tina...I do get what you are saying. We have volunteered a lot with the local food bank and our church. Many people need rides out of town and few can do it so DH and I are always called upon to give rides to those that have out of town appts for MD's and lengthy tests etc. We are gone a lot so it is a challenge to fit in volunteer work and travel, for sure ! I seem to never have much time to relax LOL! DH and I are on the go and this trip has been much the same..you have to be someplace every day by a set time...sigh... this will be my last bike tour with others...remember I said I hate too much structure...even if it is " fun" ! We have LOVED being on our own the past 2 1/2 weeks..no one to please but ourselves. You should have seen my face when the 1st B and B wanted to know when we wanted breakfast ...arrgghh ! I don't know !! It is SO fun tonight to be at our nephew's home near Den Haag..they are gone and we are borrowing their home...we can get up when we want :) Joanie...exactly..you said it perfectly ! Precisely what I was trying to convey..thank you ! If you are at all like DH and I you will have more trouble deciding "what to do next? ! " ..there are just too many great things and people and places out there and of course family comes first so that has made a big difference in our plans. We would move to Europe most of every Summer were it not for our children and now our lovely sweet grandson...so choices. May you have a lovely time deciding what joy to bring in to your life next . c

I remember that Prop 13 - I voted against it because as I understood it, it only applied to property that had already been purchased and did not affect new sales. Are you saying that any property bought since then cannot increase more than 2% a year as long as I stay in my house? We bought a house in Westchester in 2009, which has increase in value by 63% in the past nine years. I have also noticed that prices in Cathedral City have increased by more than that in the past seven years - 2011 seems to be a low spot for the valley. Some properties have a list price that is double the 2011 price, which in most cases seems ridiculously low. It's difficult for me to tell whether there is a bubble in CC since the prices are a fraction of what they are in L.A. I am planning to avoid leased land, but if the lease is long enough, the price is low enough, and I love the house enough, I might consider it. My brother is pretty much against it, especially since he is 15 years younger than me, and the lease may affect him more than it would me. I might be okay with a 20 year lease, but he would not. Also for resale value, fee land would be better, I think. We do not have any heirs, and so we are not concerned with what happens to the property after we are both gone. I think DB wants to leave it to charity.

Thank you. This was all very helpful. This is sort of a long explanation of what happened during this busy week. So here is what we decided to do. We did ask for an extension on the option which we received. Actually, we would have asked for the extension even if we weren't considering looking for a different house. We had some repair issues with the seller that couldn't be resolved fully in the time period of the option. So even if we were totally committed to the house we would have wanted an extension. At the time we got the extension I figured we would work on the repair issues and see if the upcoming house became available to look at during the extended option time. I also figured that if I didn't like that house that I would go ahead and keep the house I had a contract on. Bird in the hand and all. But then a surprising thing happened. On one day 3 houses came on the market that were close to our criteria. This was totally astonishing as I have been following this market for months and rarely do houses come on the market that meets our criteria. One house was the upcoming house in the same subdivision as the house we had under contract. The other two were houses slightly older than we wanted by 3 to 5 years but both had been completely updated. They were in the same town we wanted to be in but in a different location in this town. Those houses also had a great location close to lots of amenities. We went and looked at all 3 houses. The upcoming house that started all of this was the third one we looked it. It was an interesting house. It had a fairly unique layout that would have actually worked fine for us but I think a lot of people wouldn't have liked. House needed a lot of updating but I did feel it had a better layout than the house we had under contract. It would have been harder to update but I felt it had a better overall layout for us. I think we would have likely preferred it to the house we had under contract but it was actually a close call. The 2nd house we looked at was 35 years old but it had been updated fully. It was a gorgeous house with lots of special features. There was some outdoor stuff I didn't like as well (for example, we would have to get a new fence which would be expensive as it was about half an acre). I did find out it had multiple offers on it that day and the deadline for offers is on this weekend. I didn't feel it was likely we would get this house for an acceptable price given the offers and market. Also, this house had a better layout than the house we had under contract but it was the least ideal of the 3 houses. I liked this house better than the house above right now, but I felt the one above long term met our needs better once it was updated. The third house was the one we saw first. It was 3 years older than I wanted, but had been fully updated. One of the nice things was that the updates were entirely to my taste. That is, they were literally what I had intended to do in any house we bought. Of any houses we had seen during this entire process this one came the closest to meeting my wish list. It wasn't perfect. There is still a tub in the master bathroom that I will want to come out eventually. There are two closets but each one is sort of small (still better than the one closet in the house we have under contract). The master bath is not huge, but is adequate. There are some things I would like to be a little different in the kitchen but it is acceptable. Still it had so much that I loved. This house was actually a coming soon house but they were starting to show it. Anyway, long story short, the house did get multiple offers but we ended up with the contract. Oh - one other thing. Remember how I said that we were going to keep the contract on the existing house if we didn't find something we liked better during the option period? After we offered on the house we now have under contract, I realized that would have been a mistake. I didn't feel about the first house anything like how I feel about the new house. I love a lot about the new house right now -- not just the location or potential. I realized I just wasn't "feeling it" for the first house. I wasn't enthusiastic about it. I think we could have remodeled it to make it look nice and to be functional. I don't think I would have been miserable there. I would have loved the location. But I think it would have been a mistake to buy it. Despite the logical reasons to buy it and despite my time issues -- I just wasn't thrilled by the house. It didn't make me smile.

