Ready To view

Well, here we are in Nova Scotia, staying in an old B&B in Chester.  The number of properties we're seeing tomorrow has now dropped to nine.  One of the original eleven was a duplicate and one of the remaining ten is conditionally sold.  Can hardly wait...

Trying To Decide What Properties To Look At

Although we have visited the area of Nova Scotia we want to move to more than once, it can still be hard to visualize where a property is and what its surroundings are like just from a listing on the MLS.  We have therefore spent a considerable amount of time trying to find the properties we really want to see without thinking we may have missed something.

The result of all that work is eleven properties to view on Tuesday, possibly spilling over into Wednesday morning.  It's going to be a busy week next week!

Back Home Again

We got back home from England yesterday having brought our flight forward a couple of days.  We were worried about getting trapped by the Icelandic ash cloud and also wanted to get things started on move organizing.  As it happened we had to take a fairly large detour to avoid Iceland that added an hour to the flight but we made it OK which is the main thing.  Thanks to Steve and Linda for picking us up from the airport.  We were so tired we were in bed before 8pm last night and wide awake at 3am!  We just got up for a bit then went back to bed for a couple of hours to try and get our internal clocks straight.

So now we're back and running in top gear to get things done.  Annette's been on the phone most of the morning to the utility companies and myriad others who need to be informed.  Next big task here is sorting out what we're going to sell and what we're keeping.

But first, we're flying out to Nova Scotia on Monday to do some house hunting.  We've currently got seven houses to see which we're setting up for Tuesday.  If we can't find anything we want to buy right away, we go straight to Plan B.  Problem at the moment is we don't know what Plan B is yet!

Starting To Organize Things

We changed our flight home from England from Thursday to Tuesday to give us a couple more days to get ready.  Estimates have now been requested from three moving companies.  Our Mazda convertible has been listed on Kijiji for a while and there's quite a bit of interest in that.

We are flying out to Nova Scotia next Monday to start house hunting.  There are a number of possibilities that we've found on the MLS.  Just need to find a realtor out there to take us round and set up showings.

Keep wondering what we've forgotten to organize...

Early Days

In between the sale conditions being agreed and the deal firming up, we were in a state of semi-panic.  Would the deal firm up?  If it did, would we have enough time to get everything sorted?  We didn't want to start looking for a place to buy until the deal became firm; just in case so we were largely just waiting.

Then the deal became firm and reality struck.  We started searching the MLS for a house to buy.  What should our tactic be?  Should we try and buy quickly?  Should we go east and rent for a while before buying?  The trouble with renting at this time of year is that we're coming into the holiday season so short term rentals become very expensive.  Should we therefore put everything in storage and travel for the summer?  Thailand?  Nepal?  Australia?  We don't need to rush to buy but we don't want to rent long term either.

When we get back from England, we have less than four weeks to get everything done.  Organize a moving sale, figure out where we're going, pack up, etc.  So our initial thought was let's nip over to NS as soon as we can and view some houses.  If there's nothing we want to buy, we can look at rentals and if that doesn't work out then we can re-evaluate the situation.  We won't be back in Canada until next week so now we're in wait mode...

Introduction

Our plan has long been that we would sell up in Alberta and move to Nova Scotia.  Why you might ask?

• We don't need to be in any specific location in order to continue working; thank goodness for the internet.
• We don't want to leave Canada at the moment; nice people, stable economy and good prospects.
• We do want to live by the ocean and get a boat.
• We do need to move to a cheaper property and be mortgage free so we can retire any time we want.

We looked at moving to the BC coast but living there is just as expensive as living in Alberta.  We couldn't find an ocean front property with some land that would work for us for less than $1M.  In Nova Scotia, equivalent properties in the area we want can be found for $300,000 or less.  We toured the east coast a couple of years ago, looking at New Brunswick, PEI and Nova Scotia and basically fell in love with the Atlantic side of Nova Scotia.  More specifically, we liked the area south west of Halifax in the St. Margaret's Bay, Mahone Bay area.  This has the combination of sheltered bays with the wild Atlantic just beyond yet is reasonably close to a major airport in Halifax.  We still need to regularly go to both Calgary and England to visit relatives and friends.

Anyway, all this was just a pipe dream until we could sell our large acreage house near Bragg Creek.  The house had been on the market for a while and whilst there was some interest, we just didn't find the right buyer until now.  We happened to be travelling in England when the offer came in and we dealt with everything very efficiently by e-mail.  The deal became firm on May 18th and the buyers get possession on June 21st.  This doesn't leave us much time to pack up, sell all the stuff we don't need and find somewhere new to live.  Hence this blog.