I strongly recommend getting a house where you can walk out your door and walk somewhere without feeling unsafe because the road immediately outside your house is dangerous if you aren’t in a car and have the destination you are walking be a pleasant environment to be a pedestrian (i.e. not endless stroads).

The impact on your health, especially if you can win the lottery and get a job within walking distance, cannot be measured easily and most people vastly underestimate the savings and quality of life impact from not having to drive everywhere for everything.

Reclusive house all day long.

Guaranteed peace and quiet whenever you want it.
No risk of lame neighbors right on top of each other.
Lower mortgage payments to free up cash for other activities.
Likely no HOAs and laxer building regulations to improve upon your property.
Worried about loneliness? Get a pet or two, or plant a garden.

Years ago I moved up to the mountains from suburbia, and I will never go back.

What's the internet like in the recluse one , that part is really important to me .

Buy the cheap house away from people, only use short sentences when talking to people when you have to venture into town, make and sell hand crafted wood statues of what you see out your window, build an underground bunker full of state of the art spy technology to monitor the town you live in, create a secret Cabal of other people monitoring their towns, slowly take over your country by blackmailing everyone you can, make it a federal crime to even look at your property, retire and enjoy the privacy.

You guys can afford houses?

"Hell is other people" - Jean-Paul Sartre

You can buy a house? Damn

Buy a cheap house and enjoy having money. In a few years your mortgage will be less than rent for a flat.

Cheap house but get a subscription to a gym/sport activity with the money you saved so you have social interactions?

Take the money you saved and remodel the recluse house exactly how you want. Maybe it's different there but neighbors that socialize and befriend each other have gotten pretty rare.

Recluse houses are better for debaucherous parties of all types anyway. You're more likely to get away with a little side hustle of manufacturing drugs too, which you could then invest back into the house, and parties.

It was fine meme until the "buy house" part.

Personally, I had this same decision a few years back. My choices were to buy a really nice house in town close to things with a small city lot, or buy a run-down fixer upper outside of town (20-30 minute drive) with a large wooded lot and all the space/privacy I could ever want outdoors. I chose the house in town because I was concerned that if I lived that far away from things, I would effectively be isolating myself and adding additional mental hurtles I would need to jump anytime I wanted to go somewhere, not to mention the effect it would have had on my depression.

I am quite pleased with having a grocery store within a 5-10 minute drive from my house. I have restaurants, bars, local shops, and even the public library within a 10-15 minute walk from my house. Having access to high-speed internet in town, vs satellite, or DSL out of town was also a deciding factor in my decision to live in town. Overall, I'm happy with my decision even if I don't have a large private yard to go play in.

My advice to you is to make a list of services, amenities, and conveniences that are important to you about your future home and then buy according to which better fits into the lifestyle you want to live. Best of luck.

Do not buy a recluse house unless you love spiders.

I've had neighbors for 28 years and they've never been a significant portion of my problems. Largely nice, mostly indifferent, sometimes annoying

Being close to things, short commutes, no driving and not being lonely though?

Remove any of those and I'm instantly worse off

A cheap house away from people? The horror

Recluse house all the way, one can always invite visitors/neighbours/friends etc, one cannot easily do the opposite when you're "too" close together.

Also, cheaper, means more money for banging parties.

How much do you value access to restaurants, lots of stores, and the sort of activities that are usually found closer to cities (like museums and concerts)? For some, the answer is not much, so buying a house away from those things is great. Other people would be miserable.

Buy a condo in a concrete building.

• quiet as fuck if you also get triple-pane windows
• neighbors are a rare part of your day if at all
• in the right area, no cars to drive, park, or recover from impound (you need a city with a subway though or forget about it)
• things will be nearby
• the rooftop is nice
• no lawn to mow
• no roof to repair yourself
• usually decent Internet options
• with some forethought, a high vantage and a good view.

We're stoked but I hope yours works out also.

Recluse house. Better to travel to people you like than be stuck near randos.

Get the nice house. You might not like the neighbors but you can hide from them in a nice house.

Wait, if you get the recluse house, you won't have neighbors, and you could always update the house slowly until it's nice.

Wait, over time, others will probably move next to you and it will no longer be a recluse house, so you'll be stuck with neighbors AND a less nice house.

Wait, they say fences make good neighbors so, if you get the nice house and then put up a fence....

Is this helping?

Get the cheap house then go out and do things experiences are worth their weight in gold. Plus if the other large house is in the burbs as many expensive ones are it will be hard to walk anywhere anyway so just invite people over and when you pay it off you can make it a cheap air bnb if you want.

If it were me, I would choose the recluse house. No questions asked.

Having lived in both, I'd recommend the latter.