ONE-A-DAY
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Well this whole thing is getting real. Rewind 6 years back, we decided to sell our Anaheim Hills home and invest the proceeds into a full time sized house in Havasu and rent in CA for a few years before going full time in Havasu once my wife retired from nursing. I can run my company from anywhere so why not. We sold the OC house at what we thought was the top of market, who would have thought where it would be today, but we still made a killing on it having owned the place for 20 years. We upgraded the havasu program from a weekend home to a full time sized place. We did very well selling our weekend place here and that started the ball rolling on Havasu real estate. My wife's side gig is fixing up homes so over the next 6 years we sold three Havasu houses and we kept upgrading and rolling over the profits into the houses and slowly ending up with a smaller and smaller mortgage. We moved every two years once the capital gains issue timed out. I worked from Havasu and my wife drove back to work as a nurse, working 4 days on 10 days off, and staying in a small rental condo we shared with our kids in Anaheim Hills.
Fast forward to earlier in 2021, Covid is in full blown ape shit mode in CA and the deal comes down that all healthcare workers have to be vax'd as of 10/1/21. My wife is a cancer survivor and wasn't comfortable taking the jab, that combined with how much of a shit show nursing has become since covid, so she cashed in her 32 years as a nurse and retired. Best thing she ever did, all of her coworkers absolutely hate their jobs and the working conditions now.
At the same time, our son starts dating this traveling nurse that my wife worked with and she is from Alabama. We got to know the family and they invited us to Alabama for Thanksgiving. We had a great time and like we usually do checked out zillow when we were there and started exploring. Near their home is Lewis Smith Lake, its about twice the size of Havasu, 600 miles of shoreline and one of the cleanest lakes in the country. My wife knew of my dream, live on a lake with my boat in the backyard and have no mortgage. So we called a local realtor and saw some homes. Made two more trips to spend time with the realtor and then found the house that made the decision easy. We fell in love with the area and the people, its just a different pace, kids say yes sir and yes mam and you can hear a pin drop when the national anthem plays at a football game. We both grew up in small towns on the east coast so the whole thing just felt like home to us both.
Next up, call Stacy and lets see what we can sell the house for. Like anything in Havasu realty these days we were like, "are you serious"? Listed the house, it sold in 3 weeks at basically full asking price. Hopped on a plane two days later back to Alabama and inked the deal on a lake house. We are no longer tied to any one location with my wife retiring and with zoom and a nearby airport I can work from anywhere.
For a little over a million we bought a brand new 4000 square foot home on 1.2 waterfront acres with year round water with a sandy beach. Its a gated community with our own launch ramp for residents. The house will have a 30 by 30 boat house with two lifts for our toon and a boat for me. With Havasu real estate market the way it has been the past 5 years or so we were able to pay cash for the place which is really comforting as we knock on the door of 60. The dock wont be done for this summer since all dock construction has to be completed by 3/31. After that they start bringing the water level back up, and the dock builders are about 6 months out so we met with the dock builder and designed what we wanted and they will be starting it soon.
Yes the summers are humid as fuck but Havasu full time summers suck as well. Sitting in a cove on a Saturday with a beer when its a 120 in Havasu is one thing, doing errands on a wednesday when its 120 degrees is a whole different animal. Our plan was to leave Havasu this summer for about three months and travel to cooler spots in the motorhome and we are going to do the same from Alabama, just basically a different home base. We also plan to spend alot of time back in Havasu visiting friends and family in our motorhome and having friends come out to visit us, so we had the builder ad a 50 foot RV pad with full hookups.
Sold most of the toys, market is nuts for all of that as well as you all know, and I think our timing is good as this bubble has to deflate a little bit, so I think we sold the toys at the perfect time. I found a mint condition Mirage mod vp with a merc racing 260 on it in Michigan and sent the guy a deposit, he is going to hold it till we get situated and it will be the perfect compliment parked in the boat house next to our toon and a couple sea doos. Performance boating on the lake isnt at all what is like in Havasu, its toons, dock crushers and glitter bass boats. The fastest boats on the lake are the bass boats, so my plan it to put an end to all of that and started kicking some glitter boat ass.
So we close on 3/11 on the sale of our Havasu house and close on the Alabama home on 3/15.
