I’ve bought and sold a few houses in my day, and have done pretty well doing it. My personal saying has always been that you can sell a house that’s purple with pink polka-dots, but you can’t sell the house next to it.
I won’t buy a house near a school, a park, a voodoo house, a weed house, a parking-lot-in-the-driveway house, a cars-in-the-yard house, a business, a through-street, etc. I buy the crappiest house in the best neighborhood. Location, location, location.
“I won’t buy a house near a school, a park, a voodoo house, a weed house, a parking-lot-in-the-driveway house, a cars-in-the-yard house, a business, a through-street, etc....”
The loan officer who handled our last mortgage told us—after we’d signed and we were chatting—that his bank routinely refused to finance -—or financed only at significantly higher interest rates— homes within 1/4 mile of a drive-thru chicken restaurant.
He called this the Chicken Shack Rule.