I know, I know… I really haven’t told you about the ‘thing we did’ but I’m getting there.
After our disappointing first hunt for a lot, we came home pretty deflated and took a week or two to regroup. Expanding our search seemed the right course of action. I even contacted a random highly rated realtor to help us search. What we were looking for was small potatoes to what he usually sold, but he was open to helping us.
Our search took us far and wide but we kept in mind the distance from our children. The word had gotten out to our adult children. Little rumblings were beginning to be voiced from them. I think they were a little unsure about what we were thinking. Actually, we were still a little unsure about our plan too.
They didn’t like the idea of us being five and a half hours away from our homebase. They wanted to make sure there was a hospital nearby and that they could actually reach us, especially for those who lived out of state. We tried to reassure them, telling them we hadn’t decided anything yet.
Of course, this was all out of love for us and we really did take into consideration their concerns. In honesty, it also left us feeling a little like they didn’t trust us to make a sound decision for ourselves, even if this wasn’t their intent.
So, what did we do? As prices were soring faster that a rocket’s lift-off, two months later we went back to the area we had first looked, five and a half hours away. The snow had melted and we had a better idea of where to look. We made an offer on a lot at market value but not at the sale price. It was on a pretty steep incline but had a gorgeous view. While we waited for a response, we spoke with an architect to discuss how to build on a slope.
They countered our offer but we declined, feeling like it wasn’t meant to be. Our very limited resources were also a consideration, as our desire was to do this thing debt free. We decided that this wasn’t the place for us and felt at peace with our decision. We would continue our search a little closer to home.
Stay tuned for our next steps into the unknown.