You don’t buy a lot and build a brand-new house without thinking for about a bajillion hours about the kind of place you’d like to have. For my husband and me, those bajillion hours distilled down to a few core principles rooted in everything I’ve ever learned about place attachment:

We wanted an infill lot in an existing neighborhood with trees We wanted to be in walking distance to stuff we cared about We wanted to be closer to downtown We wanted a front porch

Five months in, I stand by...