Change in Plans

We have been tossing around various options for the next couple years. We love our house, but it has created a problem for us as far as continuing to travel - mainly in the summers. It is not desirable for us to leave the house vacant for the 4 months or so we travel to Jackson, WY. The thought of broken water mains, leaks in an area somewhere that will ruin everything, problems with the pool, mail forwarding issues, scorpion issues, etc., has led us to a decision to turn our house - at least, temporarily - into a rental home. Paying all of the utilities while gone is also not attractive to us. We have lined up a property manager to handle the details and we are going forward to become landlords. We are anticipating at least one year, possibly two or more if all goes well - before either moving back into the home or selling it and buying somewhere else. The other consideration is that we bought this home as an investment and we want to generate some equity from it before selling. Giving up our RV lifestyle altogether is not an option.

Going forward with repairs to the fifth wheel and upgrading the truck with the required equipment to safely tow the fifth wheel is the next step. We will have the hitch installed tomorrow, along with the wiring and electric brakes for the RV. When that is completed, I will take the fifth wheel to Mesa and the Robert Crist dealership where we purchased it in 2008 to have the repairs done. Following that, we will set up the fifth wheel for three months - from mid February to mid May (following Mother's Day) - while the house gets packed up, moved to storage and the property manager locates a suitable tenant to move in by April 1. In the middle of all this, we will work the Spring Training games the entire month of March at the Surprise Stadium.

Right now, Josie is planning to go back to seasonal work at the flower shop - if they will agree to allow that plan. If not, we have several other options to work in other locations during the winter months. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

We fought through all the concerns about who might rent the home, but we do have control over the selection. There will not be any pets and it will be rented to only non-smokers. The property manager handles 100% of the details surrounding the house. We hope to have a pleasant and profitable experience. If you know anybody that might want to rent a nice home, let me know.

Everything has to happen, without glitches, on our tight schedule. That is about all of the details - so far - so we'll keep everybody up to date on our progress...