What a strange journey the past month was! LOL The whole thing seems surreal but also strangely normal. For those of you who already know Tom and I that will make complete sense. You're used to us jumping head first into the unknown. If you're just meeting us now we tend to . . . hmm . . . follow the road less taken fearlessly and preferably on our own. Neither of us sees obstacles as necessarily being bad things nor are we A-Type personalities or even in a rush at all. Tom's naturally laid back and relaxed and being pagan I've learned things happen when they will and that's not necessarily when I'd prefer them to occur LOL We're pretty realistic too and that should serve us well during this project.
I think it's been fated since I first saw the auction ad in the newspaper. For unknown reasons I've always liked that particular building and I've often thought about owning a business property with apartments above. The chain of events was kind of funny; I'm mentioned to Tom a few months ago that real estate in Florida had been pretty hard hit by the economy and maybe we should but a vacation condo and rent it out. I'm thinking 'nice start on vacations and future retirement base', right? Not Tom LOL His reply is that he's been thinking of getting a rental property in Findlay, a small house or something. The timing of it all was just perfect and it was pretty much love at first sight when we toured the property. OK, not love, more along the lines of 'eww' and 'oh my' but there was a lot of potential, much good and a great deal of excitement. While the thought was scary we were more determined than ever to pursue the matter.
The auction was a complete panic! LOL I really thought Tom would pull out or I'd loose my nerve but then there we were, standing in a freezing cold building on a gloomy afternoon, checkbook in hand, and to our dismay surrounded by lots of people. We're novices at property auctions and given the state of the building and it's long emptiness I'd naively thought no one else would show up. I didn't know which was the more frightening and disappointing outcome; that we'd get the building or that we'd be outbid! The bidding process was truly agony. We'd delegated it to Tom since he's larger and louder so my job was to remain poker faced and breathe. As it turned out only three of the many people attending actually bid and it was soon down to one serious and experienced buyer and us. Our upper most limit approached and I was ready to grab Tom's arm and tell him to stop but I really wanted to tell him to bid higher and then the other man dropped out. Of course the auctioneer had to get the best sales price for his client so we waited the eternity of five minutes just in case the other bidder changed his mind. Thank the Lord and Lady that he didn't and with a thump of his stick the auctioneer declared us the winners!
Papers were signed in the quickly fading light, the last of them by flashlight as our new purchase has no electricity at the moment. With nervous giggles we headed home to arrange for title searches, closings and financing. Are we crazy and in over our heads? Most probably. Will it be a great adventure and loads of fun? Definitely! I can't wait to see what this new venture has in store for both of us!
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