And Finally...

After that second day of driving around with the realtor (see previous post) Vicki had something to say to me. "Please drive tomorrow. I'm begging you, will you please drive tomorrow. I'll drive! Just don't let her drive again. Please!"

I had to agree. So the next day as we were getting ready to leave the realtor's office I casually said, "How about I drive this time?"

She looked a little surprised and commented, " What, is my driving so bad? Ha ha."

I ignored that and continued with my explanation. "Well, I figured since you are more familiar with the area it will be easier for you to navigate, and plus if you have to get on the phone you don't have to worry about getting a ticket!"

She didn't argue and we all piled into my car. I have to say, it was much better that way after all. I drove for the remainer of the time we were there.

I didn't take pictures of all the properties we went to, but here are two more of the better ones.

This one is in a town called Glide. At first I didn't really want to see it because it was just 10 acres, but my husband told me not to count any out just because of a smaller acreage. As it turns out, I'm glad we went to see it, though it didn't work out after all.

We had to go up a good hill and I know I'd have to get a 4 wheel drive in the winter. Once we got to the top we saw what appeared to be a nice little cottage. Boy was I surprised!

It was another of those enter on the second floor which was the main floor and it had another whole floor below. It had really great decks on three sides, on the upper and lower floors.

The views were awesome!

The inside was also quite nice. The kitchen had been recently remodeled. There was an office as well as a hobby room. Vicki and I both agreed this would have been a fabulous party house!

This property also had a couple of outbuildings, including a strange open barn thing. I don't even know how to describe it other than that. Then there was a large shop with a good sized apartment attached on the back side. That apartment was nicer than some of the mobile homes we saw!

If I didn't have plans to bring all my animals with me and maybe just do with a sheep or two I may have gone for this place. Unfortunately the only flat area was the half acre that the home and buildings were on. The rest was all at about a 45 degree angle straight down. This one was listed at $366.650.

This next property was the furthest away, in the town of Drain, which is in the northern part of Douglas County. This one was two mobile homes on 44 acres with a good sized stream (Sand Creek) bordering one side of the property.

The main house wasn't in too bad of shape, and actually looked better inside than out.

This view is showing a garage/shop next to the main house and the bottom frame of an old mobile home in the foreground.

From the house looking back towards the road.
The "back yard".
The opposite view looking back towards the house.
A really nice piece of forest.
Some pastures.

There was a young kid (19-ish?) waiting around and we took the opportunity to ask him some questions. It seems the creek does flood every year and the pasture just below the house floods.

At one time previous owners attempted to have a Christmas tree farm. This is at the furthest end from the house, near the main road.

So that one was also on my list of possibles, especially with the $285,000 price. It has since dropped to $282,800.

One of the things I learned is not to fully trust the pictures posted on the internet by the agents. There were a couple that looked half way decent in the pictures but after being there in person and seeing the surroundings the real life picture left a little to be desired.

One funny example of that was a glowing description of a 10 acre property. This is not a joke. We had to go up "JR Drive" and turn on "Sue Ellen Way". Shades of Dallas! The picture on the internet showed a nice, newer mobile home. What it didn't show was that two feet behind and two feet in front of the mobile home the land was at about 60 degrees! And the entire property was like that.

It's too bad I can't take the best house and put it on the best property. But I can't do anything until our house sells anyway.

I was also surprised at the number of places that weren't cleaned up. Like I mentioned yesterday I've got to wonder if these people really want to sell. It was just amazing to me at the junk all around the properties that were occupied. Don't their realtors tell them how to clean it up? Or do they just not care. Obviously they don't watch HGTV like I do! Fortunately I can pretty much overlook the clutter and imagine myself in there, but I know a lot of people can't do that.

We were supposed to have a showing tonight but the person cancelled and rescheduled for Tuesday. And in anticipation of today's showing I washed all the windows, the floors, the sinks, the tub, the toilets, made the beds, picked up the laundry, dusted, vacuumed, polished the stainless steel appliances, raked all the leaves out of the flower beds and from under the olive tree, and swept out the garage. I'll sure be glad when this is all over.

