Some people like to cut their Christmas trees in the mountains and drive them back here to brighten their homes. I hoisted mine onto my shoulder and carried it six blocks to my new house like some kind of urban lumberjack, with my two young daughters following close behind and amused drivers stopping to let us cross the city's busy streets.

Come to think of it, I could have walked three blocks in the other direction and bought my tree from the fine folks at Asbury United Methodist Church at the other end of my street. But TROSA had sent me a coupon for $5 off as a good-neighbor welcome, so I walked a little farther to the Northgate Mall tree lot.

I have been seeking this walkable lifestyle for nigh on a decade. I almost found it in Carrboro, where I lived for most of the past five years, but I could never afford to live close enough to the town center to take full advantage of it.

As one Realtor told me during my house hunt in Durham, a lot of us "Carrboro kids" are moving to Walltown because "it's hip" - so hip, in fact, that I had trouble finding a home there I could afford. Then I discovered the City of Durham's "Neighborhood Incentive Program," which provided me with a $30,000 second mortgage at two percent interest, shaving about $75 a month off what I would have paid if I had borrowed the full cost of my house at a market rate. That enabled me to buy a much bigger, nicer house than I had imagined buying - a place my girls and I can call home for as long as I can foresee.

The NIP targets Walltown, Northeast Central Durham and Southwest Central Durham - the area along Chapel Hill Street west of the Durham Freeway and south to Lyon Park. It's part of the city's effort to "revitalize inner city neighborhoods." The NIP is one of several city programs available to first-time homebuyers, who also have access to the $8,000 federal tax credit, making this a great time to buy.

So far this fiscal year, only three buyers (my sister and I are two of them) have used the NIP, borrowing a total of $82,300. The city has up to $428,000 a year to lend through its various downpayment assistance programs. To qualify, you can't have owned a home in the past three years, and your household income needs to fall at or below 80 percent of the area's median, ranging from about $40,000 for a single person to $60,000 for a family of five.

I moved to Walltown in October because I wanted to be able to walk to a grocer like Whole Foods, a music venue like Broad Street Café, two guitar stores and the wide variety of restaurants along Ninth and Broad, not to mention all the resources of Duke's East campus. I'm not much of a shopper, but I was even excited about being able to walk to the mall and catch a movie.

It had never occurred to me that I would be able to walk to get my Christmas tree, like when I was a kid and my dad and I went into the woods behind our house to cut them down. Such is the embarrassment of riches for those of us living in the Walltown neighborhood, and it's within the reach of more of us because of the city's Neighborhood Incentive Program.