Chronicles of Our Desert Homestead–Ch. 2
Surprises!
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This post is about a few characters and some surprises that have unfolded before and after closing on our desert land.
If you haven’t read Chapter 1, do it! It’ll give you a little more context.
With our office warehouse lease renewal date coming in fast (Aug 31) we were eager to close by July 31. We were ready to close by the second week of July, but the sellers needed more time.
Jim and Jan
Jim and Jan are the sellers (described a little more in my last post.)
Knowing the situation with Jim and Jan’s health, age, and the volume of accumulated stuff inside and outside the property, we had a pretty good sense that there was no way everything was going to come together in six weeks.
We let our realtor know we were willing to help throughout July–anything we could do to help pack things up, load, list things online, etc. But there was no response on the seller’s side to any of our offers to help. So we figured that everyone must be keeping it business and not making it personal. We were advised to keep our distance, so we did.
We drove by a couple of times throughout July, and it looked like nothing was happening in the yard, which felt to us like nothing was happening. So we poked our realtor, who poked their realtor.
We let them know that if they could focus on the shop, getting in there would be our most urgent need. We could be more flexible on the residence if the sellers needed a bit more time. Our hope to close ASAP so that we can get out of our leased shop and into the new space by the end of August. We knew the new space was going to need a good cleaning before we could move in, too. It looked like 20 years' worth of shop muck in there, on top of being packed top to bottom with stuff.
Surprise #1
Maybe this one isn’t a huge surprise, but the realization that there’s no way Jim and Jan are going to be cleared out by July 31 settled in by around the second week of July. Upon closing, we ended up doing a 60-day lease back to the sellers to give them more time, and to actually be able to help a little bit more than we were able to before closing.
We bought a home and…
