TJ - We have been to TN many times and love it, but weather wise its about the same. Also, unless your very close to a major city, its all very rural as well. Nashville is the only city I would consider living around. We absolutely put thought into TN and researched homes/expenses but ultimately it is fairly similar to where we are. We could get much more land for our money though. Yes, Cali would be far out of the budget. The southern part would be ideal for weather. We are use to humidity and it doesnt normally bother me. We spent 2 months of summer in FL and it felt like summer back home. It just lasts longer. If we grew up somewhere without humidity, it may effect us more.
Vill - we are very open to fixers or foreclosures. We even considered buying and flipping instead of renting out but its something we havent ever done and would be a bit nervous to do. I do like the idea though. We have done extensive research of lawn care in the desired location. We know for sure theres a demand, and competition but there are many snowbirds, condo/resorts and high end neighborhoods who uses lawn service. We also know what we can charge in general. I have spoken with a few lawn companies to get (fake) quotes. We only advertised on craigslist here last summer and did fairly well. We would like to do more marketing if we moved to hopefully build clients faster. Many of our customers love us due to us being young, willing to listen, friendly and always does the job on time. I know the area will have a high demand, its just getting the word out and building up clients. We will be competing with big companies that are established. We are also open to part time jobs if need be while we start out. Open to property management as well, which I think may be abe to find given the amount of resorts and condos ect. These we would be open to for sure! As far as the parks, referring to any really. My aunt and uncle who live in FL have season pass to disney. Its a larger amount but you can go all year unlimited with free parking. They went to all the shows and it was well worth the cost. We considered doing the same if we like it. Our top 3 reasons to move to FL is weather, family and outdoors options year round. Theme parks are not the very top reason, but we both enjoy them.
Deborah - we really want a lifestyle change in general. Yes, we love the freedom, we sleep in late and have no plans day to day. However, we are honestly bored out of our mind most days, very much in winter. We do well in summer and get out and hike or go to the lake. Winter is awful though. We do not watch TV and are not really homebodies so its tough. We want to be more active year round. We also think doing lawncare as our job may be better for our health and help us be active. The rentals we have make decent money but are in a bad area. Its low income, high turnover and we have never given a deposit back in 5 years. If a tenant stays for 2 months and we evict them, they usually leave the place a filthy mess. Sometimes I think it would be better to not have rentals at all or only ones in nicer areas. We do background checks and all, never accept anyone who has prior evictions but still never find decent long lasting tenants. I like being self employed and for the most part have passive income though. My husband doesnt want rentals ever again, he hates dealing with it and the people. He use to handle the calls but since I have taken it over. Tenants only have my number which helped him. I dont normally mind them though, its very stressful at times but them there are a lot of times its quiet and you forget you even have them. I guess pros and cons to everything.
sorry I am kind of just venting some to. I put to pay off house because we only need to sell 2 rentals to pay it off. We would then drop our $1000 flood insurance as we do not need it. 5 years, flooding rains and not a puddle. We would still have the other rentals to sustain us without a mortgage.
we will move in with family after selling everything during transition. I expect to have around $30-40k cash after moving costs. We will have little in way of bills and will immediately begin our lawncare biz or if needed, I would also find part time work.
all the equipment we have now will be sold and will use that money to repurchase in FL things like a mower, trailer ect. I am expecting $3-4000 in startup. We should easily get that after selling equipment here. The houses we are looking at is $100-130 range.
im not sure what gave the impression that we will have no money after buying a home.. we wouldnt even consider the move if that was the case.
I did not list goals in order of importance. It will be hard to reach that until we are settled but will work towards it indefinitely.
I do like your suggestion. We would like to have something concrete going for us before moving. We would not move if we didnt have a sizeabe amount after costs. We have been brainstorming ideas. I would love to get into working from home, which will give us the feeling of freedom and flexibility but bring in steady income. I just have no idea how to locate that sort of work. Especially ones you can live anywhere. Something im again open to.
I just feel like there are so many factors.. its a bit overwhelming really. We just want to be happy with where we live. We do not want to wait until we have kids to make a move either and feel that while we are younger is the better time. We also do not want to very negatively impact our financial status, meaning to take many steps backwards. As long as we can be self employed or work part time we would be happy. Neither of us would ever want to go back to full time, unless its a amazing fun job.. which probably wont come up haha.
