Quote:
Originally Posted by MplsPete
Okay, let’s get some of the preliminaries out of the way. I did a Lifestyle visit, about 3-4 days, a year ago, in Newell. I spent July in an Airbnb in the northern village of Alhambra. I don’t want to move until I start my Social Security, so sometime after February. Although my wife was smitten with the idea of a new home, the LONG drive down to Eastport made her less eager, and I don’t want the big bonds of the new houses (I know, many say bonds don’t matter for various reasons, but I don’t want a new house bond.)
Maybe I should clarify my original question now:
How do you go about buying a (preowned) home in a community 1500 miles away from where you live?
Thanks to all who share their experiences.
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Here’s what we did: on our very first visit to TV we knew that someday we would move here, so we started looking at open houses. We visited yearly for 3 years, each time also looking at many open houses mixed in with our fun time. After our third visit here during our 1100 mile drive home we decided “what the hell are we waiting for”! We got home, straightened ourselves out a bit, talking to bank, utilities, realtor, and family. Then within two weeks drove back to TV with sole purpose of buying our new home. Since we have spent every trip looking at open houses we had a good idea what type of house we wanted and which location.
We contracted a used home, with no bond, then we ordered our golf cart. We then drove ourselves back to Chicago burbs to sell our house. While we were getting our home ready for sale up North we closed on our TV home remotely using bridge loan. We closed on sale of our Chicago home about 6 weeks after purchase of our TV home. We hired a mover that would move us alone and not a shared van. We sold one car on Carvana before moving as we knew we would only need one car and our golf cart as transportation to suit our needs. We said good riddance to Illinois and drove ourselves back to TV while the movers hauled our stuff. Then we also bought some new stuff.
If we had it to do again we would bring less stuff and buy more new stuff for TV. Some stuff brand new and some from resale. There is some very nice resale here. That’s what we did, hope some of this info helps you out.