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Blogs by Paul Cuenco
Summer Home 2/17/2012 9:37:46 PM
It was just several months when I bought my condominium in Oakland that I thought of buying a property for investment. I figured that the economy was booming, so why not? Rent it out to a bloke and I will have an income until I can retire. Of course I cannot buy another house in California. California had gone from expensive to very expensive very quickly. So, I figured that outside the state would do me just fine. Arizona and the Southwest were too hot. I didn’t like hot. I didn’t like it too far – places like Massachusetts or Illinois or the South. That will be too expensive. So I settled for Washington or Oregon. Secondly, I like it to be a relative big city with an International Airport. So that leaves me with Seattle or Portland. Well Seattle was almost like San Francisco and the Bay Area. So Portland it was.
I gathered information from the internet, collected some statistics, picked some houses to see and then, off I was, flying to Portland. I have been to Portland before but I was not impressed. When I was having my cross-continental tour of the United States and I was on the last leg of my trip – Seattle to Oakland - I stopped by Portland and I ended up by the University of Portland. The university was on a promontory. And when I peered by the ridge, the sight was not accommodating. There was a shipyard down below. The downtown was far and unimpressive. The neighborhood seemed like it was in decay. But this time around, when I arrived at the airport, although it was not as glitzy as San Francisco’s, it was clean and not bland either. It seemed efficiently run.
I rented a car. Remember, I only have a day, a full day, so I had to make the most of it. The first house was an O.K. house with beautiful trees. I can just imagine myself in it. And I stared at the back garden for quite a long while. Never mind the smell. That didn’t bother me. I figured that it was because the house had not been opened up for quite some time. I went to several more houses, especially in the Laurelhurst and the Hawthorne neighborhoods but they were expensive. The Northwest and the Southwest quadrants of the city were already expensive, too. They were not as expensive as San Francisco or Oakland. But the prices almost approached them. So if I was to buy in those neighborhoods, it was better to buy in Oakland or San Francisco.
The first house was what I can afford. So that night at the airport, I called the owner of the house and expressed my desire to buy that house.
I initially wanted to turn that house into a rental property. But it was too nice to do so. It was clean. It was empty. I could imprint my personality into it. So, I turned it into a vacation or weekend home (although I had to drive over 600 miles in half a day or fly there. I did both.) I brought my work to this home. I opened up a landline telephone and made my calls from there. My boss somehow permitted it although not openly. And when Sunday came, I drive back by nine or ten in the morning or fly back to Oakland.
My home in Oakland was sold. This summer home became my permanent home. This was the home where once I wanted to turn it into a business venture. Now, this was a home where life was lived.
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