What is the relationship between housing characteristics and the elements of flourishing?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/7am/rational_home_buying/ Does this help?
Other things that come to mind: being able to walk to places, lack of little things that take more mental energy than they should (on street alternate parking is one of those for me).
Your housing should make it easy and enjoyable to do things you value. Live near a gym or a beautiful park if you want to exercise more. Make sure the kitchen is decent if you want to eat out less. I know that socializing is good for me, but I'm bad about making plans and starting conversations. So I live with introverted, nerdy roommates (the sort of people I get along with best), and I'm trying to move to a nearby neighborhood where people hang out and talk outdoors a lot.
Your housing should not make you stressed about money. For most people, it's their largest budget category, and not very flexible. The common wisdom is that housing plus debt payments should be less than 1/3 of your income (with possible exceptions if you rent in an expensive city). If you can go lower than this without sacrificing too much, I'd say do it - having extra cash is better for human thriving than fancy housing. (Possible ways to turn cash into thriving: travel, take unpaid vacation or time between jobs to work on a side project, visit far away friends, be able to walk away from a job or living situation that becomes terrible without lack of money stopping you.)
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