Brunswick House Hunting After two weeks of looking for houses in Strongsville, Kelly and I decided to look in another city: Brunswick (alternate pronunciation is "Brunstucky"). Brunswick is at the opposite side of the spectrum as Parma and Berea. Whereas Parma and Berea are very old communities without very much new housing development going on, Brunswick is where Strongsville was for the past 10 years. It's where North Olmsted was 20 years ago. It's one of the new up-and-coming areas.

So, you still have to consider that this place was Brunstucky and hillbillies are around almost every corner. However, if you make a turn down the right street you can also find half million dollar or more mansions. One street will have 14 cars strewn across the front lawn on every housing plot, and the next is full of yuppy young couples in houses built last year. What this means is that if you can get into the area now (well, 2-3 years ago would have been the best) you should be able to make above and beyond the normal housing appreciation on a house.

So far we have looked inside 4 Brunswick homes. Two of them have been "hillbilly". One of them was a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 3 car garage, 2 acres of land, brand new EVERYTHING, new pool, new $12,000 kitchen, etc. But the neighbors on either side were "uber-hillbillies". We are talking missing teeth, ripped off jean shorts, no-joking 10 rusted out cars on the front lawn, in probably hand-built shacks. These neighbors could probably not even make $100K on their 2-acre property. That is probably why that amazing house in between the white trash is listing at $179,000. I loved the house, but man somebody needs to shoot the neighbors and all 37 of their dogs.

Anyway, to end the day we drove around and accidentally drove into a new development in Brunswick Hills. Kelly talked about how it was out of our price range, but I wanted to check anyway. These were new houses (Ryan Homes), so basically you pick what you want out of a catalog and choose your plot of land. Somewhere around 8 months later you move into a brand new house. I never considered such a thing, but it sounds like a cool idea since everything in your home will be brand spanking new. The only things to worry about are furniture and appliances (and some painting). This new variable in the house-buying equation is making things even harder to decide upon.  ¶ 10:34 AM