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Choosing to Buy an Island

My husband, Roger, and I have been discussing our upcoming empty-nesters syndrome. We have two kids still at home, and one of them is starting college next year, the other starting high school, and we had begun to discuss what we would do with ourselves when it is truly "just us." I've never been one to stagnate, as life seems full of adventure, and neither of us is keen to be "stuck" in East Texas for the rest of our lives. In fact, I hadn't ever intended to be stuck in East Texas at all, but that's where life landed me 23 years ago, and I put down roots and so here I am. Roger was born in Texas, and has lived his whole life in Texas, and yet he has a yearning to travel, which we do as often as we can.

We both had to reconcile with the idea of being the kind of people who own vacation property. Here in our little town of Jacksonville, Texas, we know people who own vacation property...right here in Jacksonville. Like, it's a vacation home on a lake, so they leave their regular home and drive ten minutes to their vacation home...that really wasn't for us.

We spent a lot of long car drives and pillow-talk time discussing what we would do, where we would go, were we unfettered. We love Seattle, but don't think we would want to live there. We love the beach, but occasional horrifically inclimate tropical weather makes that an unsound idea for us. We love traveling abroad, but don't want to be inaccessible to our family for long periods of time.

One afternoon, as we were sitting together in our living room and conversation turned again to this topic, I recalled a TV show I had seen while having my nails done one day. The TV in the salon was airing a show where a couple was literally shopping for a private island. They had a budget of $3M and the real estate agent took them from one island to another, within their "budget."

Now, I don't have to tell you that Roger and I do NOT have a budget of three million dollars! But the thing that struck me most about the show I was watching was that these people were looking at islands along the east coast of the US--in North Carolina, New York, and Maine. That had literally never occurred to me, just as it had never occurred to me that ordinary people--of any budget!--could just go shopping for an island.

So on that day in our living room, I picked up my laptop and started a Google search...and was immediately gratified. I discovered the Vladi website ( http://www.vladi-private-islands.de) where they host hundreds of private islands for sale all over the world...and I narrowed the search there to islands in the United States. Right away we were seeing listings for the sort of islands the people on the TV show had been looking for, islands for millionaires...but then, down the page a bit, we found it. Serenity Island. One perfect acre with a pretty little cabin in the middle, at a price we could actually afford. In fact, when I did the mortgage calculator, putting in the downpayment I thought we could make, the monthly payments were about the same as my current car payment, which I'm almost finished with.

We were astounded! It was amazing to think that just regular people like us could ever be able to say "Yes, we own a little private island," "Well, you know we're going to spend the summer on our private island," "Oh, you should definitely come and visit us on our private island..." My daughter got in on the early fun by holding out her hand as though she were swirling a wine glass and saying, uber-poshly, "Ohhh...my IIIIIsland..."

The real estate agent, when we finally got in touch with her, was very accommodating (as real estate agents tend to be) and she encouraged us to wait and visit in April when the weather would be nicer...that meant a six week wait! TORTURE!

But she encouraged us to go ahead and do all the due diligence, and explained that the contract could be written with a safety net that said if we got there, two days before closing, and found the island not to our liking after all, we could walk away without penalty. That made us feel safe about moving forward in the six weeks before we could actually go. Don't get me wrong though...it was still totally torture.

That very day, I contacted Quicken Loans (Rocket Mortgage) and began the process. I went in with the confidence of a large downpayment, my good credit and Roger's excellent credit, and our decent incomes which are not currently encumbered with a mortgage. Though this would be a second home, it would be a first mortgage, and I knew that was helpful. Two days and thirty-seven-thousand pieces of paper later, we were "conditionally approved"...and then we just had to wait.

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