Actually, I *have* been busy posting. It’s just that I’m finally getting our summer/fall journeys on line. So everything I’ve posted from last July on has been written very much after the fact. I would prefer to be more on time for the fresher writing feel, but I was overwhelmed at the time. I could blame Ken for his style of no down days while traveling, but I wasn’t always up to date when I was solo RVing and keeping a journal. So, mea culpa. I would also say I’ll do better from now on, but I know it won’t always be. So be it.
Since getting back to Tempe it’s been both a very busy time and a not much going on time. We’ve been very busy house hunting – looking at a several per week with the realtor and driving by many more. It’s been a tough housing market. Not many homes were on the market and the ones in the price range and condition we were interested in were also prime for investors. We would check the listings once or twice a day and, frequently, by the time we had driven by it (within 24 hrs) and called our realtor, several offers had already been made and no more were being accepted.
We actually bid on five homes. The first one was removed from the market by the selling bank (just came back on a few of days ago at a much higher price!). Selling agent said we would have won that one, too. We lost the next three. Finally, Ken overbid the last one by 15K and we won it. Closing is next Monday and we can start on the renovations that need to be done before we can move in.
Ironically, one of the reasons Ken wanted to sell his current house was to lower his monthly costs and have more money to play with. Travel primarily. And now, we are in a cash poor situation for the next several months at the minimum. Don’t ask for details, it’s complicated. Eventually, we will get back on the road, however.
Here’s a layout of the rooms, pretty much to scale
and a link to photos I took while we were looking over the house the second time. We were wondering how aggressively to go after this one. We decided we liked the location and house and yard enough to go for it, so we did.
