When Colleen’s condition progressed to a point where it was no longer safe for her to drive, it was time for us to move closer to her work in Madison, WI. This was a move that I did not accept gracefully. I really did not want to leave our home in Milton, WI. This was at the tail end of the housing market crash of 2008. We purchased it in 1997 when the real estate market was just screaming. At that time, it was thought that you just “cannot lose” with real estate. After it was all said and done, we sold our house in Milton for almost precisely the same price we purchased it for 14 years previous. At a time when many people were upside down on their mortgages, we considered ourselves fortunate.
Tough Finding A New Home
Before purchasing our home in Madison, we rented a place near Colleen’s work for about a year. When our house in Milton sold, we thought, “That was the tough part. There is a lot of inventory in Madison available. Buying a new home will be the easy part”. This was technically correct; however, not much of the inventory provided an acceptable layout for Colleen to get around. We viewed many homes but did not find a good fit for us. We started to lose hope.
Perfect Timing
One day Colleen saw a home online that was much bigger than what we needed and out of our price range, but it was only 5 minutes from where she worked. Reluctantly I told her I would call the realtor. As I was driving to work the next day, I received a notification that the price on this home had dropped by $25,000. A few days later, we toured the home. As we went through the house, we loved each room better than the previous. By the time we were done, we knew this was the right home for us. We agreed to meet our realtor back at her office in a few hours to write up the offer.
Later that night, Colleen and I were at home and were joking, “Where is our accepted offer”? A few hours later, we received a text message from our realtor asking if we would budge a few thousand dollars? It was not even a question; we loved the house. By that evening, we had a signed offer. We came to find out later that the seller was heading out of the country the next day.
A Blessing From Above
When we refinanced the house about a year later, it turned out we fell into a fair amount of equity when we purchased the house. We used this equity in the home to make updates, making it easier for Colleen to get around. It was getting more difficult for Colleen to get around, more of my assistance was required with her ADLs (acts of daily living). As much as we loved that house, it needed a lot of upkeep as homes typically do. It was getting more challenging to balance work and home as well as carve out time for myself. We started to feel as though we needed to make a move, but we were not sure what the right move was. This involved a lot of prayer.
We Were Very Fortunate
In previous posts, we talked about how organic the process was from the time we received a letter from a realtor asking if we wanted to sell our home to traveling the country. In the process, our travel trailer was the 3rd most significant purchase of our lives based on pictures emailed to us. It was not until after we were living in our new home on wheels for about a month did I realize that this could have turned out very bad. Fast forward to the present day. After living in our rig for over a year, we believe we made the correct decision. The team at Dune Sport has been very good to work with.
There is no doubt that we have been guided along the way. Some may call these events a string of coincidences. I like Wayne Dyer’s take on this. He describes coincidence as nothing more than “God smiling behind a cloud.”
