Old or Older?

[richafranco]

Pete,

Thanks again for the info. Our 2 kids(?), 35 and 39, live within 10-15
minutes of our house and if we go down this path, we'll talk with them
and see if they could/would handle this for us. If not then I would use
a management group. Like you, we could probably keep the house for a few
months and give the Bird a try and then come home and see what we think
of the whole deal.

This is all good info, hearing both sides of this experience and the
more I hear and learn, the better the final decision will be. We spend a
lot of time outside, whether working in the yard or just reading in our
screened in room, watching the world go by. I think if we can stay in
beautiful parks and campgrounds, the space issue might not be such a
problem. I don't know. We both read a lot and spend a lot of time on the
Internet and I would think that this may help any "cabin Fever"
outbreaks! Which brings up another side issue, we both go through a few
books a week from our public library. Now what! Where do the books come
from???

You've got a beautiful coach and I can't imagine you having any trouble
selling it, as this economy starts to get better. It's probably out of
our range, but I saved it to our Favorites-BlueBirds.

And finally, thanks for looking at my web site. It's an older design and
I'm actually looking at a template from Blu Domain.com to update my old
site. They run from about $100 to the one I'm looking at, "George" $400.
I have a friend that got one a year ago and he loves it. All
self-managed and very simple.

Rich&Joyce Franco


--- In WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com, Pete Masterson
wrote:
>
> Rich,
>
> Having had some experience with rental properties (as a landlord) over
> the years, you might want to consider a rental management company to
> handle your home. It might cost 5 to 10% of the revenue, but it will
> solve a lot of trouble while you're on the road.
>
> Our original plan was to sell our home and go full time.
> Unfortunately, we put our house up for sale just as the bottom fell
> out of the market, resulting in zero offers. Real estate agents who'd
> had "hot" clients, got the response "we'll wait to see how far the
> prices drop." In our general area, only 3 or 4 houses have sold (not
> counting foreclosures) during the past (roughly) 3 years. Prices are
> down by 40-45%.
>
> However, traveling in our coach for 3 to 5 months per trip taught us
> quite a bit about the lifestyle. For us, we found (1) that are
> tolerance of the smaller quarters tended to fade after about 4 months.
> The desire for a larger shower and a larger kitchen (from my wife,
> especially) started to build strongly at that point. (2) We ultimately
> came to the conclusion that, despite a variety of dissatisfactions,
> there is no place quite like "home." We've seen some beautiful areas
> (along with some of dreadful lack of redeeming qualities). But, we're
> both native Californians (we live within 10 miles of my birthplace)
> and there is simply no place where the year-round weather is more
> appealing to us. (This is not to say that others may have different
> opinions about weather and natural beauty of the landscape.) (3) I was
> not as productive at working while on the road as I had hoped. It
> proved more difficult to work on projects than expected, unless we
> were stopped somewhere for, at least, several days. (I am a book
> designer -- the desk I had installed was designed to carry a full-size
> desktop computer (Mac G5) and a color laser printer.)
>
> The ramifications of our experience is that we're now just as glad
> that our house did not sell (though it created a significant financial
> complication for us) and we will be selling our coach. I already
> offered it earlier this year but removed it from the market and based
> on the feedback, I've removed the file cabinets and re-installed a
> sofa and I'm doing some other minor maintenance and some cosmetic
> fixes. We have a trip for about 3 weeks planned for June -- then,
> after clean up from the trip, the coach will go back up for sale -- I
> will sell it for whatever I can get for it. (Honestly, I wish my
> finances were such that I could hold on to it, but that is simply not
> the case.) Take a look at the photos (link in signature block) and see
> what you think.
>
> PS. your photos and web site are very nice. One suggestion (in a role
> as a marketer) is that you create something interesting to entertain a
> visitor as the web site loads. Even though I have a very fast cable
> Internet connection, the loading time for the site seemed quite
> lengthy. Something to look at while it loaded would have distracted
> from the lengthy load time.
>
> Pete Masterson
> '95 Blue Bird Wanderlodge WBDA 42
> El Sobrante CA
> aeonix1@...
> Photos:
> http://picasaweb.google.com/Bluebirdzoom/PeteMasterson#
>
>
>
>
>
> On May 17, 2009, at 5:56 PM, richafranco wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Pete,
> >
> > This is exactly the kind of answer I'm looking for. I've just
> > joined Vintage Birds and that seems like a great site too! Part of
> > my decision to look more towards the vintage birds is of course,
> > money, but I won't let it limit what I think we may need if we can
> > pull this off. Thanks for the great advice and I'll keep checking in
> > to see if you or others can add to this discussion.
> >
> > What's behind my thought process, what little there is left, is to
> > maybe rent our home in the Orlando area, we could get 3-4 times what
> > our monthly mortgage amount is and travel the country, getting time
> > to visit some of the places I've always wanted to photograph. This
> > would accomplish atleast 2 things. 1. In a year or so the real
> > estate market should improve(down atleast 30% here) and if we
> > decided we liked this lifestyle, we could sell our home, hopefully
> > back where it was before the crash. 2. I could be out harvesting new
> > images for my gallery(http://www.richfrancophotography.com) when the
> > economy does start to kick in, rather than waiting to see it go up
> > and then try and get out and take photos.
> >
> > I'm really, really just at the beginning of this process and all the
> > info, talk me in, talk me out, will help,
> >
> <snip>
>