House-less but not Homeless!

Text for this post ran through my head all afternoon, but as usually happens, when I sit down to type in the evenings, my creative juices are less than flowing.  Do you have that problem..

Our house closed and sold, so we’re officially house-less.  This is a definite burden off us, as we were worried the house wouldn’t sell on time and we would have to face an empty house sitting alone on the real estate market.  Not something we wanted.  I’m thankful to the folks who shouldered the work for us, as our Realtor was someone I know from my association with a search and rescue team and several other folks who helped us out were associated with the team as well.  In selling the house and with selling any house or boat or RV; I think there’s several factors you need to look at to benchmark success.  1. Did you get at, near or above the list price you put the house on the market for? 2. If you had a specific timeline for selling or for your escrow, did you get near or all of the timing that you wanted during the sale?  Remember that getting every cent wrung out of a home sale can be very gratifying, but that home sales takes 3 months longer than you have to be in the home and you have to leave it empty and on the market,,,,,this might not be a situation you’re happy with and no one will be living in that house.  

You may have noticed that I was specific above with saying that we’re now house-less, but we’re not homeless.  Our home is now a 51 foot Aleutian Ketch rigged sailboat, built as tough as any sailboat in the 70’s and in need of the TLC to show for that toughness.  We’re not that unique.  There are lots of others who have done or are doing the same thing with their families and the books and blogs are out there to prove this.  My parents spent 5 1/2 years with us on a cruising sailboat in Central America in the 70’s, then they circumnavigated the planet while I was in college.  We’re not that unique, but perhaps this blog is a bit unique as I started it early, before we even came near to leaving for cruising, so you can follow our trials and tribulations as we get closer and closer to our goals.  We lived in our house for 5 years, fixing it up from a Fannie Mae repro to what it is today, even after others told us not to buy a house in the community and how we would lose our investment due to a (then) slow real estate market.  Since then, the market has changed and for the last several years has done well.  We didn’t care because we wanted to live there and made it our home.  Now our home is going to be on our boat, with our Great Dane and the turbulence that life will bring with it for a family living in a marina on a boat.  Should be fun, we’ll get through it to see what comes out the other side I guess.