Pay Attention to Noise When Buying a Home in Sacramento

Don’t buy a home near an airport.

When buying a home in Sacramento, you need to pay attention to the noise factor, even if you’re half deaf, which I partly am. When I was in third grade, I stuffed a soda straw into my right ear canal. Why? I don’t know. Why do little kids ram crayons up their noses? I don’t even recall doing such a stupid thing but the pain afterwards was particularly memorable. My mother did not believe I had an ailment and sent me to school anyway, and I spent most of the morning with my head on my desk, quietly sobbing. Next thing I knew I had a large vacuum hose attached to my ear, which caused a great deal of pain as it sucked out the straw at the doctor’s office.

That soda straw pierced my eardrum. As a result I have a slight hearing loss in my right ear, which means when I sleep, if I want to block out sound, I simply sleep on my left ear. There is somewhat of an upside to this mishap, especially since I once lived in shared quarters with 17 other guys in Nederland, Colorado. When you throw loud rock-and-roll from my younger decades into the mix, it’s a wonder I’m not deaf, but I suppose there is still time.

I do find that the older I get, the more sensitive to sound I become. Because the older I get, the more I appreciate silence. (Silence is golden but my eyes still see . . . with the help contact lenses for old people.) I treasure the sound of nothing. Absolute quiet. Peaceful. Tranquil. Silent. No sounds of the freeway, children screaming, dogs barking, no helicopters overhead or planes, no logs crackling in a fireplace, no water running through a sprinkler system, no birds singing or crickets cricketing or frogs croaking, not even a sound of wind blowing through treetops.

Home buyers don’t want a lot of noise, either. A friend of my husband, a former editor at the Sacramento Bee, once said the thing she disliked about Sacramento was the sound of the freeway no matter where you were. She is right, it is hard when buying a home in Sacramento to stay away from neighborhoods where noise does not exist on some level. Even though my home in Land Park is at least a mile from Old Sacramento, I can still hear the train on the weekends, but dual pane windows blocks out all other sound.

My sister lives under a flight path in Minneapolis. You can practically identify what the first-class passengers are drinking, the belly of the plane flies so low. My husband lived 2 blocks from the El in Chicago. Home prices in those types of neighborhoods are much lower than in areas where noise is reduced.

If you’re in the market to buy a home in Sacramento, stand in the yard for a while and listen. Go there at different times of the day and different days of the week and listen. Ask yourself if you can adapt to the noises you hear. Because when it comes time to sell — and there will be a time you will want to sell — that noise factor will influence the price a buyer will pay. You just don’t realize it now because you’re surrounded by sound and noise every day, and you’re probably much younger than me. Not to mention, that noise-polluted home is probably very affordable. I always say the best time to think about selling a home is when you’re buying a home in Sacramento.