Research Trip #2
After finally selling our house it’s time to head down to Orlando to see if we can find a place to live. It’s been a while (8 months) since we went down to Orlando to look into moving there so it’s time for the sequel: Research Trip #2, This Time it’s For Real.
We have a little over six weeks until we have to be out of our house. Over the last few months I have done a ton of research to help make an informed decision about the area and to narrow down where specifically we would want to look for homes. I’ll write about where I found the best information in a later post, but regardless of where you want to live you are going to need a good realtor. While always important it becomes more essential when you are moving to a brand new area. We got so lucky when we found our realtor Beth. She just got us so quickly. It only took looking at a few houses and she knew exactly what kind of place we liked. I could totally trust her to choose the houses we looked at. She took a lot of stress off me just knowing she had such good taste and I could trust her. I included her site in the link above if you are looking for a realtor. (I get nothing out of this- just passing on a great resource)
We considered buying vs renting but decided that we would rent a home for the first year. It makes the timing of the move much simpler, and I like the fact that we have the option of tweaking the exact area or neighborhood we live in once we know the area well. There are so many great areas to choose that I liked not being locked into one right away. Plus, worse case scenario and everything completely falls apart, we can always go back to Virginia after the year is up. (Really hoping that doesn’t need to happen but a fall back plan is always a good idea.)
Once we decided for sure on renting we started concentrated our searches there. I can tell you one thing, rental homes go very quickly! There are so many that have only been listed for a few days and are all ready rented. But on the bright side, there are lots of homes available to choose from and more seem to come available all the time. If you are looking for an apartment or town home then you have even more choices.
We have set up some homes to look at with our realtor, and called around to find a local church that we think will be closest to us to find out their meeting times. The plan is to drive down Saturday, visit the congregation on Sunday, hopefully meet a few of the locals, and look at rentals Monday and Tuesday. If everything goes well we will be be headed home on Wednesday with a decision made and clear path ahead. Easy peasy, right? ( Yeah I know. Just let me have my moment.) Or, we will all freak out from stress, stop speaking to each other and have a 12 hour ride home in awkward silence. (More likely let’s be honest.) It could really go either way.