Finding a place to live with a partner - How much agreement can be reached

Hello dear ones,

I have now been a more or less silent reader here for some time.

Now I would like to ask a question and hope that I have landed in the right forum and that it hasn't been asked yet (at least I haven't found anything).

How did you and your partner agree on where to move?
Did you create a list of pros and cons?

A brief note about us and our background:
We are a married couple with one child and another on the way.
She comes from a small town with 7,607 inhabitants and I come from a small village with a total of 8,100 inhabitants. Both places of residence are about 13 km apart.

Kindergarten, elementary school, and the local corner shop are in the immediate vicinity in both places.
Lidl, etc., is about 4 km away from the village.

I love that it is quieter there and that there is more nature, and she thinks it is too quiet for her. It is usually the case that you want to go where you grew up.

I would be happy to receive suggestions and opinions.

When we first met, we both lived in the same city and neither of us wanted to move, so luckily that was not a problem. When searching for land/house, the main thing was just to find something at all. The place of residence was almost secondary. The only important thing was that we could both easily reach our workplaces. Do you even have such a wide selection where you live that the question "where to live" arises?

If you really still have the choice of plots, I can only give one tip for your children: move to the countryside.

We step out of the house and are in the forest, we regularly use it for walks, but still are 10 minutes to the highway and 10 minutes to the "big city" schools in the village are better, kindergartens anyway.

Hello dear,

it was quite similar for us. I’m a city kid (a real big city, Hamburg, F, B) and my wife comes from a small town (actually medium-sized) and basically always wants it calm and green, while I also don’t like gray and noise, but rather the (walkable) availability of infrastructure and other amenities that come with it.

So there was quite a lot of potential for conflict regarding the location of the future property, but I kept an open mind and we went to view a property in the outskirts of Berlin. It was a nice big plot with a great house, but when we drove back home and saw nothing but some residential houses for kilometers and not even a bakery, even my wife was the first to say that this just wouldn’t do.

Pros and cons sound good. But think about your children especially. If they always need an hour by bus to get to school and that bus only runs three times a day, they will thank you for it by moving out as soon as possible and eventually putting you in a retirement home (exaggerated representation!).
I had to live like that as a teenager for two years and it was really not nice. Sure, you’d have daycare and elementary school nearby, but for at least 5-7 years you’ll have teenagers who not only have to get to secondary school but also don’t have a driver’s license yet.

And regarding a connection to home, honestly, 13 km is no argument. You probably will have at least one car anyway. Also, that’s a distance that can be nicely managed by bike in good weather, which I do every working day outside of winter (in Berlin!).

For me, price would play more of a role. Are the plots in the village maybe much cheaper so that you could afford a bigger/nicer house?
Here in Berlin it’s already like that, but for us, the disadvantages become too big as soon as you cross the Berlin/Brandenburg border.
Now the discussions rather revolve around the micro-location, i.e. public transport within walking distance, more green, big street in front of the house, etc...

Best regards

Tolentino

It is also important: In the end, both of you must be satisfied with the choice. A small compromise might be possible, but if it becomes too big, there will only be trouble later and one will become unhappy.

An example:
We live in a community with just under 20,000 inhabitants, right next to a big city. My wife would like to move a little further out (10-15 minutes by car). I also find living there very nice, but I do not want to spend even more time on the commute (currently 40 minutes each way). At the moment, I can ride my bike. However, due to the distance, that would no longer be possible. By car, it would take me 60 minutes (or more if traffic is bad). That is simply too long for me, at least in the long run. Adjusting working hours is only possible to a limited extent because I will partially be taking the children to kindergarten and, at the beginning, also to school.
No matter what my wife wants, I would never buy a house there because the disadvantages outweigh the advantages for me.