The readjustment of my threshold

So, the first part of our retirement plan was to find someplace to relocate to. Las Cruces, NM fits that bill. Step two involved going there to see if this was THE PLACE we wanted to be. Yes, to that question also. Step three was to decide what we would locate to and this is where the DW and I are now, hashing out the details.

When we first committed our lives to each other (boy oh boy, is that sappy!), we rented. An apartment in Ozone Park, Queens. An apartment in Southbridge, MA. It was great for us to be together but I hated the thought of giving someone money and not really getting anything out of it for ourselves. Thus we moved up and bought our first home – West Brookfield, MA here we come. It was an old farmhouse, 2 bedrooms, ½ acre plot. Nice neighborhood, good town, nice neighbors and we loved it. But we had a lot of work to do. There was painting outside, paint and paper inside, some new windows, wood/coal stove and hearth, remodeled bathroom. There was now grass to cut, snow to remove and utilities to pay but it was all ours. In the four years we were there, we more than doubled our money while figuring out that the house was too small to raise a family in unless one of the children we planned to have would consent to living in a small, tilted ceiling closet. Hey, it had a door and a window!
This led to house two, a ranch on 3+ acres, only 3 miles away. Still nice neighborhood, nice neighbors bit more grass to cut, more snow to move including a long, long driveway.

The problem with an old house in general is that there is ALWAYS some work to be done and any work done leads to more discovered work. Replace some windows and see how drafty all the rest are. You get the idea. Well we found out this was true for any house, it’s just that the jobs are different. In our ranch over the years we have had to replace the heating system, hot water system, water pump, all the appliances, washer and dryer…you get the picture. Then when I lost my leg, there was a new bathroom to put in and a ramp out front.
In my original threshold to move to Las Cruces, I wanted to live maintenance free while making some equity on our investment. No new windows, no appliances, no repairs. Las Cruces landscaping is most often Xeroscape (my lawn is 6000 pounds of rocks) and there is no snow. (Advantage Las Cruces!) So I set my sights on a new home being build or almost done, where we could get some needed modifications easily. However this dream faced its first challenge in the 2 months since we visited New Mexico.

First off, the realtors informed us that the economy has done more damage to our house than we thought. I had originally hoped to get about a 200% return on our house. Heck we had gotten about 250% on the old farm house after 4 years. Four years ago we had our house appraised to get a loan for handicapped accessibility and they had pegged the value at about 225% of what we paid. Sweet dreams came crashing down however as each of the 3 different realtors told us the same thing. House value was down to about 140% which did not leave us enough for a down payment on a new build.

What was left to do was re-adjust my threshold – that is what I am willing to accept in order to realize our dream. The results are still good, they get us to New Mexico as quickly as we can and still promise us a nice place to live out this next chapter of our life. So we have re-added condos and town houses to our considerations after eliminating them earlier in the process. We don’t need a new house. We just need a sturdy home with nice roof over our heads, good light, space for visitors, friends and each other. Our friends there bought a nice old adobe home with kiva fireplace. I can hope we will be as lucky.

In a soon to be written post, I hope to flesh out a bit more of a timeline for the Great SouthWest Adventure, Part 2 – How we move to Las Cruces, NM, because adding some deadlines or at least goals make the dream seem more real and attainable.