It Begins !

My wife and I have been dreaming, planning, talking about getting a plot of land and going back to a simpler way of life for 4 years. The only thing holding us back was we had to sell our home. The only problem was we lived on a golf course and nothing was selling. With the economy the way it was no one was buying and nothing had sold where we lived through a realtor since 2009. After being told by 3 different realtors over a 3 year period that we needed to drop our price to taking a huge loss we found Bryce and Penny Kander from Realty Executives in Red Deer. A mother and son realty team who thought outside the box and sold our home in a month and a half for our asking price.

Uh-oh. Now we had to find that perfect piece of land and we only have a month to do it. You know sometimes things just seem to come together. This would prove to be one of those times. We had been looking at land for 4 years but of course all of the parcels we had looked at were off the market. Looking at the M.L.S. boards we found 3 properties up by Grande Prairie that were close to what we were looking for.

And what were we looking for? Well we wanted at least 40 acres, a house that was livable, and well that would do. I used to run a renovation company doing almost any kind of renovation so we didn't need the house to be perfect, just livable. Every thing else that we wanted could be built after we got on the property.

We called the realtor that had 2 of the properties and talked with Jack for a while on the phone and set up a time to go up from Red Deer and have a look at the properties. While talking with him he suggested that he had another property that was close to the 2 we were looking at with him but it was priced 40,000 over what we wanted to spend.

The first property was bank owned as the old guy who owned it had moved into a nursing home and passed away. It was 75 acres, had a home and numerous out buildings, was in the middle of a grazing reserve, and had 4500.00 a year in oil revenue. As it turns out the old guy was a bit of a hoarder and every out building was full of stuff as well as having numerous dilapidated old cars, motorhomes, and old farm equipment. The house was in really bad shape with mouse droppings as well as what looked like dog leavings. At some point the well had quit working and he had put a cistern in the basement for water, the only problem, he had drilled a hole in the middle of the living room floor for the hose that fills it and strung it across the floor and out the outside wall. The final thing that made this property not going to work was a massive crack in the basement wall. The only way to solve the problems with the house was to light a match to it and start over. Even with the price at $154,000 it would be a real stretch to see this property being worth it

The second property was 44 acres with a shop and a older trailer on it with an addition. The trailer was in really nice shape and had been updated recently. There was a wood stove with propane furnace as back up. The shop was 20 x 30 in size with a wood floor wired for 220 but no heat. We walked the property and really liked all the mature trees and open areas. The price at $190,000 was in our opinion much more than the property was worth.

Now on to the property that was well above how much we wanted to spend. At $230,000 we almost decided not to even go look at it. But as we were in the area and were not going to look at the 3rd property until the next day we ended up going. This property had an older double wide trailer with a few upgrades, a 14x28 barn, a few outbuildings, and a 300 x 200 foot dugout. The inside of the home would need some renovations but it was livable with a wood stove for heat and a new propane furnace for backup. The barn really could not be used for animals but would make an awesome wood working shop with good storage in the loft. The other out buildings were all in usable condition and with the property being 87 acres it was a good size with most of it high and dry. The house also over looked a really nice looking lake. Both my wife and I looked at the view and agreed that it was a million dollar view. But still it was $30,000 over what I was willing to pay.

The next day we met the realtor for the 3rd property we had booked to see and drove out to the 160 acre parcel with a house and 20 x 30 shop. The house was small but laid out well and would work for what we needed. A wood stove with propane back up would work well, the kitchen was probably the biggest room in the house which suited us just fine. The shop was heated and had 220 wiring and the dirt floor could be finished with concrete in the future. Walking the property with all of the mature trees and a 25 acre field in hay was exactly what we were looking for. And at $180,000 was with in our budget. We talked to the realtor and decide to put in an offer and finally settled at $167,000 as a purchase price.

On the drive home we called our mortgage broker and discovered with a property of this size we would need 25% down. Uh-Oh. we could probably do 15% but that would be it. Now what? Why oh why wouldn't they tell us that before we went to look. They knew what we had in mind before we started looking, they also knew how much money we had to put down. 1 month before we have to be out of our house and a major set back.

All the way home we talked about the different parcels, their pro's and con's. Right away the first and second property were eliminated. The 87 and 160 acre properties would be the best suited to what we want to accomplish. Could we come up with 25% down? What about the 87 acres with that view, the fish pond, right off the highway, and everything else that it had going for it. Would the owner come down in price. By the time we got home we had talked ourselves into the 87 acre parcel. If we could get it down to a price we could handle and the appraisal came in so we would have enough equity already in for the amount of cash we had to put in,  it could work.

Penny Kander and our great mortgage broker had to jump through hoops to get it done and it for sure didn't happen over night. In fact Penny let us stay for over a month in her cottage at Red Deer Lake until the deal finally went through. We moved onto our acreage at the end of September and we are enjoying our view of Ray Lake everyday. We have a lot of work to do but look forward to see where this journey will take us.