Get Out Your Erasers

So. The last we spoke David and I had put the Astoria house on the market, we had a few lookers - and then it hit the fan. Just a heads up, there might be some bad words peppered here and there but over all it's not bad. The market here was strong but with the recent turn of events with the election and COVID our RE had told us things were cooling a bit. It was shown a few times and we knew it was going to take longer than it usually does since the house was in the upper range pricewise. You still have people looking but the pool is much smaller - still no big. We are in a good spot and can afford to hang out a bit. Then someone really interested looked at it, they were considering dividing the lots, wanted to give us a big down payment, a couple  monthly and then a big payment - we were mulling it over. We cannot be 100% certain but we are pretty sure The Shithead in an effort to encourage us to sign ran down to the local town hall and gave them a lot of false information about David doing work without a permit.

Grrr. 

David went down to speak to them and yes, there were a few things, most of it due to the fact we are not familar with things here but most of it was nonsense. The straw that broke the camel's back was when the town hall guys said to David "we understand you were doing work in the basement"(when this person was looking at the house David WAS in the basement which is why we suspect who it was). David looked at them and said " I was PAINTING the walls, do I need a permit for that too???". This whole thing plus a local rumor mill has just put us off. We've had worse Small Town HIjinks and Nonsense but honestly, we are just tired and our Bullshit tolerance is at an all time low. The deciding factor though was our accountant whom we should have called first. We still have our wonderful guy Tom Graney in  Irwin PA if you need a guy - we just love him. He ran the numbers and with the RE fees plus capital gains we were looking at a major hit. So, in the end it was actually a good thing because had we gone through with it we could have stood to lose a lot of money unnecessarily which is never our intention.

So we needed Plan B. 

The Astoria house will add about 20 minutes or so to my daily commute which is not great but given that I was commuting 3 hours a day in PA not the end of the world. To add to this is I work from home most of the time so if I can get most of my field work on two days a week and I continue working 4 - 10 hour days, hmm. That's very do-able. Kim and Steve will be half an hour closer to us, I think everyone is excited about that. We are planning on moving in January which will give David time to finish this house - there are things that we needed to finish and for us to move to the other house. We're going to use a property management company and make sure we are protected before renting this place - the rent will cover our small mortgage and taxes for both places. In two years we can sell the property in Astoria without capital gains as it will be our primary and then can either move back to Clatskanie for two years or just sell it. We are hoping to retire on the beach when all is said and done, a little place with a boat and hibachi and of course a guest room for visitors.