Be prepared to deal with heavy traffic if you live near a sports arena.

GETTING AROUND

When you're a sports junkie like Kevin Lynch, living near a sports venue is paradise.

Lynch, 28, owns a house within 10 minutes' walking distance from M&T Stadium, where the Baltimore Ravens play, and a 15-minute stroll from Camden Yards. For a living, he runs a website devoted mostly to high school sports (SportsMaryland.com). He is a sports junkie, estimating that he attends 20 to 30 Orioles games a year.

"If you're a sports fan, you can't beat it," says Lynch of his community, Federal Hill, a neighborhood just south of Baltimore's business district.

He and his girlfriend, Christine Allman, often stroll to the stadiums, sometimes deciding on a moment's notice that they want to attend a game.

"We never worry about parking," says Lynch. "We'll decide we want to go, and 20 minutes later, we're in a seat. A lot of the hassles like traffic, you just don't have to think about. It's great."

Federal Hill, concludes Lynch, is "an incredible place to live, as long as you don't have a family."

Funny he should say that.

Autumn Rose Reo, 28, lives in Arlington, Texas, with her husband, Chad, a 31-year-old financial manager for a healthcare company. Reo is in marketing, and they have a 13-month-old baby boy, Jackson. When they first found their two-story house two years ago, they instantly fell in love with it. "It was built in the early 1980s, so it's an older home, which is what we liked about it," says Reo.

They were within a mile of the Texas Rangers Stadium as well as Hurricane Harbor, a giant water park, and an enormous amusement park, Six Flags Over Texas.

"When we moved in a little over two years ago, I was excited to find such a great house close to these family-centered destinations," says Reo. "Well, I'm not so sure how great it is anymore."

That's because they learned soon after that the new Cowboys Stadium would be built within a mile of their house.

The new stadium has brought a lot of construction projects -- widening roads, for instance -- and the new energy in the city has brought in new traffic and has also created plenty: With the cars moving very slowly now, the roads often resemble parking lots. "There's so much congestion right now -- it's a huge, chaotic mess," sighs Reo. "It's hard to drive anywhere, including my gym, the grocery store -- I can't even get to my dentist's office right now."

Only in their home for two years, the Reos are already considering selling and moving to a quieter part of Arlington.

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