Welcome to 7 Sonya Place!
Justin and I purchased this home a year after moving to the Capital Region. We both worked in downtown Schenectady and wanted to live in Niskayuna due to the great schools. When we first started looking for homes in Niskayuna, we were concerned by the high property taxes, but soon learned that some homes were both a part of Albany County and still in the Niskayuna School District. The considerably lower property taxes in these areas provided us more buying power. We were fortunate to find one such home — 7 Sonya Place.
We toured the home and had not expected to put in an offer since it was only the second house we viewed, but we immediately fell in love with the home’s layout. The main floor was largely open concept — with the kitchen completely open to the dining nook and family room. Given that we were planning to start a family in this house, this was exactly what we were looking for. There was also a first floor office/bedroom with double doors, which was great given that I often worked from home. The basement was unfinished and completely dry with French drains, making it ideal to finish if we ever ran out of room.
When starting our home search, one of the things we disagreed on was whether we wanted two-story/vaulted ceilings in the house. This was a feature I really wanted, while Justin thought this would be too energy inefficient (i.e., costing more to heat/cool). However, 7 Sonya Place provided a wonderful comprise as it had two-story ceilings over the kitchen nook, while not being a large area to heat as it didn’t extend all the way over the living room and kitchen. The second story balcony allowed us to easily see what was happening in the kitchen and living room from the second story hallway, allowing us to feel easily connected in a fairly large home. This is personally one of my favorite features of the house.
Justin’s favorite feature has been the location. It is in a quiet neighborhood with a single entrance; therefore, the only traffic accessing the neighborhood is cars or service vehicles going to our neighbors’ homes. Due to the low traffic, we have been comfortable letting our cats go outside and the neighborhood children are often playing basketball in the street. We often take late evening walks around the neighborhood without any safety concerns. I frequently travel for work and the house is only a few minutes from the airport. Despite being so close to the airport, it is still very quiet given that commercial jets are not able to fly over the neighborhood due to the layout of the airport landing strips.
Despite having only purchased this home two years ago and being completely in love with it, we have made the difficult decision to relocate to Boston for new career opportunities. We are looking for a similar home in the Boston area and frequently joke about having 7 Sonya Place picked up and moved with us. We are the second owners of 7 Sonya Place, having purchased it from the original owners in 2017. We look forward to passing this wonderful home on to the next owners and wish them many joyful memories in 7 Sonya Place.
Warmly,
Liz & Justin