In order to live a healthy lifestyle, your home has to offer a healthy environment.
Your home is where you spend most of your time and it should support your physical health and your emotional well-being. When your home is doing its job, it strengthens and energizes you, so that you can go out into the world and fulfill your purpose with gusto!
Choosing the right house is one of the most important decisions a person makes in their adult life, because a house in not only a significant financial investment, it’s an emotional investment. After choosing your new home, you’ll be investing your hope, time and energy into that home for years to come.
What Kind of House Should I Buy?
The right house for you is the house the best meets your unique needs. For example, if you enjoy taking an after-dinner stroll each evening, then moving into a neighborhood that lacks walkability is probably going to start to depress you after a while. It’s important to look at yourself and your daily habits honestly, and determine what your big and little joys are at home.
Living in a Lifestyle Property
“Lifestyle Property” is a phrase that you’ve perhaps heard lately. But what does it really mean?
A lifestyle property is a home that has one or more unique features that improve quality of life for its residents.
A misconception about lifestyle properties is that they are all multi-million dollar estates. While this is sometimes the case, it is not always so.
The high-concept attributes that a home possesses are what make it a lifestyle property. These are not always expensive.
“…certain physical spaces
offer more moments of serenity and joy”
A small cottage in a living-foods commune would be a lifestyle property, even if it is priced at only $90,000. It’s in a community where the residents share one meal a day and everyone adheres to a raw diet. That makes it a lifestyle property. To those who choose to live there, it offers a higher quality of daily living.
Another example of an affordable lifestyle property would be a studio condo in a historic downtown district. Replete with wide sidewalks and charming mom-and-pop shops, a studio near a stroll-able main street can be highly desirable. The fact that is has so many unusual amenities that would impact and improve daily life makes it a lifestyle property.
Not only are there lifestyle homes, but entire communities can be considered high-concept. For example, there are villages in Southern California that offer lovely year-round weather coupled with all the benefits of living in a creative small town within nature.
In this short video, David Findley explains:
Owning Property in a Walkable Community
“Urban Pedestrianism” is the latest high-concept in healthy living. Homes that live next to the Lake Hollywood Reservoir in Los Angeles are increasingly considered lifestyle properties. In the Land Of The Car, being in such close proximity to a popular walking and running spot is considered highly desirable.
Imagine waking up early each morning and stepping into your “backyard” and hopping into your rowboat for a quick workout on the sea water? That’s exactly what it’s like to live in the Venice Canals in California. Now that’s living!
Or how about living in a lighthouse? Or living off the grid with your own wind turbine and solar farm? The possibilities are endless!
Of course, many lifestyle properties are estates, that have their own unique feature, such as an accompanying vineyard, or an ocean for a front yard, or a vast organic hobby farm, or stables and trails for horses, or a designated heli-pad for the “chopper.”
Choosing Your New Home
Many people choose a home chiefly by its architecture style — it seems everyone has a favorite style, be it Tudor, Craftsman, or Contemporary. But the architectural style of a home should just be one factor in your decision-making process. Even more important than the style is the neighborhood the home is in and whether that home aligns with your favorite daily habits.
As psychic-space becomes more crowded in the Age of the iPhone , it may be the physical spaces that offer access to more moments of serenity or joy. Properties that facilitate daily joy and physical health are becoming the new ideal in real estate.
- ▸ what do you think makes a home a Lifestyle Property?
- ▸ what about the home that you live in now do you think is unique?
- ▸ what unusual attribute do you hope to have in your next home?
Please leave your comments below; I’d love to hear from you!
Having grown up on a farm, I fantasize about living in a large open space in the heart of a small and friendly town, where there is little need to drive. For me, the community would need to have a good supply of organic foods and good air quality.
Every human being is unique! If you take a focused, yet relaxed, look at how you actually want to live, and imagine what lifestyle actually fits who you really are as a person, you might be surprised at what you realize!
It takes thoughtful consideration, planning and good advice to find a community and property to meet your needs and enrich your daily experience. It’s up to the individual, the couple, and the family to define what “lifestyle property” means to them!