Sunday, November 16, 2014

Gentrification and security...

When we were house hunting we looked all over Fayetteville. We looked in beautiful, safe, well-established neighborhoods. We looked in quiet streets. We looked in cookie-cutter neighborhoods. We looked all over town. None of them drew me in like the south side of Fayetteville.

Ten years ago you'd be hard pressed to get me to drive through our neighborhood. If you would have told me then that I would buy a home in south Fayetteville (Can we make SoFay a thing?) I would have laughed in your face, and told you to lay off whatever it was you were smoking.

Something has been happening in our neighborhood, and it's made the appeal of this place hard to deny. Not only are we within walking distance to the heart of town, but people are buying these old homes, and bringing them back to life. Investors are buying properties and putting in beautiful modern row homes, and detached homes, and the value of this area is on the up and up.



Seeing all the great things happening in this area made us excited to find a home in this neighborhood. And while it's exciting to see these new homes, and old homes finally seeing some love, that doesn't change the fact that there is still a fair bit of this around... 


We came in on the earlier end of the gentrification of this neighborhood. I'm not really trying to discuss the moral ramifications of gentrification. That is another conversation for another time. We were a young family, looking for a property that we could make a good return on investment, nothing more, nothing less. We love our home. We love the location. We love that we can put high-end finishes in our home and see a return. And we love that other families see the potential this area has to offer.

Despite all that, we've had some security issues since moving in. I'm positive our issues have less to do with our neighborhood, and more to do with who we bought the house from, but some fishy things have happened that have led us to believe that some less-than-kosher operations were happening from our home. 

We've had people show up in our driveway at 3am leading with "you probably don't remember me, but..." Our nanny has had a guy show up looking for "Billy Bobcat." Most recently I've had a women pull all the way back in our driveway, get out of her car, walk around my vehicle several times looking in the car. When I walked outside with my dog, and greeted her with a "Can I help you?" she very quickly got back in her vehicle and left. After that occurred I called my husband crying, and told him we had to do something. Patrick called to get a top of the line security system installed immediately. 

I don't think a security system will be necessary forever. I don't feel unsafe in our neighborhood, and if we had bought our home from different people this probably wouldn't be an issue. (Side note: unscrupulous activity was not in our seller's disclosure.) Until all of the previous owner's homies get the memo that they no longer live here, the security system is a must. 

I know this isn't a fun, pretty part of the home renovation journey, but I never promised you'd only get to see the good parts. This is real life, and this is really what we've been dealing with. There's not really a manual on how to deal with situations like ours, but we're rolling with the punches and it'll be okay.

Until next time!

XOXO,
Victoria