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...

I'm Home

I got home Sunday afternoon from my Oregon trip to find the "for sale" sign in the yard and 9 cards from realtors on the counter top. I guess last week was pretty busy.

I started this morning with a simple cleaning up: making the beds, wiping the sinks, cleaning the stove top and of course starting the piles of laundry that were stuffed in the hampers. Our realtor called and said we were scheduled for two showings starting at 4 so I also made sure to wash the floors, vacuum, wash the windows, empty the trash and continue working on the piles of laundry. The rest of the garage had been cleared out by my husband while I was gone last week and it looked really nice. I learned that he put a lot of the stuff into the truck to hide it from view.

As the appointment time approached I used my husbands trick and stowed the dirty laundry that I had previously sorted in the garage to the trunk of my car and moved it out of the garage. I moved the truck to the street, put the dogs in the side yard and sat down to wait.

Meanwhile my husband called and said there would be an additional showing, so that meant three showings altogether.

The house and yard looked really good and the people that came through seemed to like it. One of the couples had been here once already and when they left their realtor poked her head in and said they would most likely be writing an offer tomorrow.

I can only hope it's a full offer.

This whole thing is a new experience for us and a little scary, I must admit. I did find two good properties in Oregon. That was kind of a different experience in itself which I'll go into a little later.

Here's to hoping there will be a bidding war for our house!! ;-)

Good Morning

Vicki and I were with the realtor yesterday from 10:15 in the morning until 7 PM. For the first hour and a half we went over my stack of properties (I think there were 22 of them!) and we were able to dismiss a few of them for various reasons. Then they were distributed into areas and while the realtor went to map them out Vicki and I grabbed a quick bite of lunch.

We decided to look at the furthest properties first and as the week progressed make our way closer to her office. Yesterday's pile had about five properties for us to look at.

As it turned out we missed the turn offs for the first two properties and had to do quite a bit of back tracking. And once we got to the first property we weren't able to even view it because although we called first we never received a call back and the road in was all locked up. I was sorry we couldn't see much from the road either. So on to the next one.

The second property had a shared driveway with about five other places and it was pie shaped. It was quite overgrown and pretty impassable. In fact the road to the pad at the very beginning of the property had a large trunk fallen half way over it. We could barely squeek underneath. I wasn't crazy about the layout and especially having *renter* neighbors. We discovered that when we talked to the young man at the driveway entrance. He had written in the dirt on his truck "bow hunting opens in four days". Lovely.

We tried calling on the third property and again didn't hear back, though we found out it was because we had been in a no cell reception area when that properties' realtor tried to call back. Fortunately we tried calling that realtor again from the driveway and arrangements were hastily made for us to see it.

It was a beautiful 90 acres, according to the owner about 1,000 feet across and about 1 mile deep, so it was a long narrow rectangular property. The house itself was not much to jump up and down about but I did fall in love with the property itself.

I can't get too excited yet because obviously that's the first home I was able to actually view and we still have quite a few to look at.

Meanwhile, back at home, my husband told me last night that since Monday morning we've already had four showings and there are three scheduled for today! Wow! Keeping my fingers crossed.

Here's what I saw this morning when I woke up at six am:

The full moon was just going down. Time to start my full day today!