Well….Sure! Since you asked.

Have a Nice Life in Puerto Rico!

Now we just need some people to help us eat it…any takers?

I have spent most of my working life (10yrs) in front of a computer screen. I think it has screwed with my emotions/perceptions quite a bit. I’ve lived a comfortable life. When I think about moving to Puerto Rico I have no clue what so ever what it will be like and I am not used to that. Its exciting!

I am used to knowing what the weather will be, how long my drive will take, what my day will consist of, what I will eat for lunch/dinner, what time I’ll go to bed and what time it will all start again the next day. It must be what my dog’s life is like in some ways.

I got some pictures of a property that is for sale, here is one of them:

Sleeping off the side of a cliff scares the living crap out of me when I think about it. LoL It seems that a lot of places are built like this in PR. Something about it seems unsettling in my mind. I want to go inside and jump around to make sure its sturdy! A friend of mine brought this up to me when I sent him the picture. He lives the same life for the most part that I do so maybe we are just fraidy cats?

When we go down to Puerto Rico for this trip, we would also like to get a few things lined up with a Puerto Rican mortgage company. We had looked into Pentagon Federal when we had the offer in on the place in Lares, but they charge even just to fill out the application. Are there any other mortgage companies you might recommend? From reading CA2PR’s blog, it sounds like Banco Popular is not very good to work with even though it is the largest bank on the island. How is Western Bank? Any other mortgage companies that you trust?

This is one thing that makes moving so far away so difficult. We have a lot of connections here including a few friends in the mortgage industry. Their banks are national, but for some reason they don’t extend to Puerto Rico -poo. Anything we should be aware of that is different in the mortgage process? I would like to get preapproved and lined up before we leave from the trip. Another thing to do!! So much to cram into one week! We must keep telling ourselves, this is a property trip, not a vacation, but somehow it’s not sinking in!

Anyway, I wanted to get it framed so we would have it as wall art. It took us forever to find a frame that would fit it, but finally we found a square frame for it. Last night we put it together. I think it turned out really well and I am excited to hang it in our house in Puerto Rico (when we have one that is)

We have some goals for our trip in March to Puerto Rico. Most obviously, we want to look for a property to buy in the western side (Aguada, Rincon, Mayaguez area). This is difficult because in Puerto Rico there is no MLS (multiple listing service), so you have to go with various real estate agents to see houses and you have to look all over the place. The best place we have found so far online is Clasificadosonline. It seems that most Puerto Ricans haven’t gotten too much into Craigslist, which I think is an absolute necessity here in Colorado. But Clasificadosonline pretty much fills that need in PR.

Anyhow, it is difficult to gauge the market in PR because of the lack of MLS or central resource of properties. Plus, a lot of people sell as the owner without a real estate company involved at all. We are planning on seeing a house with a real estate agent (Jose Marti Realty) and asked if we could see others with him, including others he has listed and he tried to sell us a house-hunting service! ! For like $500 a day just to drive around with the realtor! That is ridiculous. I can’t imagine it is such a seller’s market that they are discouraging possible buyers through this “service”.  If I were selling my house, I wouldn’t put it through this company just for that reason alone.

So our main goal is to find a place that works with what we are looking for (a little bit of land and a comfortable house that we can rent out a portion of, not too far from the beaches and a town) and put in an offer. We would like to close on it this year if possible. We are not sure if we would be moving out right away or what, but we would like to have a property ready for us.

Other goals include meeting some of our blog friends and enjoying Puerto Rico as we always do. We are flying in to San Juan, although I am getting very tempted to fly into Aguadilla, but we just never have before. Then from there we are taking a rental car to Rincon where we are staying as roommates with two women who rent out their house in that way. We talked with one of them on the phone and she sounds like she will help us out in finding a place as well.

We also found this great reggae musician, Mishka, and so we plan on listening to a lot of his music in the rental car while we are driving around.

We have played about 5 games with this new crew and while I got 4th at the last one, we haven’t walked away with any money yet. Well, last night Britton got second! It was great! It is fun to win every now and then.

We also had a little bit of fun outside with the snow birds (the chickens), Kitty and Schnoodle.  Another great weekend. Plus, we made arrangements for where we will be staying in Puerto Rico as snow birds ourselves in March (staying with a couple of people in a house in Rincon).

Britton and I have been thinking that life is like that Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime. “You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” Sometimes Britton and I just look at each other and smile knowing that life is but a dream. You never know how one moment will lead to another. Yesterday, for instance, our cat and chickens were on the front page of the news.

It is sad, really how the whole chicken debate turned out. Mostly for people who will continue to live here and try to make this city a better place. I have tried, and believe me, it can be done, but it is HARD work. It is underappreciated work.

But Britton and I are ready to move on both literally and figuratively. We booked our next trip to Puerto Rico in mid-March! We are going to find a house! We are super excited. I can’t wait for the next moment when I look up and ask myself, “how did I get here?”, and then I’ll remember; what a strange life it is going gently down this stream.