Yeah, 20k was what I figured and that would not be enough to both live off of and pay the loan off to buy a place. I can't afford B&Bs but did stay at a couple of small inns for work, and three B&Bs back in England (don't worry W, they had private baths!) and I didn't find them any more socially intrusive than a chain motel and in many cases less so. All were clean and quiet and I didn't interact at all with any other guests other than noticing them getting breakfast at the breakfast bar in one place, the others were just rooms. Knowing what I do about milennials though, cost would definitely be a factor, and wanting to travel with kids and activities for families to do together would be their thing. B&B aren't generally geared towards that, more for singles and retired folks. I know we never stayed at one when I was growing up, but my parents did occasionally on their retirement travels. In my travels during my single days, I tended to rent cottages or camp, as in both cases I could do my own food. If you can't afford a B&B room you can't afford to go out to eat a lot either. That's why campers are so popular in my state, used ones can be picked up for a song and there are many campgrounds. That might be an even easier way to pick up some extra money, run a small campground. The little local campground is where the working class spend their weekends. And yes, the cohort of folks who can afford a nice B&B are shrinking and I don't expect that market to expand. I only plan on working 10 more years though. I can get jobs in the tourist industry locally to start, but that doesn't solve my problem of no longer being able to afford to visit my ancestral family home on a regular basis, and tend to my mother's grave. I might be better off buying an eventual retirement cottage and renting it out to pay the expenses until we can afford to live there. I supposed I could contract that out with someone up there. I just mused that running a B&B might be a way to kill two birds with one stone, get me up there quicker and get me working for myself. WSY18, just because you are not aware of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, particularly perhaps under your price range. My friend was a nurse living alone in London at the time. The apt. also had a heater in the living room that you had to feed with pound coins to keep going, and a hot water tank in the kitchen that you also had to put coins in to get hot water for the dishes, etc. My friend kept a coin purse with her and had to meter her need for heat and doing dishes. She only had heat for a few hours in the evenings before she went to bed. My friends in Edinburgh couldn't afford heat in their big flat either, although they had a bathroom in the apartment. Their advice when you got chilly was to put on a jumper and have another cup of tea. All are married now with homes with heat although it has been my experience that the Brits are more tolerant of chilly homes since heat is so expensive. After my friend got married, she and her husband graduated to being house parents at a college in a tiny flat and then eventually they moved to Perthshire where they have a house with TWO bathrooms if you can believe that! But the down side of that is we both can no longer afford to travel to see each other on either side of the Pond.