And I hope it's sooner rather than later!

More Looking

We continued on with our property search the next day. Once again, we drove the realtor's car.

And once again we missed a few and had to back track to find the properties. Oy vey! After a while it became a joke amongst us: would we be able to find the next property without having to back track?

This one was on a beautiful 20 acre piece loaded with oak trees. It had an older mobile home on it and a really nice shop building. The real problem was the mobile home. When we first pulled up and were looking for the lock box we noticed a multitude of wasps buzzing around. That was a little uncomfortable.

The entry door is that white door on the right. This is from the living room looking to the kitchen.

A very dated kitchen.

View from the kitchen towards the living (again, the entry door is the white door on the left.)

This is the main bathroom. The house was set up to be wheel chair accessible, as you can see with this roll-in shower. Anyone who knows me knows I prefer a tub.

The outbuildings were much nicer. There was a smallish chicken coop (not shown) and this shop that was divided into three sections.

This was the largest, then the back portion, accessible from this room and another door on the outside, was divided into two more rooms for storage or crafts or whatever. There was a giant black widow in one of those rooms. By the time we got to that area I was so creeped out by all the other webs and creepy crawlies I decided to forgo the spider photo op.

The property was the best part of this whole package. It was all on a gently sloping hill, and like I said, had tons of oak trees. I could easily picture my cows and possibly new sheep grazing out there with my riding trail criss crossing between the large paddocks.

This is the upper corner of the property (where the trees are on the right) looking at the neighbors next door (on the left) and across the valley. The price tag on this piece was $299,000, which is easily within our budget. But not with that house. This valley is being advertised as the next wine growing region and that may be why the price was kind of jacked up.

Now here was another property we looked at that was at the bottom of a valley, so it was all flat. This was one of those odd places supposedly for sale. I say supposedly because the owners said not to drive in because they didn't want us to "disturb the tenants". ??? Is it for sale or not? I'm not going to buy something I can't fully examine!

So here are just a couple of pictures taken from the outside fence line.

It was supposed to be 36 acres and since we didn't have an aerial or plot map we had to guess at the boundaries.

As we were driving away I said that it just didn't look like 36 acres to me. I found out later when the realtor ordered an aerial map that we had only been looking at about 15 of the acres. It was an "L" shaped property and we were only looking at the small end of the L.

They were asking $375,000 for that one. It would have been interesting to see the interior of the two homes on that one. According to the flyer the main residence was "super good cents". Not sure about that from what we could see from the road. This may be a "come back for a closer look later" when the time comes.

This next home was up a steep hill. By this time I thought the realtor would have known pretty much what I was looking for. By the time we got up to it I could already tell it wasn't going to work for me, but since we were there and the house was vacant we went ahead on in. I have to admit, this was one of the nicer homes from the outside and I was curious to see what the $350,000 price tag came with.

This is from the side of the house looking out the back. The main floor was the top floor. Then there were stairs to a large basement area with another almost finished bedroom. It had a nice big deck out the back as you can see.

I love the oak trees! Unfortunately most of these 24 acres was pretty steep, and therefore unusable for my needs.

From the nook through the kitchen to the living room.

Here you can more easily see the steepness I was talking about. It was all like this except for the immediate area the house was sitting on.

Too bad. I liked this house and it was within our means.

A few things I haven't mentioned yet were about the realtor. She didn't seem very organized.

If I were the realtor and I was unfamiliar with the listing I would have checked on the map and maybe even printed a map out for each location. I would have ascertained what type of property my client wanted and therefore saved a lot of time and driving by not going to places that wouldn't have worked. Knowing my client was from out of state I would have made appointments for the places that had tenants. I would have double checked the MLS to make sure the list she gave me had all the types of places she was looking for, especially since she admitted her list was incomplete! (I found a few places we could have gone to after I got home!)

