Our New House

The Living Room of Our New House

We accepted the sellers’ counteroffer, and assuming the inspection doesn’t come up with a deal-breaker, we’ve bought a house in Windermere. Built in 1957, it is tiny, but the sellers raised the roof about 18” and added a room off the kitchen so it seems larger than others of its vintage. With the huge screened pool area, I think we will have the extra living space we decided our apartment doesn’t have.

Grant and I hemmed and hawed over the price, then offered $675,000 to their asking price of $725,000 and that they throw in the pontoon boat and motor. No go on the boat because it was a 40th birthday present. We agreed on $695,000, which seems crazy, but I’ve looked at enough houses in the area to know if we want to be downtown, it’s what we have to pay.  Plus the house is move-in ready on a dead end street and a canal to the Chain of Lakes. We can buy a boat and/or take the sellers up on their offer of boat rides whenever we want. They bought a house right across the street, big enough for their growing family and directly on the lake.

It is amazing that I can do all the paperwork from here in Okinawa. We’ve e-signed the contract, and I had the earnest money wired from our brokerage account. At the same time, I cannot get my eBird app to work. I can open up the map and drop a pin on my current location, yet when I try to start a new checklist, it can’t reach the server. It’s happy to do it if I use a stateside location but gives an error message for any Japanese site. The yin yang of computers.