If you live near a sports stadium, you can make some extra cash by renting out your home to fans on game days.

OWNING A HOME

Whether you're a sports fan, family man, soccer mom or soccer player, there are positives and negatives if you're going to live near a sporting arena. So if you're thinking of moving to the heart of a sports city, here are some of the things to consider:

• Property values. While it's easy to imagine them going down because of crime or strangers hanging around -- Reo envisions someday seeing scalpers on her front lawn -- they can also go up. Lynch says that Federal Hill is full of a lot of young professionals, and so he doesn't worry about falling property values. In fact, he owns a second house that he rents out.

• Star power. OK, maybe this isn't a reason to move near a stadium, but there's no denying that it's a perk. Peggy Collinsmith, who lives in Green Bay, Wis., grew up in walking distance from Lambeau Field, where the Green Bay Packers play.

  "When Bart Starr was a quarterback, he lived two blocks away," says Collinsmith of the football giant who played during the 1960s. "We would often see several of the players at church, stores and restaurants."

• You could turn a small, tidy profit living near a sports stadium. Your teenager could have a fun summer job selling popcorn at a baseball stadium, or -- just think -- your kids could become professional scalpers. But seriously, a lot of people make extra cash by letting people park in their driveways (and sometimes on their lawns) for a fee, and if you're up for it, there's actually an online business -- GameDayHousing.com -- that focuses on college football stadiums.

  One of the business' founders, Chris Brusznicki, explains the concept: "Homeowners who live near these stadiums leave for football weekends and rent out their places to groups of fans from out of town."

• Your life can easily be shaped by the sports schedule. Roberta Guise doesn't live near a ballpark, but she works 500 yards from one, and she often wonders what it would be like to live in one of the condos next to AT&T Park in San Francisco.

  "When the games let out, I'm trapped in my office for almost two hours because of gridlock. Even if people have season tickets and are avid fans, I can't imagine how they are paying up to $1.5 million for a condo on this industrial waterfront, where they're trapped hours at a time, six months of the year and forced to plan their lives around the ballgames."

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