Forget about the front-yard flower gardens embraced by white picket fences, or backyard swimming pools with bottoms painted aqua blue.
Discard visions of leisurely strolls across lush lawns for friendly chats across those fences with your neighbor.
And don't count on the two-car garage or any real chance of turning up the stereo too loudly.
If you are a low- or moderate-income person with hopes of buying into the American dream, Delaware County may not be the place for you.
That's the word from many real estate agents, developers and planners. As they view the market, low- and moderate-income families that want to buy homes in the county are in a bind because the segment of the market that has traditionally been available to them - older, modestly priced homes - is fast disappearing, either because of sharply rising prices or because of the deteriorating conditions of the homes.
"Even in the lowest poverty areas in the county, like Chester, you can't get a house for less than $55,000, and that's one that has to be gutted," said 20-year-old Diane Holefelder.
Holefelder, who makes $6 an hour as an insurance service agent in Chadds Ford, is getting married this December. She grew up in Middletown, where her parents and grandparents still live.
She and her fiance, Craig Johnson, will have a combined income of about $26,000 a year. They want to live close to her parents, she said, but there seems to be little chance of that.
"We'd love to live in the county, but we can't afford it," Holefelder said.
So she and Johnson decided to move to the state of Delaware, where they recently bought a trailer home, with the intention of living there until they save enough money to afford a single-family house here, perhaps something like the modest home "my grandparents bought 30 years ago, and that will cost us $102,000."
Holefelder says that if she and Johnson are frugal in the early days of their marriage - "if we don't go out to eat, and scrimp and save" - then they may be able to afford to move into an older house in Delaware County in about three years.
It may take longer.
Because today, a 50-year-old row house with a small back yard and half a front porch in Lansdowne or Sharon Hill goes for about $85,000, and would require a $900-a-month mortgage payment with a conventional, 30-year loan at just over 10 percent interest.
