My new journey began as my cancer journey ended. Officially, my cancer journey ended with my last procedure being on December 15, 2023. I had to healed from my final surgery in September, and I was no longer under restrictions. As 2023 was ending, so was my cancer battle. What a great way to wrap up 2023, pushing forward into 2024. But I am getting ahead of myself a bit.
So what is this new journey I am on? We decided to move across country, again. Who does this more than once in their lifetime? Clearly, I do, we do. We had talked about moving for some time, buying some land, but with my cancer diagnosis, everything was put on hold. I had the best doctors treating me for my cancer, and I wasn't willing to give that up. For the last year or so, maybe longer (I don't honestly remember), I was casually looking for property, in many states. I wasn't sure where the right place to land was, but I was keeping my options open. I know I wanted to stay south, because I like the warmer weather. So north into the snow and cold, was out of the question.
After doing much research on the states I was maybe considering, I did a lot of homework on each state to see what the cost of living was, what the income tax rate was, property tax rates, sales tax rates, and on and on. This significantly reduced my list. Some states have more cons than pros as far as I am concerned. So as the list got shorter and shorter, I kept looking.
Houses were flying off the market as soon as they were coming on. We went, in person, and looked at many homes, but we just didn't find "the one". It is what it is. We have time to look. There is nothing urgent in terms of a reason we need to move, so we can continue to take our time looking. So every day I looked online to see if any new houses came on the market. And every now and then one would appear here or there that peaked my interest. Sometimes I would call about it and other times I would just sit and wait and watched what happened with it. And in all of this searching, I came across something very interesting. A website called auction.com and it grabbed my attention.
So you want to know more about this auction.com site? It is literally a website where properties are auctioned off, banked owned properties. Interesting. I don't think I really knew something like that existed. I was hesitant about it, skeptical because I wasn't sure if it was legit or not and if I should move forward exploring it. I did, because like a cat, the curiosity killed me.
It is a legit site. I registered on it, which then allowed me to make bids on properties. Wow. Talk about having a bid to place! Some of these house auctions start at $1. Literally ONE dollar. This cannot be. The bidding increments vary, anywhere from $5k - $50k, and they can go up and down from that amount. It depends on how high the bids get, sometimes they lower the bid increment amount. There is always a starting bid, which normally isn't $1, but they really are all over the place.
The other thing about these auction homes, is either they can currently be occupied or unoccupied, and the listing info tells you this, so with that in mind, most of the time, you only have the option to see the exterior pictures of the home. Think about what you could possibly get yourself into buying a house and not being able to do a walk through before hand? Seems risky. Seems really risky. So what do you do? Take the risk, or not?
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