real estate adventures

After our trip to Berea on Memorial Day weekend, James and I put in an offer on a 5-acre property with a lot of UP! last Thursday. It had much to recommend it-a creek, nice neighbors, and an existing septic system, water, electric and cable were on the property, and it had a southern exposure on an east-facing slope. The previous house burned down about four-five years ago, and there was a pile of rubble/ash that needed to be cleared.
It has a creek down by the street, and goes UP (and UP some more!) from there. We'd have clearing work to do-rubble, trash left in the shed, brush that's grown up during the unattended years, etc. Fauna in the area includes a variety of song birds, deer, some bobcats, a bear that wandered through a couple of years ago, and rattlesnakes that come down to the creek in the dry season. James figured we'd just build them a pond further up the hill.

The neighbors told us there are wet-weather springs, so we'd have to figure out where those were before siting the house, but we could manage that.

We'd need to clear a good bit of underbrush, but that's free mulch. There were a couple of dying pines, and a poplar closer to the house site than we'd like, so those would come down and be cut for firewood. A few other trees would need to be cut to open a clear solar window, and we'd try to use those in our actual construction.

We could make it work!

It had been on the market for about 10 months, so we knew it was a bit over-priced, besides not showing well, so we offered just over tax assessment for it, but included contingencies that the septic system pass approval to get a building permit, and the owner obtain an easement for the driveway that the last survey (1995) showed as encroaching on the neighbor's property. We'd already talked to the neighbors and knew they didn't think it did, but we wanted to avoid problems in the future.

We submitted the offer Thursday morning, with a 5 PM Friday deadline for response. Late Friday our agent called to request an extension because the owner's agent had found out that he was out of town for the weekend. Could they have until Monday morning?

There was no response on Monday, so when I called my agent at 7 PM I gave the owner until 10 AM Tuesday to actually get in contact with me or we pulled the offer. About 9:30 AM I got a call from a gal in Berea who understands the permaculture/eco-friendly (eco-freak) scene, and she had some questions about the street possibly becoming a corridor, or paralleling the corridor for the future continuation of the bypass under construction to the north. (One more concern about that property.) Timmie also said she just bought almost two acres with a tear-down house four miles closer to town, so appropriate property is available. She's going to keep her ears open for us.

Discussing this with James, we had gotten to the point that we weren't going to do anything further to pursue the original property. So, of course, when we got home from our family trip to the library I had a message waiting from our agent.

The seller's agent had finally gone out to his house. He hadn't checked his messages and didn't know he had an offer! He accepted the price as long as we dropped the driveway easement contingency. If we hadn't already gotten to the point that we weren't going to renew the offer, we would probably have negotiated from there to increase the price of the property to cover the cost of a survey and filing paperwork at the courthouse, but we were past that.

Not wanting to buy a property that might lose use of the driveway should the neighbors decide to sell, and being too far from the site to deal with things ourselves, we're letting this offer go.

I'm back to shopping!

We're moving. . .

to Berea!!!!!!!!

Okay, so we won't be moving for another four years (or three if both twins choose to follow Liza's example and graduate early), but -after looking for at least two years- we've found our community.

We want out of "the city", space to extend our gardens, a simple life of gardens, music, relationships, and so forth. We'd been focusing on the eastern side of the Appalachians with no success. Our thinking has been that James's family is in C'burg & Waynesboro, and I still have two brothers in the DC area. We'd like to be near them. Getting other places is easy from the DC & BWI airports.

But we want out of the megalopolis, and the traffic and density, etc. We already live our lives at a slower pace than most folks, and quite happily so.

James's military retirement gives us options since it provides a minimal income-but with medical coverage for a very reasonable price. We figure that once the kids graduate and we clear the housing expenses (mortgage, primarily, but also most utilities), we could easily make enough money to cover the rest of our expenses (in a lower cost-of-living area) with part-time or temporary work. We'd be able to select work based on interests/passions/values, rather than having to focus on the paycheck.

Our goal is to have the property paid off and money saved for building expenses so that James at least, if not both of us, can take a year or two and focus on the building without having to fit it in around a job. And be able to spend much of our time making the world a more beautiful place. . .

After investigating and visiting various communities in the Piedmont (NC through VA, and looking into PA) without finding "our place", I figured we'd widen the search field a bit.

What are we looking for?
A community within an hour's drive (or a little bit more) of a good-sized military base so we can take advantage of the retiree's benefits (medical and maybe commissary), a college town to provide a more diverse perspective on the world (since other small towns can be very homogeneous) and opportunities for me to teach (which rules out most church-affiliated schools except Quaker ones), a public library, a Friends' Meeting, hopefully a Buddhist group of some sort for James, contra-dancing nearby, and affordable non-toxic land (we can build soil but cleaning up major toxins can be a problem). Access to the Interstate system is a plus, but we don't want to be within sound range of the road or train tracks.

We want something in the 2-10 acre range within a couple miles of the college so we can use bikes as our primary mode of transportation for much of the year. Outside a neighborhood association because we don't do lawns! A southern exposure or at least solar access is essential.

Nice-to-haves include: bike trails nearby, a creek or pond, established nut & fruit trees

We'd rather not have a house on the property, since we want to build and won't be moving for a couple of years anyway (vacant houses deteriorate and we aren't looking to be landlords!).

James and I spent Memorial Day weekend in Berea, KY. Why Berea?
It has all of the must haves PLUS an active sustainability group and other environmentally-focused folks. Berea College even has an Environment and Sustainability Department, a history of supporting the Appalachian people and culture, and a philosophy I love! The town grew up around the college, and the community seems to have a more tolerant/open-minded attitude than other small-ish communities we've visited. I received multiple welcoming responses from emails I sent to the Friends and the sustainability group. We met a local musician, Mitch Barrett (check out his Sacred Yard song!), our first night there-and he put us in touch with other folks we needed to talk to.

In short, it feels like a place we could almost "fit in", feel comfortable, connect with like-minded folks, contribute, and so forth. And it's beautiful country, besides being where all my mother's family has come from for roughly two centuries!