Colorado is rather bipolar when it comes to weather. Yesterday, for instance, it was sunny and 73 degrees. Today, my work closed due to blizzard conditions with a high below freezing in April! Or put more simply in pictures of our Greeley backyard with the chickens:
Yesterday
Chickens scratching, taking dirt baths, tulips growing, yard greening, Kitty hanging out.
Today:
Avoiding the snow standing on one leg, feeling “cooped up”, snowy windblown eggs, peeking out the door of the coop.
This weekend we were busy paint-prepping and painting our rental so that we can list it for rent again. We enjoy hanging out together and getting stuff done, so it was actually kind of fun.
Britton paint-prepping
But we were able to take a little break and enjoy an Easter lunch with my mom, her boyfriend, my aunt, grandma, and Britton. We aren’t very religious, but I am always glad for a reason to get together and be thankful for our lives and our family. We hope you all had a beautiful Easter as well!
Easter with the fam
Springtime must make people a little stir crazy for change. We have three of our four rentals with people who have either moved out or are planning on moving out. One of them was just abandoned…again. Another we were told what was going on and they are going to pay rent until we find someone else and the third had his lease come up and gave notice that he is planning on moving. And the fourth house we had someone else move-in with the current tenant! Everyone is moving this year, it seems. Even we feel the pull to move to Puerto Rico!
So…we were going to be putting all our rental properties eventually under a management company anyway before we move to Puerto Rico and figured that this is as good a time as ever to make some of these changes. Our own sort of stir-craziness.
On one of our properties Britton wanted to see how much we could get if we sold it. Last year we thought about selling one in Evans, but the price didn’t make sense; we would actually lose money. But we talked with our real estate agent on this one and she said we definitely had a spread for some profit. So we decided to list it. So far it’s been going pretty good. We have had quite a few people come over for showings. I am a little ambivalent about selling it as it was our first ever house that we owned outright, it’s a very sweet cute house, and we were making pretty good income on it. But I also understand that the cash infusion could really help us in our savings goals. Britton would like to sell just to sort of “clear the slate” and have one less thing to worry about here in Colorado. It was with this one that we really got stressed out over last summer.
Our house that’s for sale
My investment strategy has always been income, with very little emphasis on growth/appreciation, so that is why I really have to just go with the flow on selling one of our “golden gooses” even if it we can make a decent lump sum. It’s hard to want to let it go. We also have never gone through the process of selling a house so this is all a big experience either way (we’ve bought plenty, just never tried to sell anything). We are planning on keeping it on the market for a few weeks and seeing if we get any offers. If we don’t get any by the end of April or early May, we may just rent it out again under a management company with the other two.
We are excited to see how a management company will go and if it will ease some of the stress that occurs mainly when there is tenant turnover. Plus they have all the tools we don’t when it comes to leases, contracts, complaints, evictions, legal matters, etc. I am glad we have a year to test all of these unknowns out too that way we can adjust and make changes as they come along.
In the meantime we have been interviewing management companies, cleaning, staging and painting houses and signing contracts. It’s a busy time, but I think all this front-end work will pay dividends when we are living down in PR.
Well, there is still about a week left of March, so I hope I’m not jumping the gun or jinxing anything, but the weather has been spectacular these last few days! 80 degrees and sunny. Mild evenings. Everyone is outside in the parks or on their porches enjoying it. It really feels like Puerto Rico! But we have to be careful because March in Colorado is one of the most fickle months. Often one of the snowiest and windiest. But so far this year, March has been so beautiful. And if feels like spring has truly sprung.
Crocus in our yard -first flowers of spring
We’ve filed (and paid!) our taxes. Britton has moved the chicken coop out of the greenhouse and into the yard again (their summer home). We’ve planted a few early seeds like lettuce, spinach, cabbage and the like in the greenhouse and in the garden area. And we’re already seeing lettuce seedling volunteers from last year come in! And of course the tulips. One of my favorite flowers that I will miss in Puerto Rico because they need a cold season to be perennials.
Tulips coming up and volunteer lettuce (upper right)
All of our fruit trees are looking healthy and have little leaf buds ready to burst open (or have!).
These are apricot flowers from our fruit cocktail tree -looks like we might have quite a few apricots!!
It’s amazing how much better we feel in the spring/summer. 80 degree sunny weather is just about perfect. I can see why we have chosen a place in Rincon that stays this temperature year round! When it is like this here in Colorado it erases all those miserable windy, icy, snowbound and dark days. Everything is waking up and is re-energized with life. We are out walking and biking, and we are spending more time with friends and family. It is great!
Another sign of spring: We even were able to balance and stand a few of our chicken eggs upright on the spring solstice! They say you can only do it on the spring solstice, but I have no idea if that’s true or not. In any case, we managed to get a few of our eggs to stay up. Pretty cool.
Balancing and egg to stand upright on the spring solstice -first day of spring