Monday, December 27, 2010

Relocating again...

Let's see. I moved from Aiken, SC to San Antonio, TX. To Austin. To Green Bay, WI. To Littleton, CO. And finally to Las Vegas, NV. If you had asked me oh, say, ANYTIME before I actually moved here if I would EVER live in Las Vegas, I would have bet you a bazillion dollars the answer would have been no. Too bad you didn't bet me that, cause you'd now have a bazillion dollars! But, here we are. And apparently, here we shall stay. I will not pretend this is my favorite place to live, but it certainly has its benefits. The weather is spectacular - with the obvious exceptions of July and August. Larry loves his job. Everybody makes it here eventually, so we have seen friends we probably never would have seen if we'd lived anywhere else. And we have no lack of great entertainment, that is for sure!

All signs point to the fact that we are probably going to be here awhile. SO, we bit the bullet and bought a house. It's a small house in the neighborhood where we have been renting for the past 18 months. We love our neighborhood because it has a lot of kids who love to play outside, the people are friendly and nice and all of the houses are one-story. Seems like an odd thing to love, but I'll tell you why we love one-story houses. They are rare and precious in Vegas. Land costs so much here that they put houses practically on top of each other in order to house the 2 million plus people who lived here during the boom. And since land was so expensive, houses couldn't be sprawling ranches...so they became towering three-story stucco McMansions approximately 4 inches from the (mostly identical) stucco McMansion next door. In June, July and August (and really into September), that makes for $700+ monthly electric bills. Um. Nope. This past summer, we paid $220 as our highest bill in our one-story. Still expensive, but when it's 115+ outside every single day for two months, well...

We also love a one-story house because it is so very desirable here in Vegas. While every other neighborhood in Vegas (including the really chi-chi ones) has foreclosures on every street that linger for months and months, ours has absolutely none. When a for-sale sign appears in a yard, there are lines of folks interested in buying here. Of course, there are foreclosures (we are buying one...) but they go fast. Since we do NOT plan to live in Vegas forever and ever, amen...we are excited that this neighborhood offers such a great resale value.

So, that was a long story to tell you that we bought a house! We are very excited, and I will post photos soon. We closed last week and are having tile put in this week. We hope to be moving in the first week-ish of January. The house has a small pool (yay!) and is on a corner, so the lot is probably three times the size of any lot in the neighborhood. It's a well-built, nice house. It's nothing fancy nor is it really anything to write home about...yet. What we like about the house is its potential. Divine hubby and I have spent many enjoyable hours discussing what we can do, how we can do it and if we should do it. We have plans you can't even imagine at this point and are enjoying thinking about the possibilities.

So, pictures coming soon...but remember they will be "before" pics. We are looking forward to the journey of fixing up our non-fixer-upper and will share pics with you!

Anybody else get a house for Christmas? Thanks, divine hubby! Mwah.

8 comments:

Paul Ebel said...

Susie, you asked if anyone had bought a house lately... We will have to answer yes

STQ said...

Ho ho ho...

Miz C (and Burton) said...

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Anonymous said...

Very nice Susie. I just got around to reading about it. I bet it's weird living in post-boom Vegas. I'll be interested in your thoughts on it sometime. Has the population dropped by a lot? Again, cool that you got a house!

Tom

Vegetable House said...

Cool!
I know what you mean about wanting people to see the exciting potential of a house. :) DH and I have enjoyed doing the same sort of thing on this one. I, personally, got dirt for Christmas. Fabulous Natural Gardener Rose Planting Mix brought in with a dump truck!! Today I bought an azalea plant and planted it before I went into the house . . . without even using a jack-hammer.

man with van London said...

Attractive posts to read, very nice blog. I subscribed to you via RSS for your latest updates, keep up the good work.

storage london ontario said...

Enjoyed reading your post, May you have success in relocating , Congratulations!

storage london ontario said...

Hi, congratulations.