You may have noticed that this journal has crossposted to LJ from Dreamwidth for awhile. I set that up a few years ago because LJ's stability and changes of ownership had me concerned about the platform's viability, and I was still posting/reading often enough that I wanted a backup.

(I'm still looking for a downloadable archive of my journal that can work for a Mac user. BlogBook might be what I'm after.)

Given recent developments I'll probably discontinue crossposting at some point and may delete my LJ. If you've decided to join the great Dreamwidth migration, I have the same username on both platforms.

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Yesterday, Erik and I went out with our realtor to view three properties we'd identified as potential hits. The first two were in Graham and had houses; the third was in Rainier and didn't.

Of the two in Graham, the first was a far better match. The house had been custom built by an architect on a 20-acre lot and had a great interior: vaulted ceiling, fireplaces on upper and lower floors, great layout (except for the kitchen, which was rather cramped and would have to be redone), tons of closet space, and all of this only slightly countered by the overwhelmingly 70s decor (the listing even describes it as a "70s retro time capsule"). The carpet isn't nearly as horrendous in person, though the linoleum is, and we'd rip it all up anyway. The stonework is gorgeous.

The main issue with the place was finding somewhere to put Erik's boat shop. A lot of the acreage was really wet. It's not designated and thus could be drained, but...we don't think the amount of work required to do that is necessarily worth it. Great house though.

The second place, I didn't care for. The house is new-ish and beautifully maintained, the first floor has great accessibility touches (one of the residents is a disabled veteran), and there's room to put up a shop, but overall we didn't care for the layout and the upstairs loft area was weirdly partitioned, with tiny bedroom that technically isn't one (according to code, it's not a bedroom if it doesn't have a closet, and since the house was custom built such an omission is just bizarre). We didn't bother walking the 20 acres it sat on; we both knew this wasn't it.

(I will say, for such wildly different personalities, Erik and I have largely agreed straight down the line with regard to the properties we've looked at. It's making this process so much easier.)

The third place was an adventure. It wasn't far from the 40-acre wood I described in an earlier post; basically on the other side of a narrow valley with a boggy bottom that eventually feeds into a tributary of the Deschutes River (the stream on the 40-acre wood also feeds this river). The property is two 20-acre lots being sold off by a commercial timber company (not Weyerhaeuser though they're in the area as well) and thus has no street address. We got to the approximate location using a parcel map, just short of the end of a county road which dead-ended at another residence with a sign out front that said "At the End of the Road, You Find God". Rural Thurston County, folks.

Erik and I bushwhacked up a steep and overgrown hill for a bit before conceding that if this was what access to this land looked like, it wasn't for us. One of the things we're figuring out with this search is how much work we're prepared to put in, and installing a usable driveway up an incline that steep wasn't on the list.

Our realtor called the listing agent, because we hadn't actually seen a sign out, and the agent said she'd put one up. The agent lives about ten minutes from where we were (Rainier is a very, very small town) and came out to see what was what, in a pickup full of gardening supplies.

We'd passed the access--a dirt driveway with a gate and a no trespassing sign--because someone had taken the listing agent's sign down.

She led us up a much more accessible route, basically a service road put in by the timber company, and paused to tell off a couple of guys who were harvesting cedar branches. By "harvesting", I mean they stripped several trees completely bare, to the point that the trees probably won't survive. Turned out they had permission to be there--but not to harvest on the acreage that was up for sale. The listing agent, seventy if she was a day, was not amused, called their boss, and kicked them off the land. I was impressed.

This is why you find "no trespassing" signs all over the place on privately owned rural land. That way, there's no way someone can claim they didn't know.

Aside from the damaged trees, the property at first glance has a lot to recommend it. Access is through an easement so we'd need clarification about that (who maintains, etc). The property has a well on it near the best building site, which has a killer view to the north over forested land (likely to be logged, but at least it's not likely to be developed). There's power in the county road so we'd need to pay to bring it up the hill and put a transformer on the property. Solar and wind both tentatively feasible. Septic would need to go in. There are additional possible building sites where we could put, say, guest houses—plumbing would be a challenge, but composting toilets and bottled water wouldn't. There's plenty of room to put up a boat shop. The land currently has a bunch of stuff of the owner's stored on it—shipping containers, construction/logging vehicles some of which look like military surplus—which would be removed as a condition of sale, but we're wondering if they can be persuaded to leave some of it. Shipping containers are hella useful for storage, and since we'd be building, we could use a backhoe.

The land felt pretty good for something that had been harvested for commercial timber in the past century. Two cedars had been stripped, but there were others, plus hemlock and fir trees—and madronas. OMG. So many madronas, more than I've seen anywhere in one place outside the Arboretum in Seattle. Those things don't grow just anywhere. There was lots of room for camping and revelry and no nearby neighbors. List price for the two lots is $350K, and the listing agent straight up said she thought the owner would come down on one of them since its primary value is as a buffer zone for the other.

The 40-acre wood is nicer, it's been stewarded since the 60s by the same owners and has habitable structures on it plus a year-round stream, but putting up a boat shop and storing timber on it would be a challenge, as would adapting our lives to the existing residential structures. Building on it would pretty much require tearing down an existing building.

The lakeshore property we looked at has the advantages of being completely flat (unlike what we looked at yesterday which has a lot of slope), power and septic onsite already along with a well, 300 feet of shoreline, and a nearby community we could engage with at whatever level we please. It's also $900K all told, mostly because of that lakeshore (the rest of the lakefront except for the public boat launch is completely developed).

