House hunting.

I wouldn't say we're really house hunting, but we're looking at what's out there. We've been talking about moving closer to Jackson for a while now, and tomorrow we are going to look at this house. It looks pretty awesome judging from the website. The indoor pool would rock. Of course, Tim doesn't have a job in Jackson, and we don't know how easy it would be to sell this place, but we're going to look anyway. The back yard looks like it's on a slope, so there may not be room for Charlie to play. If there's not a reasonable amount of space back there, it'll be a deal breaker.

Even in this economy, it's hard to find a house that compares to this one for this price-- especially in Brandon. A house this size in Brandon is about $40-50k more expensive. A house this size in Brandon on 3 acres would be well over $300k. We'd like to upgrade to 4 bedrooms and keep some of the perks of this place, which include the fact that there's a little bit of land around us, a shop, and we're at the end of a dead end street. It's just the damn neighborhood is so crappy that we're scared our home's value is going to go down instead of up. A house around the corner recently sold for under $60,000. Another on the other end of the street is currently for sale for $72k. There are a couple of rentals, too, and don't even get me started on the trashy folks who live across the street. Right now their yard is completely covered with crap. Just passing by, I counted FOUR inflatable swimming pools, a jungle gym contraption, a poorly built tree house with the word "deth" spray painted on it, a trampoline, a go kart, about a dozen bikes and tricycles, roller skates, skateboards, and some other brightly colored plastic crap that I couldn't identify. Thank God at least their yard is partially blocked by a fence. Tim bought this house for $30k less than what it appraised for, so hopefully we could make a profit. But if I were going to spend that kind of money on a house, I wouldn't want it to be in this neighborhood.

I'm conflicted on the moving idea, to be honest. Part of me would like to be near Jackson. It'd be closer to my hometown by about 2 hours, making visits with my family much easier. We'd be about the same distance from Tim's family. There would be more job opportunities for both of us. However, living in Jackson proper isn't an option, and the suburbs are damn expensive. We also currently live in one of the top school districts in the state, so if we move out of this one, I'd want to move into another comparable one, which would mean being near Brandon, or at least in Rankin County.

I dunno. Why can't people just pick up their yards and take care of their shit and avoid other white trashy behaviors?