We have purchased a property! Not the property we have spent the past year developing and believed we would be purchasing, but a different property.
As many of you know we rented the property we moved to in May of 2012. We had a handshake agreement to purchase the property at market value the summer of 2014.
Most of you know that we have moved to Digby county.. many of you have asked
why. Well it's a long story.
The synopsis is: we had a verbal agreement with the landlord at our last
place to purchase the property in the summer of 2014. So we spent a year making improvements to the property; building penning in the barn, running
electricity to the barn, building a 2 acre market garden, planting an extensive
herb garden, putting in fruit trees etc.
Then last spring the landlord told us he wanted to sell last summer. We
agreed to talk and potentially purchase last summer. The landlord had the property appraised and sent a note to us via our 12 year old son naming a price. In the note he said he would be over in a couple of days to talk. Well he never showed up, the asking price was about $100,000 over the price we were given when we had the property appraised.The owner never came over to talk and basically implied the price was written in stone. So despite the fact that we had spent the past year improving the place and setting it up the way we wanted, we made the hard decision to look for something else.
We knew we wanted something with at least 15 acres, there needed to be a house of some description, preferably outbuildings already in place, and a good water supply on the property. We weren't ready to borrow a huge amount of money, preferring to have the money we had saved pay the majority of the asking price. A huge mortgage payment is definately not inline with a self sufficient lifestyle. We were looking primarily in Lunenburg County as it was close to our daughter, and the older boys had their lives there. Then out of the blue an opportunity to purchase here in Digby County.
The positives: there was four times more land here, and we would have a small
mortgage for a short time, then it is ours.
The negatives: the place was a wreck. The land was being reclaimed by forest,
the house, although solidly built, had been neglected and let go. The entire
property, both inside and out, was covered in garbage.
Well, we are not known to back - down from a challenge (have you met our 5 home schooled kids??), we decided to go for it. We closed on the property on Gary's birthday, June 21st.
We began coming down for a couple of days a week to work on the property
it took until the middle of August to get it even a little habitable.
We hadn't intended to move in until early October. We wanted to let Reiley get ready for and attend 4-H Pro show and make sure everything was ready for us and the animals we were bringing.
However, true to the adage that making concrete plans is the best way to discover that the gods have a sense of humour, I was given a surgery date of September 5th.
We moved in on August 25th, and I had surgery on September 5th. Reiley did attend Pro-Show the last week in September and we have all survived the winter. That LONG COLD SNOWY winter.
Join us and share the building of our homestead, house renovation, and land reclamation. I promise it will never be boring... kind of like trying to spot three white goats in a blizzard.
As many of you know we rented the property we moved to in May of 2012. We had a handshake agreement to purchase the property at market value the summer of 2014.
Most of you know that we have moved to Digby county.. many of you have asked
why. Well it's a long story.
The synopsis is: we had a verbal agreement with the landlord at our last
place to purchase the property in the summer of 2014. So we spent a year making improvements to the property; building penning in the barn, running
electricity to the barn, building a 2 acre market garden, planting an extensive
herb garden, putting in fruit trees etc.
Then last spring the landlord told us he wanted to sell last summer. We
agreed to talk and potentially purchase last summer. The landlord had the property appraised and sent a note to us via our 12 year old son naming a price. In the note he said he would be over in a couple of days to talk. Well he never showed up, the asking price was about $100,000 over the price we were given when we had the property appraised.The owner never came over to talk and basically implied the price was written in stone. So despite the fact that we had spent the past year improving the place and setting it up the way we wanted, we made the hard decision to look for something else.
We knew we wanted something with at least 15 acres, there needed to be a house of some description, preferably outbuildings already in place, and a good water supply on the property. We weren't ready to borrow a huge amount of money, preferring to have the money we had saved pay the majority of the asking price. A huge mortgage payment is definately not inline with a self sufficient lifestyle. We were looking primarily in Lunenburg County as it was close to our daughter, and the older boys had their lives there. Then out of the blue an opportunity to purchase here in Digby County.
The positives: there was four times more land here, and we would have a small
mortgage for a short time, then it is ours.
The negatives: the place was a wreck. The land was being reclaimed by forest,
the house, although solidly built, had been neglected and let go. The entire
property, both inside and out, was covered in garbage.
Well, we are not known to back - down from a challenge (have you met our 5 home schooled kids??), we decided to go for it. We closed on the property on Gary's birthday, June 21st.
We began coming down for a couple of days a week to work on the property
it took until the middle of August to get it even a little habitable.
We hadn't intended to move in until early October. We wanted to let Reiley get ready for and attend 4-H Pro show and make sure everything was ready for us and the animals we were bringing.
However, true to the adage that making concrete plans is the best way to discover that the gods have a sense of humour, I was given a surgery date of September 5th.
We moved in on August 25th, and I had surgery on September 5th. Reiley did attend Pro-Show the last week in September and we have all survived the winter. That LONG COLD SNOWY winter.
Join us and share the building of our homestead, house renovation, and land reclamation. I promise it will never be boring... kind of like trying to spot three white goats in a blizzard.
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