Q: My husband and I are moving to the city where one of my dearest friends lives. She really wants us to move to her neighborhood (“You can walk over for barbecues! Go on morning runs together!”). I love the idea of being close, except I hate her neighborhood. It’s a bunch of huge McMansions with things like fake turrets and nonsensical designs. I get why she and her husband chose it—there’s lots of space for their big family—but you couldn’t pay me to live there. On paper, though, it makes a lot of sense: It’s close to my work, in my price range, etc., so my friend doesn’t seem to catch on to my polite demurrals (“That might be a little too much house for us” or “We’re looking in a lot of neighborhoods.”) What can I tell her besides “your house is hideous”?
—Hideous House

A: Unless she’s calling you every day and going through all the listings in her neighborhood, I think it’s fine to keep offering her polite-yet-accurate demurrals until you eventually find a house elsewhere. There’s a natural expiration date to this conversation, and that will be when you move into a house in a different neighborhood. In the meantime, you can stress how great it is that you two will finally be living in the same city. If you absolutely can’t stand her gentle but insistent questions, then pick a household feature or two you know her neighborhood can’t provide that are absolute necessities for you and tell her: “We’re looking for something with less than 2,000 square feet, and [your neighborhood] just doesn’t fit the bill. Tell me what you think of these two houses we’ve been looking at.”

(Original column)