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So we did this beginning in 2020. Downsizing is hell. We had a junk removal company come for four times over six months. We made numerous trips to Goodwill. Then, we stored 50 boxes and a few extra pieces of furniture with our moving company. We cleared out as much as we could to ready the house for showings.
We chose our area because our daughter lived there. We rented a condo while looking for a new house. We had the moving company bring everything from our house and storage down. We stored most of our belongs in a storage unit in our new location.
We purchase a house in the process of being built. The pandemic extended the timeframe so we were stuck in our rental for 18 months.
It was awful! I'm not sure how we could have made it better. It was the first time in decades that we rented a place to live. As the appliances broke, we had to call the rental agent. Days went by before the agent spoke to the owner. The owner had never owned a house before and was pissed off at us when 16 year old appliances died. In the 18 months, the hot water heater, dishwasher and dryer died. It took a five days before the hot water heater was replaced. The dishwasher was broken for months and wasn't repaired until we left. The dryer broke twice. It was replaced after we left. When you own your home, you do repairs immediately. The lost of control with a rental was hard. A bad landlord made it worse.
The worse was our dog began her decline from cancer during the 18 months. She needed steroids with the side effect of peeing also uncontrollably. I owned a bissell carpet cleaner and I had a professional carpet cleaner come every few months. Besides the carpet was light colored so it wasn't going to stay clean anyway.
My longwinded point is that a very nice rental will not take dogs. A rental that takes dogs will have issues. The upside is we learned that we couldn't live in a condo with neighbors on both sides. We needed more personal space around us. We also learned that we don't do carpets.
So I'm going to agree with ExNooYawk2 and MrRational. If you know the area well, purchase a house. If you don't know the area well, then it might be wise to rent until you know it better.
The price of a rental and storage unit always will feel like wasted money to me.
It's so stressful - use a professional moving company.
Last edited by YorktownGal; 04-19-2023 at 10:04 AM..
100% on board with this idea. We're moving from upstate NY to Georgia, so at least I can gleefully get rid of every snow shovel and mega-warm parka.
This past winter the South had very cold weather. In Tidewater VA, our temperature went down to zero. My neighbor's pipes frozen. Once every decade we have a huge 10" snowstorm. So keep your snow removal equipment and your parkas.
I'm from NY too. It can get cold down here. Perhaps one in ten winters, but it can happen.
Along these same lines, can someone on the thread tell me how you rent a house if you don't have a new job in the place you are relocating to yet? Like the OP, I want to check out my new area first for a while before making a new home purchase, and I will be job hunting once I arrive.
I have enough cash to cover rent for an entire year if necessary and could pay that up front, but I have found that most places want income, not cash up front.
Looked into extended stay hotels and Airbnb's, but the prices are absurd.
Along these same lines, can someone on the thread tell me how you rent a house if you don't have a new job in the place you are relocating to yet? Like the OP, I want to check out my new area first for a while before making a new home purchase, and I will be job hunting once I arrive.
I have enough cash to cover rent for an entire year if necessary and could pay that up front, but I have found that most places want income, not cash up front.
Looked into extended stay hotels and Airbnb's, but the prices are absurd.
.
Land the job FIRST. Use your written job offer to provide proof of future stable income to LLs. Search through threads under the Real Estate/Renting subforum. The topic has been discussed a lot.
Last edited by Parnassia; 04-19-2023 at 01:52 PM..
...can someone on the thread tell me how you rent a house if you don't have a new job...
You don't. You rent something less than a house until you do have that job.
^^If you're able to secure that job beforehand... good for you.
Quote:
Looked into extended stay hotels and...
That's only for the week or so it takes to land some sort of 'get by' job.
THEN you find some sort of share situation (probably WITH someone you now work with).
Once you have that LOCAL address, and LOCAL phone #, and LOCAL work reference,
and LOCAL personal reference ... THEN you apply for a LOCAL job like an actual LOCAL.
THEN you can look into renting a house.
Leasing for only 6 months is also a problem. Rentals are investment properties. They need to rent for a full year, at the least, if possible. Between rentals they have to have the place cleaned, things repaired, etc. It's an added expense, hassle, and one or more months of no income for that property until a suitable new tenant can be found. It can be done (finding one for 6 months), but it will likely be a special situation (like someone needing someone in the house to protect it while the owners are out of state - in which case there probably won't be repairs or anything like that).
You have an RV? I haven't read all the posts so maybe I've misunderstood. Maybe you should just stay in your RV in an RV park for a few months. If they allow dogs. (I wouldn't want to be staying next to an RV w/2 large dogs, though, esp since I have a smaller dog.)
You have 5 bedrooms now. Will you have 5 bedrooms after you find a place? The last thing you want is to take things you may have to get rid of after you move.
Downsizing has become fashionable. "Do more with less". Minimalism is the new materialism.
Having downsized from a country house to a small apartment on the other end of the country, I still very much regret having had to dispense with so much personal property, even if on balance the move was successful. In hindsight, it would have been better to either put things in storage, near the former locale; or to buy a cheap place somewhere - "cheap" relatively speaking - while sorting-out one's final destination. This is assuming that market-reasons agitate towards selling one's current house, with all possible haste.
Now, years later, I'm still in a small apartment, wondering about some nebulous future-time, when it would be possible to "re-inflate" one's material footprint. It might be a long journey....
Just find a house and buy it. Too much trouble to do two moves. We've done the cross country moves a few times. Just fly down there and look for houses after researching this site and others. It sounds like a huge hassle the way you're planning to do it. You've got a school age child, don't you want to get them settled right away in their new school and neighborhood?
Just make a commitment to stay in your new home until your child graduates, then you can look for another home if you're not happy.
Downsizing has become fashionable. "Do more with less". Minimalism is the new materialism.
Having downsized from a country house to a small apartment on the other end of the country, I still very much regret having had to dispense with so much personal property, even if on balance the move was successful. In hindsight, it would have been better to either put things in storage, near the former locale; or to buy a cheap place somewhere - "cheap" relatively speaking - while sorting-out one's final destination. This is assuming that market-reasons agitate towards selling one's current house, with all possible haste.
Now, years later, I'm still in a small apartment, wondering about some nebulous future-time, when it would be possible to "re-inflate" one's material footprint. It might be a long journey....
Minimalism is the new materialism. - Brilliant!!! And true!
We downsized too. Two years later, we still have a storage unit in our new location. Still, I gave away too much. I gave away my cotton curtains only to realize that I needed them! It's been hard and expensive to find quality 100% cotton curtains. There were kitchen tools that I miss like my mandoline slicer and serving bowls. It was a huge mistake on my part.
Marie Kondo was wrong.
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