for jobs since it's a pretty busy area in that aspect. The negative is that this is only temporary (our place is temporary, not closing the distance).

[Zephii]

Congrats on closing the distance soon! How exciting.

The pros for us are:
I can walk to work in under three minutes.
I can also get to the gym & shops in that amount of time
Public transport is right at my door.
My family live really close.
It's in my country <3 In a safe suburb, near lots of fancy restaurants.

The cons:
It's freaking expensive.
I love this flat, could live here forever really - BUT it's only one bedroom, so no good for our soon to expand family.
It's a unit, so there are lots of rules (strata) and the laundry is shared/coin operated.
My cat isn't here. I miss my cat.

[Tanja]

We lived in my house so obviously there isn't any cons in it!

Joking, there is

Pros:
Huge yard (enough room for all my animals and for kids to play)
Our own peace and quiet (in the countryside)
Lots of room for us - 3 bedrooms but an option to have one more if we want to
Mortgage is fairly reasonable - flats half the size in the city can cost twice as much!

Cons: *sigh*
It's an old house so it needs repairing (roof, windows, kitchen... ouch)
Can't live without a car because of the long distances to everywhere and the public transport is rare - costs more
Not a rental so can't just call the supervisor when something breaks. It comes out of your own pocket.
A lot of work to maintain everything (the stable, garage, yard and the house itself)

I wouldn't change it for the world though!

[mllebamako]

Positives:
-I am only a 15-minute walk from work
-It's bigger than our last place, the living room is twice the size and we have 2 bedrooms and bathrooms instead of 1
-The neighborhood is a lot quieter than most
-We have a boutique right next door (boutique: little neighborhood shop where you can buy all the essentials: bread, eggs, sugar, soda, milk, soap, etc)
-Price. Housing in Mali is pretty dang reasonable.

Negatives:
-Our neighbors (we live in an apartment). They have totally taken over the shared courtyard and the shared storage space and even the roof. And everytime I'm outside, they bug me and ask me to teach them English and ask if they can use my wifi for free (F- that). So now I barely sit outside anymore which kind of sucks.
-It's harder to control the amount of mosquitos inside with a bigger place. So now we sleep under a mosquito net tent.
-There is no market in this neighborhood--so for fruits, veggies, and meat, I have to take a taxi or my SO takes me to the market on his moto
-And lastly, we now live in an outlying neighborhood of the city, so we get our electricity cut much more often than the downtown neighborhoods. April/June have been particularly bad for power cuts though which is frustrating. At least 2 hours of no-electricity per day, but the past few days it's been off for 6-10 hours. Ugh

[Dziubka]

I've lived here for 2+ years, but my boyfriend has moved in with me in March.
Soo

+ it's a students' residence, so while it's still quite expensive it's cheaper than most other places in my city
+ we have two (bed)rooms + reaonsable sized kitchen (with a sofa and space to eat)
+ a lot of friends living in the same building or next door
+ it's super close to the shop and gym
+ it's a reasonable distance from the city and university

- we only have a kitchenette, not a real kitchen
- the kitchen doesn't have windows - it's sort of a room between the hall and our rooms.


I'm not so unhappy with where I live, but I can't wait to live in a real apartment. I'm going to move in with my boyfriend's parents, at least temporarily, in October, though and they have a proper kitchen and big bathroom

[snow_girl]

Pros

It's brand new
It is cheap rent
You can see the sun setting, we are high enough up
Close to work
Close to shops and good train connection

Cons
Its next to a main street (noisy)
The location is kind of sucky in terms of things to do

[lucybelle]

Good things!

-We live within walking distance of the following: feria (market on Saturday morning), bus stops to downtown, a grocery store, C-stores, a pharmacy, a vet, lots of parks, the USA embassy, a bank (+ATM), furniture stores, sodas (little restaurants that seat about 5-8 people), and a few bars.
-We live driving/bus distance from just about everything we could possibly need
-We live about 5 minutes from where my SO works
-We have a great little patio for our doggy
-We live on a fairly calm street
-We live in a "nicer" area of the kind of bad area
-Our landlady is great

Bad things..

-Since we live basically on the border of the rich side and the poor side, there's still lots of crime and we have to be careful (funny story- our neighbor left his car outside the gate one night and they stole his radio. The next night he left it out again since the radio was already gone, and they took his battery! jaja!)
-We live pretty far away from where I work. In car it's about 20-25 min, in bus it's about 1.5 hours. I have to take the bus once a week.

That's about it. I really love where we live