We liked what we saw yesterday enough to ask for more information about the property's size and history, exact dimensions and mapping, survey and timber cruise information, details on the easement and anticipated use of the surrounding property, and other information. Based on what we get back, there's a good chance we'll go back for a second visit when the listing agent has time to give us more details, walk the borders (insofar as that's feasible), and answer some of our questions.

The journey continues.

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...for acknowledging that journal pricing is a problem. That's only been a dominant topic of discussion in my profession since well before I entered it.

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We found a realtor. She's a colleague of the one we initially picked off of Redfin, who showed us a few places and seemed like she might be a good fit. Then her husband was killed and she is understandably not working with clients right now. We met next with the agent who showed us the two properties we've liked so far. She's great, but she's also the agent for the people selling those properties, and much of what we've read suggests that it would behoove us to find a buyer's agent since this is all likely to get complicated. Our financial planner recommended someone, and we met with her as well; she seemed like she'd be great if we were looking for your standard urban/suburban single-family house on a 5000 square foot lot. Well qualified but not for us.

The person we've chosen to go with is based in Olympia, knows the agent handling the two properties we've liked so far personally but not intimately, and had recommendations for who we might talk to about financing. Both of the properties we've looked at so far have dual zoning: residential and forest. This complicates matters considerably as many lenders aren't interested in dealing with this kind of real estate. Our research suggests that local lenders are generally better for a lot of reasons (anyone who remembers the 2008 recession, the 2007 crash that preceded it, and the developments leading up to the disaster can probably think of a few) and those in the area we're buying are probably more used to the kinds of properties we're looking at than, say, Citimortgage would be.

Working out the financing might take awhile, but at least we're putting things in motion.

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It's been that kind of day.

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Since my last update Mr. Darcy and I went to Scotland with family, viewed another property, and talked with financial planner about next steps. Scotland (and London) was a fabulous trip and we really want to go back, particularly to Skye. Mr. Darcy liked Edinburgh, even, which surprised me. He's not a fan of cities.

On our return the listing agent for the 40 acres we'd looked at previously got in touch with another property in the same area. This one is two parcels totaling 51 acres. There's no structures on it anymore, but it has a well (two wells, actually, though one only produces about 5 gallons per minute), power, and septic. Also apple, plum, fig, and walnut trees that are all producing, and—the pièce de résistance—around 300 feet of shoreline on a lake that is otherwise entirely built up.

It's far less private than the other property, though plenty secluded, and with substantially drier soil. It's wooded, but while the 40 acres was last logged a century ago, this one was logged much more recently. Probably 50 or 60 years ago. So the tree cover isn't as dense, and there's a lot less cedar and more maple and cottonwood. Also no stream, though there is a spring on the property that could probably be made into a small stream with some encouragement.

The two properties are similar in price. The one on the lake is the better choice for a number of practical reasons: it has utilities in for the level of usage we anticipate for the next five years, it's mostly flat, and it would increase in value the minute we bought it. The potential is obvious from the above description.

I really, really like the other one, though. The calculus I'm currently engaged in is how much my liking of the other place is predicated on what the current owners have done (and the owners themselves: we met them, they're lovely people), its utter seclusion (which I love one minute and am convinced would drive me Jack Torrance levels of batty after a few weeks the next), the older trees (mature forest and ultra-dense downtowns are my two favorite places to be, and for similar reasons), and whether and how much of that could be replicated on the lakefront site.

An important additional consideration is that Mr. Darcy is going into boatbuilding. Fresh water is terrible for wooden boats, but frontage on saltwater would be even more expensive and given the massive boating culture on this lake (they have 4th of July boat parades every year, hydro racing, and other activities) he could advertise by installing a dock (which would be hella expensive, but we can do it).

The financial planner says we can make either of these places work, money wise, and found us a potential realtor in the target county along with a couple of attorneys specializing in rural real estate, and someone who can advise us on the double whammy of securing a mortgage and construction loans. An important next step is to set up financing because pre-approval makes real estate agents happy, and will speed up the process once we're ready to make an offer.

This is exciting and terrifying in equal measure. I've spent the last decade and a half being fiscally conservative to the point of miserdom, and have been fortunate in that that's been a choice and not a necessity. The kind of purchase we're looking at is an order of magnitude greater than when I bought our current house. It's not likely to go pear-shaped—we are getting excellent advice—but it is anxiety-inducing.

Meanwhile, there's an organization out there that teaches you how to build log cabins from design and materials acquisition to finished construction. An old friend of Jesse's—like, they were students of Bruce Lee together—started it. They're having a seminar over Labor Day weekend and Mr. Darcy is going to go.

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2.

And it's not even 9:30 yet.

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We're meeting with the owners of the 40-acre wood on Sunday, July 3rd, since we'll be in the area anyway for my birthday shenanigans. This doesn't mean we'll be making an offer—far from it—but we want to know more, and they want to meet us.

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jesus FUCK, but I hate vendor cold calls

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...I get a UTI.

Could be worse, I have basically no symptoms. Went to the doc for something else (that the jury's still out on but unlikely to be anything much) and he was all, "Hey, white cells! Bacteria!"

So I get antibiotics for a few days and a caution against eating them with cheese. Yay.

Other than that, still truckin'.

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