Last week I hosted a gathering to support our local schools. We opened with the question, why did you move to Lafayette? 

Almost everyone said it without hesitating. The schools. 

As the conversation grew, people talked about how they chose their house. It was so interesting to hear a common theme in their responses, the house picked us! In Lafayette, where fewer than 300 homes sell each year, the most coveted neighborhoods might see one or two transactions each year. To land in the neighborhood they really wanted, they had to buy the house that was available when they were ready. It often meant not the dream kitchen. Not the renovated bathrooms. Not the perfect backyard. Just the right street, the right schools, the right community, and the house that happened to be there. 

And here's the remarkable part. Not a single person in that room regretted it. 

Todd and I know this feeling well. We bought our house 25 years ago for the neighborhood, not the house. Since then, the home has evolved through multiple chapters, and we have never once wished we'd made a different choice. We have watched this market for decades. We could have moved many times. But why would we leave this loved neighborhood that we made sacrifices to get into? 

In today's world, time is the one thing nobody has enough of. Buyers want to move in and start living, and an updated home promises exactly that. No projects, no waiting, no mess. I understand the appeal completely. 

But something interesting came up that evening. Once people moved in and started building their lives, the older kitchen started to fade into the background. The need for perfection, or the need to control something in a process that so often feels uncontrollable, quietly disappeared. The community they were building, the neighbors they were meeting, the life taking shape around them, that became what mattered. 

You can renovate a kitchen and create your dream spaces. You cannot renovate a neighborhood. 

Todd and I have lived that truth for 25 years, and every person in that room had too. It was a pleasure to be reminded exactly why we still live where we planted our roots in 2001.