We would both like to say thank you to Stacy and Team RDP for getting us in and out of 4 homes in roughly 9 years, and allowing me to live my dream on living on a lake. And yes we all bitch about Havasu real estate prices but it played out well for us on timing and it turned out to be my wifes side job basically getting the houses dialed in and then selling them once they were.
If anyone wants to visit just let us know.......pics are still a work in progress but it will be done soon. Also the 3 car garage is free standing, we added that and it has not been started yet in these pics, the dirt being moved in the pic is where the garage goes.
Fast forward to earlier in 2021, Covid is in full blown ape shit mode in CA and the deal comes down that all healthcare workers have to be vax'd as of 10/1/21. My wife is a cancer survivor and wasn't comfortable taking the jab, that combined with how much of a shit show nursing has become since covid, so she cashed in her 32 years as a nurse and retired. Best thing she ever did, all of her coworkers absolutely hate their jobs and the working conditions now.
At the same time, our son starts dating this traveling nurse that my wife worked with and she is from Alabama. We got to know the family and they invited us to Alabama for Thanksgiving. We had a great time and like we usually do checked out zillow when we were there and started exploring. Near their home is Lewis Smith Lake, its about twice the size of Havasu, 600 miles of shoreline and one of the cleanest lakes in the country. My wife knew of my dream, live on a lake with my boat in the backyard and have no mortgage. So we called a local realtor and saw some homes. Made two more trips to spend time with the realtor and then found the house that made the decision easy. We fell in love with the area and the people, its just a different pace, kids say yes sir and yes mam and you can hear a pin drop when the national anthem plays at a football game. We both grew up in small towns on the east coast so the whole thing just felt like home to us both.
Next up, call Stacy and lets see what we can sell the house for. Like anything in Havasu realty these days we were like, "are you serious"? Listed the house, it sold in 3 weeks at basically full asking price. Hopped on a plane two days later back to Alabama and inked the deal on a lake house. We are no longer tied to any one location with my wife retiring and with zoom and a nearby airport I can work from anywhere.
For a little over a million we bought a brand new 4000 square foot home on 1.2 waterfront acres with year round water with a sandy beach. Its a gated community with our own launch ramp for residents. The house will have a 30 by 30 boat house with two lifts for our toon and a boat for me. With Havasu real estate market the way it has been the past 5 years or so we were able to pay cash for the place which is really comforting as we knock on the door of 60. The dock wont be done for this summer since all dock construction has to be completed by 3/31. After that they start bringing the water level back up, and the dock builders are about 6 months out so we met with the dock builder and designed what we wanted and they will be starting it soon.
Yes the summers are humid as fuck but Havasu full time summers suck as well. Sitting in a cove on a Saturday with a beer when its a 120 in Havasu is one thing, doing errands on a wednesday when its 120 degrees is a whole different animal. Our plan was to leave Havasu this summer for about three months and travel to cooler spots in the motorhome and we are going to do the same from Alabama, just basically a different home base. We also plan to spend alot of time back in Havasu visiting friends and family in our motorhome and having friends come out to visit us, so we had the builder ad a 50 foot RV pad with full hookups.
Sold most of the toys, market is nuts for all of that as well as you all know, and I think our timing is good as this bubble has to deflate a little bit, so I think we sold the toys at the perfect time. I found a mint condition Mirage mod vp with a merc racing 260 on it in Michigan and sent the guy a deposit, he is going to hold it till we get situated and it will be the perfect compliment parked in the boat house next to our toon and a couple sea doos. Performance boating on the lake isnt at all what is like in Havasu, its toons, dock crushers and glitter bass boats. The fastest boats on the lake are the bass boats, so my plan it to put an end to all of that and started kicking some glitter boat ass.
So we close on 3/11 on the sale of our Havasu house and close on the Alabama home on 3/15.
We would both like to say thank you to Stacy and Team RDP for getting us in and out of 4 homes in roughly 9 years, and allowing me to live my dream on living on a lake. And yes we all bitch about Havasu real estate prices but it played out well for us on timing and it turned out to be my wifes side job basically getting the houses dialed in and then selling them once they were.
If anyone wants to visit just let us know.......pics are still a work in progress but it will be done soon. Also the 3 car garage is free standing, we added that and it has not been started yet in these pics, the dirt being moved in the pic is where the garage goes.
Still better than no dock!
