A dream has the potential to live in a state of perpetual haze unless there’s a trigger to set it into movement. While we are not going to credit the Pandemic of 2020 for everything, the things that were set into motion because of it certainly helped. We were fortunate throughout that challenging year, we had space as compared to most people living in or around a major city, we both maintained our jobs, and our daughter adapted well to home schooling.
2020 saw an “old” phenomenon begin taking shape. It was both obvious to those paying attention in metro areas, and surprising when you saw how fast it was happening. There was a great exodus from the cities where the realization of space and families living on top of each other without public spaces available, and under a lock down, was less than ideal. The other obvious factor was the remote worker having the ability to zoom from anywhere. So why stay in a hot spot?
We already live in an area with a stellar real estate market – let’s just say New York City’s 6th borough, but with green space and in New Jersey. Intense bidding wars in the neighborhood are not really a surprise, but with news coverage of the pandemic, we saw steadily increasing pricing, almost weekly, on all types of property north, south and west of Manhattan. Out of curiosity, I began looking at property further north of Albany and realized house and land values climbing in the most rural of areas.
In the early summer of 2020, I took my daughter and her friend to a hidden gem of a swimming hole near our old home in Upstate NY. I had earmarked a few properties to explore while there, but was in awe to see so many For Sale signs on the trip; a sign -no pun intended – that many land/home owners were looking to take advantage of this shift in population and cash in on a market that is typically slow moving. I convinced the kids to stop by a few of the listings I saved (including the land parcel we eventually purchased) by bribing them with the best local ice-cream, Battenkill Creamery. This was the beginning of the exploration for property and the discovery of what we were looking for in a land purchase.
One parcel was at the end of the very same road we had lived on. It was familiar, we knew the neighbors, it was ready to be developed because of proximity to utilities and it was mostly cleared with some nice wooded sections for privacy. Another parcel was about 20 minutes nearer to Vermont, densely forested, not maintained and offered no available resources near utilities, not to mention more isolated from neighbors. There were other differences like price, lot size, topography, village zip code, and most important buildability, which can greatly impact future cost for developing.
On the way home, all I could do was begin envisioning the potential of what we saw and thinking about how competitive the area had become – the same location that took us over a year to sell our last home had become a real-estate hotbed. My mind was spinning, and while we were somewhat ready to begin looking, it hadn’t been very high on the priority list. But…every ballon needs a string to keep it grounded and that’s where my wife has always supported, grounding us (me) in reality.
Tenir Bon House 