Buying home near train tracks?
gbillan
7 years ago
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kitasei
7 years agocpartist
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Buying a house near a freeway
Comments (26)I LOVE living beside the highway. I love the feeling of being alive in a city. I am moving to another house two miles right up the 4 lane highway. I have lived on a corner, on a cow farm, on 4 lane suburban road and here along the 4 lane highway. I much prefer living with the white noise of the highway to the CREEPY, LONELY, QUIET that makes you feel like if you died - no one would notice. The truth is, you forget there's a highway most of the time, except for the occasional disruptions of the JAKE-BRAKE trucks and motorcycles breaking speed limit laws, and the infrequent car without muffler. These are not unique to the highway, they occur everywhere. The idea that living along a highway somehow makes a home less desirable is bunk. You can talk about less value and fewer buyers all you want. You can site prices and statistics, this was not a factor for us. The point is there are buyers who do not want white noise and are not aware that you tune-out the sounds. That's no reflection on any particular home. I would not/will not price a home any different, just waiting for the buyer that is impressed with your house. The birds are more annoying than any traffic. Rush hour and the traffic is at a crawl not making any noise. I get upset at the birds at 5:30 AM and the chipmunks chirping at 6:30 am...See MorePurchasing a house near power lines?
Comments (39)Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMF) Radiation from Power Lines http://www.epa.gov/radtown/power-lines.html Being a radiation worker, your exposure to harmful radiation is inversely proportional to the distance. If you are twice the distance from the source, your exposure is decreased by four. One significant hazard is children playing outside. The laws of Bergone and Tribondeau (radiobiologists) is basically rapidly growing or producing cells (children, growing fetus,etc.) are more sensitive to radiation. This is why leukemia may be more common to children playing outside near the source than those adults who may be inside with some protection). One reason that studies by the government do not fully state warnings to human health caused by electromagnetic radiation is conflict of interest. Many times chairpersons on committees are connected to power plants/companies. This is legal as long as the person discloses the "conflict of interest". The EPA states: The general scientific consensus is that, thus far, the evidence available is weak and is not sufficient to establish a definitive cause-effect relationship. No surprise there. One study in California: STATEMENT TO THE PUBLIC The reviewers expressed their judgments using two distinct sets of guidelines to evaluate the evidence: · Using the traditional guidelines of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) for childhood leukemia, their classifications for EMFs ranged from “human carcinogen” to “probable human carcinogen” to “possible human carcinogen” (IARC’s Groups 1, 2A, 2B). Panels convened by IARC and the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences classified EMFs as a “possible human carcinogen” for childhood leukemia. · Using the traditional guidelines of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) for adult leukemia, their classifications for EMFs ranged from “human carcinogen” to “possible human carcinogen” (IARC’s Group 1 and 2B). The IARC Working Group classified the EMF evidence on adult leukemia as “inadequate.” The National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences classified it as “possible.” · Using the Guidelines developed especially for the California EMF program, one of the reviewers “strongly believes” that high residential EMFs cause some degree of increased risk of childhood leukemia, another was “prone to believe” that they do, and another was “close to the dividing line between believing or not believing.” · Using the Guidelines developed especially for the California EMF program, one of the reviewers was “ prone to believe” that high residential or occupational EMFs cause some degree of increased risk of adult leukemia, while the other two were “close to the dividing line between believing or not believing. In 2005 Draper et al. found a 70% increase in childhood leukemia for those living within 200 metres (656 ft) of an overhead transmission line, and a 23% increase for those living between 200 and 600 metres (656 and 1,969 ft). The authors concluded that "the relation may be due to chance or confounding." The authors considered it unlikely that the increase from 200 m to 600 m is related to magnetic fields as they are well below 0.4 µT at this distance.[39] Bristol University (UK) has published work on a theory that could account for this increase, and would also provide a potential mechanism, being that the electric fields around power lines attract aerosol pollutants.[15] IMO, no way would I buy a house near those power lines....See MoreBuilding a railroad for a train that does't exist...
Comments (19)Thanks for the support everyone. I truly appreciate it. If I provide a bit more backround perhaps it will answer some of the questions that have been raised. My parents built their retirement home on a lake in central Ohio 23 yrs ago. They still enjoy the home, but my Dad feels the maintenance has become too much for him and periodically tells my mother (not me) they should sell. The last couple of years she told him she wasn't ready yet - she likes being near family. For the past 12 years they have been spending 6 mos. out of the year in a mobile home in FL. They have a lot of good friends there and it's particularly good for my Dad because he has buddies he hangs out with. Buddies who will ask him to come along if they run errands. In Ohio he has friends, but not the kind who want to hang out, so he's mostly in front of the tv during his waking hours. Going into town to run errands every day was his break, his entertainment so to speak, and now he can't do that. My mother's sister lives on the opposite coast of FL from where my parents winter. She has friends in a retirement community in central FL and has wanted to move there for a few years now. Her husband passed last July, and since she has been more avid to move. Since neither of my parents want to spend winters in Ohio, they are thinking of selling the lake house and buying into the development where Mom's sister wants to live. My mom's sister is 79 and has been undergoing cancer treatments for a number of years. One thing gets cleared, then something else pops up. She is doing okay - as in she's not feeling terrible - but from what I get from my mom the treatments continue. My fear is that if my parents sell the lake house, put all the proceeds into buying new home in the FL retirement community it could be only a matter of a few years until my mom is there by herself. I HATE thinking like that, but given my father's and my aunt's health issues it is a real possibility. I don't believe my mother would want to live there without any family around, so I would probably end up moving her back to Ohio to live with me. A better plan- to me -is for them to sell the lake house, buy an Ohio home closer to town for the 6 months they spend here and keep the trailer for winters since that is where Dad is happy. I've suggested this to Mom and that's when she told me she would never buy another house in Ohio. I'm not sure why she is so adamant. Last summer during our 30 min commutes back and forth to town I would point out areas on the outskirts and say "It's pretty out here and not too far from town." Once she shot back: "Why would I want to live where there wasn't a lake?" I replied, "Um...because you'd have something nicer to look at than your neighbor's windows? Which is what you would have with a house in FL." Maybe she sees buying a house in OH without a lake as "coming down in the world"? Or she feels buying another house here means eventually having to live here during the winter? Maybe she wants to be nearer her sister while she has her? I don't know. I agree the track I need to build for myself is a way to support myself in my own small place. Let mom and dad do what they want to do and cross the bridge of taking care of one or both of them when the time comes. I suppose I'm just trying to prepare myself psychologically for that future. Thanks again Lavender and all, for letting me explore that here....See MoreWould you buy a house near a cemetery?
Comments (107)My daughter's house backs up to a national cemetery - a VERY small national cemetery, in which a long-ago KY native President is buried. The entire neighborhood was once part of his family farm, Springfield. The family home (now privately owned) is around the corner from DD's house. The cemetery is surrounded on three sides by houses, and on the 4th by a busy road. On all sides, there is a beautiful old stone wall that is about 4 1/2 ft tall and 2 ft thick. What a gift! A wall like that would cost a fortune today! In a national cemetery, all the headstones are the same simple marble markers. To see rows and rows of these, is very lovely and very moving. My grandsons have always played in the cemetery, climbing over the wall. When they were little, my daughter had Easter egg hunts there. She asked me if I thought it was disrespectful, and I said if I were buried there, I could think of nothing lovelier than happy children, gleefully hunting eggs on Easter. None of the houses surrounding this small cemetery have ever been hard to sell. Most people adore the stone wall, and like the quiet as well. Kind of nice to not have noisy neighbors behind one!...See MoreDebbie Downer
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