Building Boom?
Despite this year's kind of-almost-not really summer, things in the Possum Kingdom are bustling. It's clearly tourist season, as lots of strange cars and faces are appearing around the village.
Most interesting of all, however, is that we appear to be having a mini-construction boom. Several of the big, mostly abandoned houses around town seem to have been purchased recently and there are major renovation works going on. At least two of them are being turned into apartments, which makes lots of sense as, a: there isn't enough rental accommodation in town and b: there are government subsidies available for renovating if you agree to keep the property as rental units for 10 years and c: trying to heat those giant places for one family would just be monstrously expensive. Most people I know who live in a property like that keep most of it closed up and disused.
Some folks are surprised, however, by the do-it-yourself nature of at least one of the projects. Especially as the roof is completely shot, but instead of repairing that, they are fixing up the ground floor. It does seem rather ass-backwards, but, hey, maybe they really do know what they're doing.
We're starting to seriously contemplate what we might do if my mother does come to live here. Do we buy her a village house and turn the ground floor into a self-contained flat, then close up the rest of the house for now? Do we sell OUR house and look for a single-story property on the edge of town where we could add a granny-flat of some type and all live together? Do we try to buy land and build what we want/need there? None of this is easy. And, of course, we'd have to actually SELL our house in a market that is not the market we left in L.A., where we were able to sell within 24-hours of putting our house up for sale.
Still, no matter what we decide to do, it's good to see houses in the village getting done up and leaves me eager to see what happens next.
BTW; for anyone following the saga, Bob has his appointment for his liver biopsy on 12 July. Keep those prayers coming.
Ciao for now.
Randy
Most interesting of all, however, is that we appear to be having a mini-construction boom. Several of the big, mostly abandoned houses around town seem to have been purchased recently and there are major renovation works going on. At least two of them are being turned into apartments, which makes lots of sense as, a: there isn't enough rental accommodation in town and b: there are government subsidies available for renovating if you agree to keep the property as rental units for 10 years and c: trying to heat those giant places for one family would just be monstrously expensive. Most people I know who live in a property like that keep most of it closed up and disused.
Some folks are surprised, however, by the do-it-yourself nature of at least one of the projects. Especially as the roof is completely shot, but instead of repairing that, they are fixing up the ground floor. It does seem rather ass-backwards, but, hey, maybe they really do know what they're doing.
We're starting to seriously contemplate what we might do if my mother does come to live here. Do we buy her a village house and turn the ground floor into a self-contained flat, then close up the rest of the house for now? Do we sell OUR house and look for a single-story property on the edge of town where we could add a granny-flat of some type and all live together? Do we try to buy land and build what we want/need there? None of this is easy. And, of course, we'd have to actually SELL our house in a market that is not the market we left in L.A., where we were able to sell within 24-hours of putting our house up for sale.
Still, no matter what we decide to do, it's good to see houses in the village getting done up and leaves me eager to see what happens next.
BTW; for anyone following the saga, Bob has his appointment for his liver biopsy on 12 July. Keep those prayers coming.
Ciao for now.
Randy
