I stopped looking for a while and then beginning of the year, thanks to some good fortune coming our way, we calculated our options and thought, now we can do this. So, I started looking at properties again. (I never mentioned anything before about this as I did not want to jinx it.) I asked my best friend who is a real estate broker in Orange County if she would be able to assist us in the search. She suggested to go with a local agent as cabins are a different kind of animal and referred us to Bill. Actually I had chosen Bill myself because I had talked to him once many years ago, when we were looking around in Big Bear. I liked him from the few sentences we exchanged and I asked her to refer us to him.
So, we started looking at a few areas and different places. We chose Big Bear Lake, which is located in the San Bernardino mountains and has two ski resorts, Snow Summit and Bear Mountain. The SoCal skiers/snow boarders choose this destination when they do not want to drive all the way to Mammoth Mountain which is a 5-6 hour drive from San Diego or LA. Big Bear is 2.5 hours from our house and it offers many activities besides winter sports. Another nice area would have been Lake Arrowhead but there is no ski slope at that location and the lake is much smaller. So we narrowed it down and found a few places in our price range. It was so exciting to see the inside of cabins which I had been watching on the listings.
We made a low offer in March on a place that was way over-priced compared to others. The sellers were not motivated and did not budge. Bill said that they were out of state, probably had paid off the cabin and were now just waiting for the full price offer. Too bad, I liked it very much.
After our trip to Germany, we continued our search. On May 16th M (daughter) and I drove back up the mountain and looked at three cabins in an area called Sugarloaf.
The first one was located too close to a main street. The funny thing about this visit was that it was occupied. The TV was running, a half-unpacked suitcase was in the living room and personal items were all over the place. But nobody was inside, so we rushed through it and were out of there fast. It was just so so...
The next one was on the same street but set back far enough and traffic noise seemed less. It was a two story, but the stairs to the loft were a metal spiral staircase. Not so good for the dogs. Upstairs was very nice though. They had a series of family photos on a dresser, which seemed to be from the 70s. M thought that was kind of creepy.... she makes me laugh.
Then the third one was the one... of course I had seen the pictures of the listing, but when we drove up and parked in front of it, it was just so welcoming. The street is quiet, the neighborhood is not crowded. The inside is very "cabiny". Lots of light colored wood, lots of dark green and lots of furniture.... We made an offer the same day and the whole process of negotiating, inspections, disclosures, etc. took us until June 26th when we closed.
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