Big decisions

One of the main reasons that I wanted to start a blog in the first place was to record my thoughts / feelings about some of the big changes in my life that have started recently. There's been quite a lot going on, and it will be great to be able to come back in a few years and read about how I was feeling at the time.

The first big change that happened recently, was the decision to move to Squamish. It came about in a somewhat roundabout fashion really. I'd been considering what to do with my place in Manchester; whether to re-mortgage the place and buy another, or perhaps sell it and buy something here in Canada. The place was very little bother, and kept bringing in a little money, but I knew that the capital appreciation had slowed, and I thought that getting something in Vancouver would yield more on that front, especially in the years running up to the winter Olympics in 2010.

I'd done quite a bit of snowboarding up at Whistler over the previous summer, and had been speaking to one of the partners at work who owns a timeshare up there. He really likes it. He has a quarter share in a furnished, 3 bedroom place close to the lift at Creekside and with all amenities. He and his family stay there around 20 days a year, over summer and winter, and the rest of the time he releases and the management company lease it out. He said it cost him around $164k to "buy" and then net he pays $2k a year for upkeep after taking rental income into consideration. $100 per night for a 3 bed place in Whistler is not bad at all, and he thinks he's had good capital appreciation during that time too.

We did some digging around, looking at Whistler properties, but didn't find too much, and we also heard that the market in Whistler was pretty much saturated, so weren't that excited about the whole thing.

One weekend during the summer, we were camping in Squamish, and decided to take a look at some property there. It seemed like it might be a good place to have a bit of a retreat type place. Somewhere we could come for weekends during the summer, and that my dad would be able to stay at when he came over to go fishing. We really enjoyed the camping there over the summer, and it's a beautiful area, even though the town's not all that nice itself.

We looked at a few places. Rivers Walk is a collection of duplex townhomes which were nice and quite big, but very close to the main road. Amblepath had small lots, but some great designs which would be relatively cheap, and perfect for a weekend getaway. Eaglewind also looked like it might have some nice homes once finished, though seemed to be aimed at the retirement crowd, and RedPoint looked like it would have some great condos and townhomes, and was aimed at the younger, outdoorsy professional types that Squamish appears to be trying to attract.

We then went up to Thunderbird Creek, which is in the highlands above the town. The show home there was just beautiful. Really well finished, a good size and with great views. It didn't have a lot of yard, but a nice small piece. They're selling lots up there for around $320k and we asked how much the house was and were told that was $750k. I was thinking that was combined with the cost of the land to give a total of over a million, which would put it well outside our range, but we were told that the $750 was for the whole thing.

This was still a lot outside what we were thinking for a second home. I thought I'd net around $200k from the sale of the place in the UK, so there was no way we could afford that. It did get us thinking though.

We headed up for a hike to Brandywine Falls and were talking about maybe moving out to Squamish full time. If we sold the place downtown and added the UK money, we'd be OK. Squamish would be a great place to raise a family and we'd be close to all the outdoor activities that we love. The only downside would be the commute to Vancouver for work, and all the other things that we take a bit for granted living in the West End. During that hike I did a lot of daydreaming about what life would be like there, and could really see myself being happy there raising a family with Louise.

I think this was a big step for me. I'd conceptually thought about all of those things of course. Getting married, having a family, maybe one day building a house, but never in such detail, and not with such excitement. I think I decided on that hike that was what I was going to do, and thankfully Louise didn't take much persuading!

So much for posting once a month

Can't believe it's been two months since I posted anything, and even that wasn't very exciting. Terrible. Feeling a little hung over today, so will struggle to write much anyway. There's got to be a better way.....

Bebo

Linked to Bebo - thanks for the invite Kelly Jones!

Forwarding

Now forwarded edwardmatley.com to my blog, though it seems to be taking a while to update. I'll start to add some material from the Australia trip soon. I'm going to have to bite it off in manageable chunks because we covered quite a bit.

Looking forward to it though!

You've got to start somewhere...

So, after much procrastination, I've decided to start writing my blog. I've had a couple of requests, some kicks up the arse (thanks Lee), and lots of emails asking me to join Facebook, MySpace and all those social networking sites. I won't have time to do all that, but I might be able to sign up and then just point people to this if they're interested in reading what's new.

And there is quite a bit that's new. I'll cover each of those exciting developments in more detail in future posts. I'm expecting that I'll write about once a month maybe a little more often if I'm enjoying it. Surely I can find time to post once a month......

Brand new

What's it all about?