This past weekend, I went hiking with my friend 8 miles west of where I live. Since I literally live in a valley, mountains surround me in all directions. One of my favorite hikes is 8 miles west of where I live, in the Santa Susana Mountains. It’s a quick loop hike, only about 4 miles long and I’ve been hiking it for the past 4 years. Getting there takes 20 minutes, but the scenery changes drastically as soon as I approach the base of the mountain.

As I head west on a main street, the road begins to wind, the cement sidewalks turn into dirt horse trails, and the vegetation becomes chaparral. I pass many huge, beautiful, and overpriced homes. Then, I enter Chatsworth Lake Manor, a small “mountain” community on the rim of the valley. The only reason it has the word ‘lake’ in the name is that there is a small reservoir behind a chain link fence. The community is small, it consists of a general store, a restaurant, and a few other businesses. There is also a quaint church nestled at the bottom of the foothills. I’ve always loved this part of the valley. It’s a completely different vibe than suburban Los Angeles.

Since this particular area has always piqued my interest, I decided to do some research on Redfin and Zillow to see if there were any homes in our price range, or at least land to build a house on. Just for the fun of it. I was surprised to find out that there are a couple for sale and some plots of land as well. My husband was especially interested in the land for sale. It was priced at a reasonable $35,000. We drove back out to the end of one of the roads this weekend, but was disappointed at the size and layout of the plot. We decided that we would have a hard time working with that particular lot.

When we got home, I did a little more research. I found a little house, that I’ve seen a couple of times, listed for under $280,000. It’s on a huge piece of property, but needs some work. My husband was curious, so our next trek out to that area will include visiting this property:

Chatsworth Lake Manor House for Sale

It’s an old house that needs a lot of work. I’m not so sure it would qualify for a home loan, but as my husband and I near the first of the new year, we intend to research this a little more. The home has a walk score of 22, fairly car-dependent, but I should be able to bike to shops.

Another house I found up in the canyon is a small cottage. The only problem is that I can’t map it on MapQuest or Zillow. It’s quite inexpensive at $140,000, but it’s also under 600 square feet. Perhaps too small for us. It’s also in a different county, so it’s a little further that what we planned:

Box Canyon House, Small Cottage

One last little house that I need to drive by is a small Lilac Canyon home built in 1925.  It’s walk score is a pitiful 3, which means that biking to my neighborhood Starbucks is out of the question. With my husband and I sharing one car, this would also present a problem. It sure is a cute little house though:

Lilac House for Sale

With thoughts of purchasing a home in the next few months, my husband and I have begun to have conversations about what we like about our current neighborhood. These conversations are helping us build an idea about what we want in a neighborhood. What we like about our current neighborhood where we’re residing:

• Older homes have more character than the newer “cookie-cutter” versions (older homes may have been cookie cutter’s years ago, but subtle changes over time have given them more character)
• Within a mile of our house are some stores, a Starbucks, and some fast-food restaurants that we can bike to
• Three miles from our house are a few nicer restaurants (a college is near this area, so Chili’s is the “nicer” restaurant of that I speak)
• Two miles from our house is a park with bike paths (though, the bike paths don’t necessarily lead anywhere expect around the park)

However, our current neighborhood also has some drawbacks like low-rent apartments, graffitti, and very few clearly marked bike paths. Though I like the character of the older homes, some of the homes have been neglected for many years and, unfortunately, bring down the value of the neighborhood.

One item my husband and I would really like in a neighborhood is to be able to bike, on clearly marked bike paths, to nice restaurants or bars for an evening out. With this in mind, I began to research walkable neighborhoods using the Walk Score website. A neighborhood that clearly stands out for us is Canoga Park, an adjacent neighborhood only 4 miles from our present location. Many small antique shops, a couple of diners, and a theater have revitalized this once old neighborhood. Five blocks, on both sides of the street, are made for walking and the outlying half-mile or so are also quite pedestrian friendly. Canoga Park has a walk score of 72 out of 100, with 100 being a walker’s paradise. (see below for a comparison of cities)

On the other hand, a community with newer homes (and these aren’t really all that new) has a much lower walk score. Granada Hills is rated at a 49, anything under 50 is considered car-dependent on the Walk Score website. The design of these communities focuses on block after block of houses without a store or restaurant in sight. I can think of many contemporary suburban communities that are similar to this. Somewhere in the urban planning process, being able to walk somewhere was forgotten.

Walk Score has rated cities walkable.

Obviously, most urban communities are very walkable; think New York City or San Francisco. Yet, in many suburban cities and outlying urban areas, you can find pockets of walkable neighborhoods. Finding bikeable cities, however, is another task that I haven’t yet conquered. Of the bike-friendly cities I know of, none are within a few miles of where my husband and I live and we will unlikely move for that reason alone.

A few other reasons my husband and I prefer an older neighborhood is that they have more mom and pop type stores and not just big box stores. Since we are entrepreneurs ourselves, we like supporting other small businesses when we can. We also like that older neighborhoods have a more diverse population; cookie-cutter neighborhoods tend to draw cookie-cutter couples with their two children and their dog.

So, our search continues for the pedestrian/bike-friendly, quasi-suburban, affordable, character-rich neighborhood that may only exist in movies. Does anyone know of a bike-friendly website like Walk Score? Can someone recommend a neighborhood in suburban Los Angeles that they absolutely love?

Getting back to my 3 step plan, I’ll elaborate more on our money saving goal and why that amount. But first, it’s important to understand how we came up with our house budget without going house-broke.

We originally set our house budget at $200,000. However, after numerous RedFin searches, we recognized this was not realistic. There weren’t any homes at this price. So, we revised our budget to $250,000, give or take $10,000. This is completely do-able if the plan goes down like this:

• Save at least $20,000
• Find a home for $250,000 that’s not completely falling down
• Finance $230,000 at no more than 6.2% interest rate
• Monthly mortgage = $1410
• Monthly property tax = $313 (1.5% of cost of house)
• Property insurance = $150 (this is an estimate)
• Total monthly cost = $1873 (only $73 more than our current rent)

I used Bankrate’s mortgage calculator to help figure out our mortgage amount:

Bankrate's Mortgage Affordability Calculator

Michael Bluejay’s calculator is a little more detailed, he estimates what you can afford:

Michael Bluejay's Mortgage Calculator

The down payment, or how much we can save, will affect how much of a house we can afford. The less we have saved, the less we can afford and there are not many houses available in the low $200,000′s.