This & that

It's a rainy day, as I write this post. Rainy days are rest-days, town-days or indoor work-days. They are a nice and needed change from the typical days.

On this, I may be doing all three.

I'm staring this entry that I hope to post sometime today. In a few hours, by about 9am, I'm off to town for grocery shopping etc. plus to drop-off a carton of our colourful eggs for a client. Checking the water-levels of the batteries on such days are always a good idea.

If the wood pieces that I gathered for my whimsical & rustic wood slices for cake stands, display racks, trivets, signs & stools, are dry enough by the afternoon, I hope to put them together.

And finally catching-up with emails.

Our sunny/dry days routine has not changed. I'm at my neighbours by 7-7:30 am until about noon. Then home for lunch & rest before tending to the raised beds, the grounds or managing & taking care of the fallen/falling trees, crowding/spacing and brush-walls into hugelkulture.

I will try to remember to take pictures to include with the post to show the progression of the gardens, the whimsical trails in the forest and more, if I remember to take my old phone out with me.

Early days beets & onions.

The wild strawberries are slowly providing us with a darling ground-cover of foliage, beautiful flowers that the many butterflies flutter around and of course their tiny strawberries. Who needs gravel, rocks, mulch and especially grass, when you can have lovely ground-covers as this?

Also seeing a lot more butterflies of different colours, patterns & sizes this year, yay!

When it comes to the subject of weeding, I'm really not sure whether there is such a thing as weed. Nearly everything has it's purpose. Even the common rag-weed has beautiful yellow flowers that the insects & the pollinators love. Burdock, Dandelion, Thistle, Mullen, Plantain, Hawthorn,...all have amazing qualities for natural remedies.

So the only time that we remove any of them is if they are muscling-in on, crowding or dominating other plants.

The brilliant Painted-Trillium flowers are on their way out now. This is the more dominate variety of the spices on our land.

When we lived in the province of Ontario, we knew that Trillium was it's provincial flower. But until recently and not until living in New Brunswick, we didn't know the following fun facts about it.

They have three small petals. Three large petals and three-sectioned seedpods. And this perhaps is the reason behind their very name, Trillium.

Their seeds are primarily spread by ants. Ants love the protein rich seeds and carry them back home. But they are not the only ones who love these beautiful flowers. They are also a favourite of white-tailed deer.

But most amazing fact is that it takes the plant 10 years before it's first bloom. So we are grateful & fortunate to have so many of them, with their brilliant purple centre, on our property, even if they only last for 2-3 weeks :)

I could end this post without my now seemingly regular real estate news happenings but as I'm so fascinated by this phenomenon... Just two short examples for today. I recently had an email request from a lovely family from Sweden, considering moving to our neighbourhood.

They had decided to take advantage of my offer to inspect properties for sale in and around our area for my honest opinion.

By the way, these lovely folks already knew and in fact preferred my honest opinion to sugarcoating. I try not to give a "Buy" or "Run" rating to any property. Instead, I prefer to point-out everything that is both positive and negative, for each property and let you decide for yourself.

Anyway, the property that they had included the listing-link for me sold before I had even gotten the chance to read their email only hours before receiving it, due to the time difference and not because I had ignored their email.

The said property was purchased 7.5 years ago for $130,000(I know this because we were also interested in purchasing it when we first arrived here), then sold nearly 2 years ago for $165,000 to a lawyer in Alberta.

It was listed again this year for about $199,999 and sold for about $275,000.

I was actually amazed at how low it actually sold for because I would not have listed it for a penny short of $500,000 even with the work that it required, simply because of it's acreage and proximity to our organic neighbourhood.

Here is another reason why, which brings me to my next example.

A few posts ago, I wrote, right here, that a bulldoze property sold quickly in December, near here. Shocking because of the time of the year AND the fact that the agent had mentioned "Not habitable" in the description.

Months went by and we didn't see any sign of life on that road-side property on our way to town. So we just assumed that someone had just bought it as an investment property.

Two weeks ago, we heard from neighbours that the new owners had moved-in. Well, perhaps moved-in is not the right choice or wording here. A Romanian family arrives to find the house....."Not habitable", just as the agent had disclosed.

We heard from different neighbours how these folks were "devastated"??? As human beings, it seems that we see and hear mostly/only what we want to see and hear. The reason why has been the subject for many dissertations and book titles going back perhaps for thousands of years.

We have all done it and we will all do it again, sigh.

This particular story has a happier ending though...or it could have. So these folks bought their bulldoze property in December, if you recall me saying that. It is now the month of June. So what, you ask?

Well, should those folks decide to put their property back on the market, they can now see an appreciation of 50 to 100%! Honestly.

So is this an exception or the rule? Who knows, I sure don't. Had I known the market for bulldoze properties would reach this hight in only 6 months, I would have bought that property myself.

No-one knows what the future will bring.

If you are in the market for a new property, especially one that you cannot personally visit, then learn to decipher the realtor terminology.

Cozy means small. Rustic means rough and/or bare minimum(not minimalistic). Could do with TLC means, it requires upgrades. Needs TLC means that it requires extensive work. Value in land means bulldoze. And more!

Unfortunately for the buyers, as this seems to be the sellers market, the agents don't feel the need to write any of those hummm...red-flags/disclosures as properties are selling by the very virtue of being listed.

So the onus is on you to decide whether to buy a cheaper property with lots of work or a more expensive move-in ready property with little to no work. It's all relative.

But as of this writing, what is not achievable is a below fair market value priced property for an above average quality/location property.

My advice is, regardless of what your budget, partner with friends or relatives to purchase whatever. This way you all share the costs and/or benefit from the rewards.

As always, I'm here to help, with advice, in-person inspection of properties, guidance, planning, cost projections, local connections, renewables, etc.