Having said all that, there was the issue of her driving. She had to fill up with gas every day. Was she waiting for me to offer to pay for gas? Once she stopped to get lunch (Vicki and I had already eaten). She ended up getting a small bag of nuts. Was she waiting for me to offer to buy her lunch? She drove excrutiatingly slowly. Several times she stopped in the middle of the road to look at a "cute house". When she was looking for her sunglasses or phone (while driving) she kind of swerved around the road just a little. When cars came by she would move into position to let them pass and she would give them a wave and say "we're just tourists!" Once she made a turn onto a side road while she was doing something else. She was then driving in the wrong lane and another car was coming at us. I had to say "car...CAR" before she moved over to the proper side. "Just sightseeing!" At the property above where we weren't supposed to go in lest we "disturb the tenants" when she backed out of the driveway she ran one wheel off the street and almost backed into a ditch.

Then there's the issue of not getting her full attention. As I mentioned earlier she couldn't see us that first day because she had other things to do. Then one of the days we couldn't get started until afternoon because of another business she had (unrelated to real estate) that she had to do. And another day was a late start so she could take care of "personal business".

Several people have told us to get a new realtor. So how do we break it off? We didn't sign any contracts so there isn't really a legal issue. I do feel kind of bad because she has been sending us listings (albeit through an automated system so she's not really doing anything). She did drive us around. She did order several aerials of properties so we could see the boundary lines (I assume she has to pay for those--how much I don't know). And to top it all off her mother is ill.

Do I just not make any contact with her again? Ignore future e-mails?

I don't like this part. I'd appreciate any helpful suggestions.

***more tomorrow!***

Property Pictures

I thought I would share some of the photos I took of some of the properties.

I didn't take any of the first location since we were just at the side of the road and couldn't really see anything anyway. This is the old barn on the second property. Notice the deer in the back door. (Remember you can click on each picture to enlarge.)

Inside the barn.
Back side of the barn.
This was just off to the side of the barn. Notice the deer in the middle.

This was what most of what I could see looked like. Kind of hard to get around to see what the property actually looked like beyond the entry point where the barn and the mobile home was. BTW we couldn't get into the mobile and there were a lot of wasps taking up residence in the eaves so we left it alone.

This is the 91 acre property that we liked. This is the house from the road.
One of the older outbuildings.

The hay barn. It's on the other side of the stream (didn't take a photo of that).

What I liked about this property was that it had usable areas. What I mean by that is there were spaces that could be easily used as pasture areas or even possibly planted with alfalfa. Also one of the things I would like to do is have a nice riding path, with some little jumps along the way. This place would fill those needs nicely.

The views were wonderful.



The fence is the property line. This is looking at the neighbors.


One of three streams on the property, two of which are year round.

There is allegedly a spring behind all those bushes.

Down the trail going through the dense...

...to the clearer area.
And finally a couple of the gravestones.

The inscriptions were very faded but I was able to make out a "Mc-something" on the name and the "died in 1840". Yes, I know it's wierd but I thought that was pretty cool.

...more tomorrow...

A Few Changes

It's been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. I guess I don't handle stress too well.

I had a great time looking at various properties while I was in Oregon but there were some things happening that kind of stressed me a bit. I think I mentioned that we didn't meet with the Oregon realtor until Tuesday. Originally I had contacted her a week earlier to let her know I was planning on coming up but that week "wasn't good" for her, so I postponed my trip until the following week.

When Vicki and I got up to my sister in law's house on Sunday I contacted the realtor and she said she wasn't able to meet us until Tuesday because she had some things to do on Monday. This was after she knew we were going to be there. Needless to say I was a little disappointed. But we didn't waste Monday. We went to Florence, did some shopping, had a little lunch, and took some time out to shoot a few photos.

