Our pandemic housing story Part 1

6 houses. 2 years.

Haha everytime I’d run into someone who peripherally follows my social media during the pandemic they’d say “so where are you living now?” To be honest those few years were a blur and stressful, but for those always confused about our living situation here’s the breakdown.

It all goes back to those blissful days pre pandemic. We’d been living in our beloved White House, in the same town I’d grown up in. We had best friends for ourselves and kids two doors down, and a white picket fence at the end of a culdasac. What more could we want?

We always knew that house wasn’t forever. The yard wasn’t large and we knew we’d want more space as the kids got older. The market had slowly begun to rise and we thought “this is our chance”. We listed- sold in a day and had 30 days to figure out our next move. That’s where it all hits the fan…

We sold in January 2020. We were hopefully looking for our forever home. But nothing surfaced. As we were about to sign a lease on an apartment a distress sale hit the market in our town. Literally checked none of the boxes. But you know us. Can’t say no to a good deal in real estate 🤣. It also happened to be a few doors down from the first house we had ever purchased 10 years prior. Our thought process was to have fun renovating it and sit in it until the house we wanted popped up. We could then sell it for a little profit. Or keep it as a rental.

Then March hit. We were half way through a cosmetic renovation, living with my parents when the entire world shut down. We frantically moved in with one working bathroom uncertain of what was to come. Bobby was working around the clock at the restaurant making sure that didn’t sink, while I was home with kids distance learning and trying to wrap up odds and ends with the renovation.

During those first few weeks there was so much uncertainty. Would the real estate market crash? Would the restaurant have to close? Oh and what about our Airbnb in big bear? That was vacant too. So with 2 mortgages, all of our money tied up in a renovation and the possibility of our only source of income being cut off we panicked.

Thats when we called our realtor (before we had our licenses) and said to put out feelers for a buyer. The day we showed the house, we sanitized and waited at the end of the block because where else would we go? Everything was closed. That day we got an offer that would leave us with a little bit of profit. We thanked Jesus and took it. No idea what was next but at least we had our money back and an empty cabin in big bear waiting for us……

Part two later this week-

Our Summer in Big Bear…