More land...and a house?

Well, unfortunately that 4 acre piece of land we were looking at didn't end up working out. As beautiful as it was, it was overpriced beyond our budget. I was also struggling with the idea of keeping three horses on a four acre piece of land when 1.5 acres minimum would be dedicated to house/arena/outbuildings. There are ways to do it, but still, I was struggling with it. So it's for the best really that the dollars just didn't line up...especially given what we looked at today!

This past weekend we did our now routine stalker potential buyer drive-bys. I know a lot of people just make their realtors case places for them and have them take them to look at a million houses. However, our realtor is a friend, who is a hard worker (not just a realtor) and has a young family and a busy schedule. As such, we try to give him a break and do most of the ground work ourselves. After all, who gets a master's degree if they don't like research? We have to put those degrees to work one way or another. Anyway, we don't want to waste his time or make homeowners jump through hoops if we aren't seriously interested in a property. Really, that's just not a cool thing to do in my book. Can you say, tire kicker? That is just not me. So, ever since our house went on the market, we've begun a weekend ritual of doing Google earth inspections followed by drive-by's. When we drove up to this place last Saturday and both of us were instantly interested, we decided that it was about time we actually set foot in a potential new home. That happened this afternoon.

A brief summary: it's a 20-min drive from downtown, but still in our school district. Big check! Ten acres. Rock on! The house is a humble 1980's era (but renovated) 2500sf house, amazing 360º mountain views, an old barn "shop", and has a really big four sided run-in with a sliding barn door. The perimeter fencing is not horse safe and would need to be replaced, but otherwise the place is really clean, updated, and move-in ready. The moment I fell in love with the place though? When I found the automatic anti-freeze waterer in the fence-line between the pasture and the dry-lot which, while there are no horses on the property now, is working perfectly. I hate filling water troughs and I hate the unreliability of water trough heaters. It was seriously love at first sight!

Happy trails and swooshing tails!
•Renee•