Finding my happy place…
Oftentimes, I get asked how I chose Ossining over the other river towns in Westchester County and as it turns out, I wasn’t even looking at New York in the first place. Like many city dwellers, I began to feel trapped in my tiny box. I longed for outdoor space. I hated when I had leave Fort Greene Park, next to our co-op in Brooklyn and pack my kids up in their double stroller (the Brooklyn cliché) and put them to put them to bed in our 2 bedroom apartment. At night I dreamed that I could step outside and have a glass of wine and listen to crickets on the patio. I wanted to spread out. Not that I needed more space to live….I just needed more space to breathe.
So after months of longing for something different, my husband, John, and I searched outside of the tri-state area and found ourselves in Massachusetts. Cape Cod was my summer stomping grounds. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all lived in Yarmouth Port and I had a picture-perfect memory of my summers there. My nana’s cedar shingled cottage nested in the pine trees, my Aunts 1700’s farmhouse with all its fun hiding places. Walks the bass hole, our childhood beach and trips to Captain Frosty’s for lobster rolls and soft serve were the highlights. This was my happy place. Luckily, John was as eager as I was to try something new after nearly 2 decades of living in the city. Owning a business together and having control over our lives would be a dream come true. After touring several hotels, motels and B & Bs for sale, we made an offer on a little gem that we thought was perfect for us: a 10 room (I can manage this with 2 year old twins…right!?) hotel with a pool, lush gardens and a barn that could host wedding and events. It was right down the street from the ocean side beaches. What could be better?!
I imagined myself decorating and cleaning the rooms while my kids were at daycare. John would do all the advertising and manage the finances. We’d work as a pair greeting and tending to guests, offering them a more sophisticated experience than the other seaside hotels had to offer. We’d be known as as the fun and unique hotel for families that wasn’t the typical tourist trap. We’d work hard all spring and summer and have the winters off to travel. So with those ideas in mind, we made an offer and were excited to have that offer accepted the next day. But after the inspections, meetings with contractors and hours and hours of business planning, the bank did not appraise the hotel at what we had offered. There was a shortfall of almost 300K! There was no way we’d be able to finance that ourselves. We had sold our apartment in the city for 2x what we had paid for, but that still didn’t leave us with much. Doubts had been settling in and I was secretly relieved at the news. I couldn’t imagine running a hotel with 2 children under the age of 3.
There we were with no home (our apartment had sold within a few days that it was on the market and we couldn’t back out of our contract) and we couldn’t afford anything bigger or better in the city and we knew we wanted out anyway. So we decided to explore Northern Westchester. John saw a listing for a beat-up 1940s cottage ( ironically a Cape Cod!) on a tree lined street in a private lake community. We couldn’t believe when we found out that this fixer upper was literally right next door to our very good friends from the city. They had moved here several years before and would host us every summer at their lake. I remember feeling so envious that they lived so close to the city- but their neighborhood felt like the country. Every day felt like a vacation and it was just 35 miles north of Manhattan. We had found it. This was my other happy place!
Like so many home buyers that I’ve had the privilege to work with, I was that nervous home buyer too. Having doubts, stressing at all hours of the night, wondering when it was all going to work out. Would I choose the right home and the right place to live? Is this the right place for my family? The same advice was true for me as the advice my mentor gave to me when I was first starting out in real estate. The right home always finds you. It always works out.
-Cheers to a new year and to fresh starts wherever that may be for you!