Retirement Home Search #1

Let’s just say that the first potential retirement house we looked at was a big bust! These are just my opinion. The house is probably great . . for someone else. I had been looking at this place online for months and from the pictures I had seen, I figured it was not something that was going to work but we wanted to see it.  On our list is one story and an attached garage. This place is two story nad has a detached garage.

Vince and I have spent a lot of time making a list of things we HAVE to  have, things we would like to have and things that are deal breakers. That list continues to grow. The realtor we’re working with in Louisiana is very sweet but I think she’s feeling like we’re a bit picky. This is the first move we’ve made where we can be picky. In every other move, we’ve had to be in a specific location on a certain date. At this point, we could end up in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas or Missouri. My guess is that we’ll stay in Texas simply because of the tax situation. We’ve weighed and calculated and calculated and weighed everything til either of us can look at the price of a house and about tell you off the top of our head how much $$ it would save or cost us to live in one state over the other and even with the Texas property taxes being a bit higher, it almost always comes out costing substantially less for us to live in Texas. We’ve factored in multiple trips each year to Missouri, staying in a hotel, eating out and we’re still saving enough $$ that staying in Texas is the most cost effective thing for us to do . . by far. We’re not yet ready to commit to Texas . . but if someone held my feet to the fire this minute and made me say . . I’d say Texas.

The house we “looked at” yesterday is in Texas. It was a drizzly overcast day, which makes my pictures somewhat dreary looking but I love rainy days so I was good with looking at it in the rain.

The setting was gorgeous. The trees were gorgeous. I should stop there because it goes downhill, figuratively and literally from there.

I should say this at the outset. You’re all in this journey with us so I’ll share the good, the bad and the ugly and as always, I value your input but in the end, Vince and I get to make the final decision . . unless you’re buying!  🙂

The house is out in the middle of nowhere, which suits us just fine. We drove through a good bit of area that was not good. There was one place where the foundation had literally crumbled from beneath the house, there were several mobile homes that had probably not been visited by humans in years and years. In some places, even with just the minimal rain we had yesterday, I was worried that we weren’t going to be able to get through, and our SUV is 4 wheel drive. I didn’t even ask who maintains the roads and how well they’re maintained because my eyes tell me no one maintains the roads and they are not maintained very well. By the time we got to the house we were to see, we had pretty much made up our minds that it was not something we were interested in.

After driving what seemed like miles down this narrow, bumpy, crumbling road with hairpin curves, we come to a dead end area that had about 5 or 6 nice places.

I can’t tell you about the inside of the house because the realtor brought the wrong keys and we couldn’t get in! After spending about 45 minutes trying to make this key work or that key work, after having Vince try over and over, the realtor said “I’ll run back to the office and get the other set of keys”. She said it wouldn’t take long. We waited probably another 45 minutes and finally, Vince said . . let’s go!

While we were waiting, we had walked around the place and actually, I’m not sure when was the last time anyone had been there. There were at least four old vehicles that were . . I’d say abandoned. Flat tires, pieces missing, extremely expired plates. There was a huge 5th wheel camper there that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. The covers were blown off the air conditioners, the plates expired in 2012, it was covered in green gunk from having not been washed. There were numerous old tires piled up here and there. I said to Vince “Do you think the owners plan to move all this stuff when they sell this place?” He said “I doubt it!”

The seawall had not been maintained and there was a good bit of land lost to the lake already. It looks like there had once been a boat dock but it was gone. The pier was in such bad shape that Vince wouldn’t walk out on it.

The air conditioner was almost 19 years old.

All of the wood trim, decks, porches, needed refinishing. The logs on the house seemed to be in good shape.

The positive thing I can say . . there were lots of trees.

As we walked around, Vince said “Rita has never walked through leaves”. It brought back the memories of my childhood of playing in leaves. We would be directed to rake the yard and I would build a house . . raking leaves and making “walls” and then making openings for doors. I would design my future home . . bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms. I would drag my parents outside to see my newly erected home. Eventually we would get the leaves into a pile. My dad would light the fire and before long, we had roasted wieners and marshmallows.

The area from when we crossed Louisiana back into Texas and drove north . . before we got to the little town where this house was located . . we saw some beautiful places. They weren’t on the water but several times, Vince said . . I could live there! I said “Are you saying you don’t HAVE to be on the water?” He said “No, I don’t mind if we aren’t on the water . . just so we’re near the water.” I’m not sure he really means that but that does expand my search parameters a bit.

We learned two things yesterday that made the entire wild goose chase worth it . . first, we have to do more research about fracking. We knew there were some parts of east Texas where there is a ton of fracking going on. The area we were in yesterday is one of those areas. We will not consider anything with fracking nearby which is probably going to rule out a whole lot of east Texas because of oil in the area.

Second, Google Earth every location. I thought I was fairly familiar with most of East Texas. I had no idea there are hundreds and hundreds of chicken houses in that area. They are everywhere! I love my chickens but I don’t want to live where there are huge, commercial chicken houses.

On our way back to Louisiana yesterday, we were saying “home doesn’t nearly so bad” and discussed, again, whether we would stay right where we are but the lack of rain, the lack of green grass, the difficulty to grow anything because of the water situation, in the end, that’s what will get the best of us and send us packing.

We aren’t miserable there. We are happy there til we find where we want to be but yesterday . . we only found where we don’t want to be. That’s all part of the process. We were glad we went, glad we learned some things about that area that we didn’t know.