Headed Home Saturday

After I shut the laptop down tonight I'll pack it, along with all my other stuff except for what I'll wear Saturday.

We had a wonderful time here, as usual, and actually took a few hours today to drive by 6 of the homes I've got in my saved properties list.

We didn't get to look inside any of them, but just doing the drive-by confirmed that yes indeed, the people who take the pictures used in the listing are quite creative with camera angles!

One house looked really sweet "on paper", BUT the listing photos don't show the neighbor's yard with cars-on-blocks, the other neighbor's yard that looked  like a used Jeep/ATV dealership, or the house down the road a few hundred feet that just looked plain "weird".

One we looked at had NO garage at all, the garage having been converted into more living space. Don't know how I missed that in the listing, as a BIG garage is very high on my priority list.

Another had a HUGE yard, but the fence around the yard in the photos was gone! Since the photos were taken months ago, hopefully a new fence is in the works.

BUT....two of the ones I had saved were true gems. One has a very nice yard, with a "nature area" that the back yard abuts to, almost guaranteeing that the land will never be developed, and the other was a knock out. 30,000 sqft lot, a large garage/workshop as a separate building, and looked to be in excellent repair. It's been on the market for almost 6 months now, with the priced dropped $20k at the end of October.

My "local connections" are looking in to it to see if there might be code violations or other headache-inducing things wrong with it. They seemed to think it was still a bit overpriced considering the "comps" in the neighborhood, so they're going to discreetly nose around a bit on our behalf.

My wife has said she wants to seriously "run the numbers" on it when we get home. She's now thinking that we could go ahead and buy it, and let the kids rent it until we're ready to move. That's probably the only scenario I'd EVER consider being a landlord in!

And with family renting it, I could make repeated trips out here with a truck moving our extensive collection of "stuff", greatly easing the entire moving process.

AND...we had another "episode" of our Ford Exploder refusing to start. It's one of these keyless-start cars, loaded with electronics, and methinks there be some gremlins lurking within this particular one. The various modes of the electronic traction control quit working, and the auto-fold mirrors don't always report for duty.

I'd have to give this model of Explorer a strong "NOT Recommended", and we're going to tell Budget to send this one to the showers when we turn it in Saturday afternoon.

See you all on the flip side.........