Day 62

We went out with the realtor today. There was a little mix up in communication. Ellen thought that we weren't going because we couldn't get permission to look at one of the houses. That turned out not to be true. So the realtor ended up waiting for us for half an hour before she called us up and asked "where are you?".

We saw 3 properties. One was a relatively old house on 7 acres. It was set up as a horse operation with a large barn. The house was small, but the garage had a large carpeted, heated, and air conditioned work room. The weird thing about the place is that none of the buildings had ever been painted. The neighbors next door raise emus. We decided to pass mainly because we don't need a horse property.

The next house was one that we really wanted to see. It was an older house on 10 acres. The land was great and the house so-so. What made it a non-starter was the road noise from a fairly busy county road that fronts the property.

The last house was a winner. It is a log house on 2 acres with a great separate apartment over the garage. The apartment and some of the house is furnished. The lot was small but the house is well positioned on it. There's an option to purchase the adjacent 2 acre lot. It even had an covered area for parking a trailer. The bad news is that it's so near a busy road that there's a fair amount of road noise. Also it's overpriced - 10 to 15 percent over appraised value.

While we were driving we talked on the phone to a realtor about a fourth property. It turns out to be on a flood plane. Flood insurance is $100/mo. We didn't think it was worth the extra cost.

According to the MLS we've now seen everything of interest in our price range in that area. It's time to make a decision. I think that we'll end up going back there one more time to look at the two front runners. Then we'll probably make an offer. Setting a price will be interesting. One of the properties is priced below appraisal. The other is priced above it. If we could get the second one for appraised price I think we'd have gotten a pretty good deal.