Building Yet Again

When we moved to Thailand in 2005, we sold our house in Ann Arbor, MI and became apartment dwellers in Bangkok, owning no real estate of any kind anywhere. Since then, we've entertained many different ideas of where we'd like eventually to own a house in the States. For quite awhile, we were seriously thinking about buying property in Las Vegas. We even made a low-ball offer on an existing house, which (thank goodness, in retrospect) was rejected by the seller. We later had a change of heart about Las Vegas after thinking more about just how hot it is there during the summer and just how dry it is. Mind you, we're not fans of high humidity, but Doris became concerned about the health effects of living year round in a climate more conducive to mummification than everyday life.

Las Vegas did offer some important pluses, in addition to weather nicer than Michigan's (at least in our opinion). It's relatively close to Sunnyvale, CA and Seattle, WA, where our children and their families live, and the cheap air fares to and from Vegas would make it easy for us to get almost anywhere easily and inexpensively to visit. It wasn't easy to find a sensible alternative, but we eventually decided to explore Austin, TX, where some of our friends live and which we already had visited several times.

Austin intrigued us because of its nice, warm, but not-blasting-hot weather (with supposedly 300 days of sunshine per year and moderate humidity), and its reputation as a university town offering lots of cultural activities for residents to enjoy, including plenty of live music. It's also reasonably well-located as a home base for Doris to use while making extended visits to the States to see our children and their families, for as long as I continue to work overseas.

So, near the end of August, Doris spent two hectic weeks in Austin, searching for a house to buy. I couldn't help much, due to work commitments, so Doris took the lead in house hunting. We consulted frequently by phone, and within a relatively short period of time, we had decided to build a house just west of Austin. It's likely to take 9-12 months for construction to be completed, and when the house is finished, we plan immediately to undertake the building of an in-ground pool in the backyard.

The pictures that follow will provide some idea of the development in which we're building and the surrounding area:

The entrance to the development (named The Ridge at Alta Vista)

The development's Community Center, which houses an exercise facility and includes a swimming pool and tennis courts

Doris standing at the rear of the lot on which our house will be built

The view from the back of our lot, which borders a bird sanctuary

As you can see from the picture below, the development is set in wooded, rolling hills

Since we obviously can't show you a picture of our yet-unbuilt house, I'm including a few snapshots showing representative houses elsewhere in the development. Ours will have a painted, stucco exterior.