As a few of you know, I've been making some trips to Alaska with my wife and enjoying the hell out of it. We want to retire and move there permanently someday soon. We found a place this last trip and put in an offer for it. A short negotiation and we got started on the financials. Everything went fine, although a bit slow, and THEN the required appraisal didn't like us. Off -grid means no electricity. Oh, the horror of it all! We can't classify that property for a mortgage for you being a non-resident and all. OK, fine. We tried this, that, and the next thing, and had a shot at getting something to work. The money was NOT a problem, just how Alaska classifies the place. We were just about FINALLY getting somewhere when we got in touch with an insurance agent about the cost of insuring the house, or houses actually, being that there was a log cabin there as well. When they found out that it was off-grid and had a wood stove, NOPE, not insurable! No insurance, no mortgage regardless of how they classified it. DAMN IT! Nearly 3 months of trying to get the deal done and now it's not possible. Back to square one with looking for a place to spend our retirement. Not to mention being out a good chunk of cash during the process. The one good thing about it was we made a good friend of the man living in the log cabin there.
This whole thing has pretty much run us down emotionally.We were making plans to spend Christmas there and meet up with our friends right down the road for the holidays. Make plans for furnishings and getting some things up there for future vacations. Now we have nothing and get to start the search all over again. I guess we'll have to make sure the next place has electricity. That, or find a place we can just pay cash for. That's fairly hard to do being 3500 miles away. This place took us about 3 years to find. Hopefully, the next one won't take that long. We hoped to be there 3 years from now. Before I get too old and beat up to enjoy all of the good things about Alaska. I just want ONE moose, damn it!
OK, that's our story. Thought maybe I might feel a little better after I spent some time typing things out. Thanks for listening.
This whole thing has pretty much run us down emotionally.We were making plans to spend Christmas there and meet up with our friends right down the road for the holidays. Make plans for furnishings and getting some things up there for future vacations. Now we have nothing and get to start the search all over again. I guess we'll have to make sure the next place has electricity. That, or find a place we can just pay cash for. That's fairly hard to do being 3500 miles away. This place took us about 3 years to find. Hopefully, the next one won't take that long. We hoped to be there 3 years from now. Before I get too old and beat up to enjoy all of the good things about Alaska. I just want ONE moose, damn it!
OK, that's our story. Thought maybe I might feel a little better after I spent some time typing things out. Thanks for listening.
