B O W L D E R L O D G E . C O M
So, how did I come to end up at BowlderLodge ? Fate ? Luck ? probably a little of both.....
After leaving Kroughs, I decided to have a look around and wandered over to the boardwalk. Right on the corner was a Coldwell real-estate office. Even though the day had started off less than perfect, my spirits were high and I decided to give it another try. Inside I met Arlene Gray who offered to run me out to a house to give me the feel of the Lake Mohawk area. Little did either of us know at that point that this would turn into a nine month struggle to find a home.....
So we headed off for a house on Indian Trail - I cannot now remember what the number is (sixty-something I believe), but I remember the interior (and the view of the lake) like it was yesterday - huge stone fireplace and two-story open ceiling like you might find in a ski lodge. We headed back to the plaza and Arlene equipped me with a map of the local area so that I could look around. She added community reports, school reports and other area info and we agreed to talk again once my work plans firmed up. I made a call to my wife and told her that I had found the area where I wanted to live.
I continued to look at other areas over the coming weeks, but always kept coming back to Lake Mohawk. The family and I spent Christmas 2001 in New Hampshire with my brother and on the return trip to Florida (driving) stopped in to show them the lake and area. We had an emotional dinner at Kroughs - I think the possibility of the move finally began to sink in and my daughter was not at all up for moving her life.
We spent many hours over the next week working the pros and cons and finally in the first week of January 2002 decided to put the Florida house on the market. We were hoping for a sale sometime within a few months - but we didn't want to move our daughter (Allison) while school was still in session (so a few months was ok with us). I continued with the back and forth commute until May when I was needed in New Jersey full time for work. The house hunting in the north and the house selling in the south continued with no prospects on either front.
We had a lot of lookers in Florida, but the house was priced on the upper end of the scale for its size. It was by no means overpriced - it was just that we had done a lot of upgrades that pushed the price above similarly sized homes - plus every dollar that we reduced the price was one less dollar that we had for a down payment in NJ (and we needed every penny). This limited the number of serious buyers and therefore the number of offers. In April we were finally rewarded with an offer - full price contingent only on inspection. Unfortunately the inspection gods were not on our side and we ended up with an inspector that either had little experience or highly exacting standards. Even after hiring separate inspectors to repudiate the original report, the purchasers felt uneasy and backed out of the sale.
In New Jersey the market had taken off and I found myself looking a new listings almost every weekend. Unfortunately the houses that we liked, went under contract almost as soon as they hit the market. We had come close to putting an offer in when the Florida sale fell through, so we were back on uncertain ground. And then quite unexpectedly on the day that we legally executed the cancellation (about a week after the original buyers left) we had another offer - at full price.
They were fine with the inspections and the paperwork was drawn up. A week later the moving van (which had been arranged by my wife with only three days notice) arrived and began packing our belongings for their trip to storage. Kim (my wife) and Allison would move in with her mother who happened to be only a few blocks away. I executed all the documents in New Jersey and my wife went to the closing to sign her parts and collect the check. As you can predict this of course did not go smoothly. The title company decided that the power of attorney letter that the buyer had been using all along was now no good. The husband would need to appear in person - and as he was in Alaska, the closing would be delayed.... ug!!
Everyone however was confident that the deal would close, so we put an offer down on a partially updated lake-style on Springbrook Terrace in Lake Mohawk. It was not everything that we were looking for but it was close. As we had seen with so many others however, it went into a bidding war and went beyond our limit. The week was not a total loss however, as I returned to Florida to see the family and at the same time collected the proceeds from the sale of the Florida house. One hurdle down - another to go...