Relocating After 50: 3 Hard-Won Lessons From Our Move

What Relocating After 50 Actually Looked Like

I will be honest about that time. I was lonely. I loved my apartment, but coming home to it by myself every night got old fast.

I did have my cat, and I had a balcony I loved, and I was figuring out a brand new place on my own. And it felt good to be looking for a house I really had a say in.

We had scouted the area together the year before, but that was only a few days in a camper. Learning a place takes longer than that.

My weekends went to looking at houses, and to sitting out on that balcony. One day I was driving and saw a long line of cars and could not figure out what they were waiting for. It was a car wash. I had never seen a line that long for a car wash in California, but when you live where it snows, your car gets dirty fast. It is still the only long line I have ever seen around here.

Terry was doing the part I would not have wanted to. The first thing he did was rent the biggest dumpster they had, because twenty years in one house is a lot of accumulation. He wanted to sell most of it, and his realtor told him straight he was not going to get much for it. So it went to donation instead, about twenty-five trips to Goodwill.

Then the contractor came in for neutral paint inside and out, they did the hardwood floors, and Terry was outside getting the yard to look good. That was the job, full time, and it took the better part of three months.

They staged it in February, and once a house is staged you cannot really live in it. So he moved into our camper in our own driveway with the dog for about six weeks. Every time a showing came through, the two of them got in the truck and went to the park.

They only accepted offers for one week, no contingencies, and nothing under asking. Twenty-six offers came in, and it sold for two hundred sixty-five thousand over.

Lesson 1: Beautiful Is Not The Same As Livable

I used to live in Florida, and when I got there the beaches were gorgeous, but I could not take the humidity. So look into what the place is actually like the rest of the year, not just when you are visiting.

Winter is what got me here. It is not just knowing that it snows, because I knew that. It is the icy side streets that do not get plowed.

I drove out to two open houses that winter and never saw the inside of either one. The road to the first one had not been plowed. The street was icy and I could not get up it, so I turned around. A few days later I drove out to the second one. Different part of the county, but the same problem.

So one more thing went on the list that neither of us would have thought of. Winter conditions. If you are relocating after 50, look at a town in its worst month, not its best.

Lesson 2: Relocating After 50 Takes A Good Realtor On Both Ends

Terry’s realtor in California was a friend of many years, and he told Terry straight what was worth doing and what was not. That is why Terry spent three months on paint and floors instead of trying to sell twenty years of furniture.

Our realtor up here knew what we wanted better than we did. We had been emailing her for a year before we ever moved, so by the time anything came on the market she already had our whole list. That included Terry’s part of it, which was somewhere close by to walk the dog, the kind of place we used to have and not a dog park, and room to park the trailer.

Then one afternoon she called me at work. She said I should see this house now, because houses were going like hotcakes that year.

I did not expect the drive to be so beautiful. It is a winding country road that follows the river, with hills and trees the whole way, and a house here and there down on the bank. You even see fly fishermen out there once in a while. It looked like a scene out of a movie, and I felt at peace.

I got to the neighborhood and the properties were all an acre. In California we had a much smaller property. The house is a split level, so I walked up the stairs, went straight through the back door, and stepped out onto the deck looking over the backyard. That was it. I was sold.

The house had been remodeled, so the kitchen was open to the living room, and there was a fireplace. Both of those were on my list too.

I did not think a house existed with all the things we both wanted. She knew it did, and she made sure we would get it. She is a great realtor, and we still get gifts from her four years later.

If you are relocating after 50, start emailing an agent in the town you are looking at long before you are ready to buy anything.

Lesson 3: Know The Few Things You Will Not Trade

I took a video of the whole place so Terry could see it, and we made an offer that night. Our realtor knew what the sellers would want, so we wrote it accordingly. I told her I was nervous about Terry not seeing it in person, and she told me we could back out any time up until inspection day, which was about four days out.

We heard back the next morning. Terry drove north on the ninth, which was before his own sale had even closed, and pulled in on the eleventh. The inspection was that same afternoon, so he walked into our house for the first time with an inspector right behind him. Both houses closed on the fifteenth, about six hours apart, and we paid cash.

The one thing about this house was the detached garage. We had wanted an attached one, but this was far and away the best house we found in the range we wanted to spend, so we gave on that.

There were houses out there with a view of the river, and I loved those. But they came with a mortgage. That decision was made a year before we ever saw this house. No mortgage, whatever else we had to give up.

For me it was the balcony and the trees. Those were the two I would not trade.

So write down everything you want, all of it. Then mark the ones you will not give up, and find out what the rest of them cost. That list is the whole job when you are relocating after 50, and every item on it has a price.

What Relocating After 50 Bought Us

The timing worked out almost perfectly, except our movers from California were about a week late. Our first night here we sat in lawn chairs and ate grocery store sushi.

This house really felt like home. Before this we were living in a house Terry already owned, and he had been there over twenty years. It was his home, not mine.

Our house has windows everywhere, and out every one of them you see trees. I got my balcony, and I sit out there and look at our back yard. It is not a river view. But it is one I enjoy every day, and it turned out to be plenty.

I do miss California at times, especially my friends and the beach. But I do not miss the traffic or the crowds.

What paying cash bought us is no payment, and no month where the house decides what we can and cannot do.

If You Are Relocating After 50

It comes down to two things. Knowing what actually matters to you, and knowing whether you can afford it.

Terry built The Financial Ledger for the second one. It maps out your next three decades, so you can see your baseline, what changes year to year, and what the long-term picture looks like.

And if you have not seen the one where we lost the house I thought was our dream house
That video is right here.