On Tuesday we went to the realtor's office at 10 am and we went over my list of properties that I mentioned I wanted to see. I had mentioned that the list was incomplete because I had failed to make copies of some of the properties. When I tried to go back to make copies of some of the properties for my trip I discovered that the links were only good for 2 weeks and I didn't know at that time how to find them again. I'm not sure if the realtor missed this comment of mine or if she chose to ignore it or what, but we just went over what I had at the time.

We ended up splitting the properties into several groups, according to location, from furthest from the office to the closest, and one or two we were able to disregard altogether because the property had restrictions (like CC&R's) that I was not willing to deal with.

We took some time off at that point so she could look on the map at where the properties were and Vicki and I went to get some lunch. She was just about done when we got back and then she asked what kind of car I was driving, as she had a small Saturn.

I answered somewhat incredulously that I had a Hyundai Sonata, which is about the same size as her Saturn. That's about all I said because I wasn't going to offer to drive. I always thought that realtors are supposed to take you around in their vehicles, after all, that is what they get paid for. Am I wrong?

So anyway we piled into her car after she cleared some space from the seats. We had planned on seeing about five properties so off we went towards the first one. It was about 100 acres listed at $399,00, at the upper end of our price range. But I wanted to see it because it was a large property and perhaps there was something we could negotiate over since the home was about 90 years old!

Off we went and on and on we drove. Hmmm. Something didn't seem right so eventually we turned around and headed back. We saw the road we were supposed to turn on and went the right way. We found the drive but it was locked up with a chain and padlock. The realtor said she had called ahead but as of that point had not received a call back. The property was fairly wooded from that point in the road so we really couldn't see much. So that trip was pretty much a bust.

We headed off for the next property, about 80 acres with a mobile home. It was deja vu. We went too far, had to back track, and finally found the place. I find it amazing how the on-line pictures make a place look way better than it actually is in person. I guess that's what they are supposed to do though... that is, suck a person in? When we finally found that particular property we found it was a shared drive with about five other properties. There was a guy in a truck parked there and he didn't know the property we were looking for. He told us he was a renter and had just moved in about a month ago. In the dirt in the back of his truck was written "four more days until bow hunting opens". Oh boy.

Anyhow, the barn in the picture was really cool, but we couldn't even look in the mobile home as it was locked and somehow we couldn't get in. I couldn't see much of the rest of the property because it was very overgrown and there was no way to get through. I unfortunately left my machete at home (just kidding, but only just a little).

The next property we went to was a 91 acre property, long and thin. The realtor said she had called prior and had not received a call back by the time we got there. She tried once more and actually got a hold of the listing agent while we were in the driveway. He called the owner and we were able to have a real look-see finally.

Once again, the house showed much better in the photos than it did in real life. I have to say the house was ok, but nothing special. It was obvious that one or both owners were heavy smokers. If we ended up with this one then we'd have to replace the carpet and repaint the walls just to get rid of the awful cigarette smoke smell. The special was the property.

Since the listing agent was unable to be there the owner took Vicki and me out to explore the property. Our agent stayed at the house with the owner's wife. We piled into his four wheel drive truck and he took us across the year round creek behind the house to the main section of the property. (There was no bridge.)

Now that was a lot of fun! We went up a slight slope to a flat area , then again up a hill to a flat area and so on to the end of the property. According to the owner the property was approximately 1,000' wide and about 1 mile deep. It was about 1/2 fairly clear (some tall weeds and blackberries) and 1/2 densely forested. There was a spring and another small marshy area. The front part of the property was a flat approximate 10 acres with a couple of older outbuildings along with the house.

As we were coming back down the hill the owner told us he had one more thing to show us. He took us to a side portion and we got out and followed him into a grove of trees. He showed us some small headstones from a grave yard on the property. We could barely make out the dates: 1840! I thought that was the best part of the whole property.

At that point it was almost 7pm so we drove back to the office and made arrangements to meet the next day.

...more tomorrow...