For a long time, we’ve been going to the beach town I grew up in, on vacation. For the longest time, we’ve been paying a lot of money to stay in a hotel, and after everything that happened this last time, I was insistent that we buy a home near the beach.
Now, I had read somewhere that houses were more inexpensive in the beach town. My husband insisted on seeing it for himself, so I actually had to take an honest look at the beach town. While it was indeed more affordable, some of the houses were in a flood zone, and some of them were very tiny. After all the news of hurricanes and floods we had heard, we didn’t want a house in a flood zone, but I thought we might be able to do tiny.
I started looking for homes that were on dry land, but I also wanted a house near the bay or the beach. Beachfront and bayfront homes cost upwards of one million dollars, but even a block or two back the prices were drastically reduced. A house five blocks from the bay cost less than a quarter of what a bayfront home cost!
We started looking at houses, and even my husband had to admit that I was right about the prices. I felt so happy that we were taking action on it. I liked every house we saw, and my husband didn’t like any of the houses we saw. We must have seen a dozen houses, and we had driven down for the day just to see the houses. Keep in mind, we live in our year-round home about three hours west of here.
We also had to be careful too. We were somewhat familiar with the neighborhoods there, because I had grown up in the area, but so much time has passed that I really had to rely on the realtor for information about how things had changed, and whether things were the same.
I was satisfied that the realtor wasn’t leading us astray, and we kept looking. It was tough, because a lot of the buildings for sale weren’t single family vacancies. That made me wonder if we would have to deal with wild parties and all kinds of things, but the realtor steered us clear of those.
Finally, we looked at a house that was right across the street from the bay. It was a one floor house, but it had airy rooms and a view of the bay. Because it was so small, the price was great, and that is the one we bought.
Now, buying the house isn’t the whole story, of course. We have to pay taxes in two towns now, and we had to decide whether to pay for utilities during the winter months. But overall, we have a beautiful new beach home, which gives us all the more reason to run down to that beach town every chance we get. I love it and my husband loves it too.