Beantown Bound

All the people that needed to know now know, so I can share this publicly. My family and I are moving back to Boston after nearly 10 years in Oregon. My wife's company offered a spectular relocation package that we couldn't say no to.

I'm going to continue being a Realtor with EXIT Realty since there are about a dozen offices in the Boston area I can choose from. Quite a different scenario than the 2 Portland Metro Exit offices.

We had planned to list our home and hold it open on Saturday. On Thursday morning, I advertised the open house on Craigslist. I got a call from a woman who asked if she and her husband could come preview it Thursday night. Long story short, we verbally committed to their STRONG offer by 9:00 p.m. Thursday and had all papers signed by noon on Friday. We close on May 15 and we have the option to rent back from them until June 15.

We travel back to Boston in early April to house-hunt and plan to find something to our liking, make and offer and schedule a close for late May. That way we'll have the big equity we built up in our Oregon home at our ready to make a sizeable down payment.

Moving to Boston as a Realtor is a double-edged sword. It's great because home prices are about 50% higher in Boston so my commissions will be 50% more, but it hurts because we have to purchase a home in that expensive market. We don't think we'll ever be able to own a home in Boston of the same quality we now have in Portland.

If you are interested in the virtual tour I created for my home, click here. Perhaps it'll give you an idea of why the first people who came through made a more-than-full-price offer.

I hope the move will finally inspire me to begin blogging regularly again. Like Surgical Strike's Dan Tobin, who moved from L.A. back to Boston, I want to capture the differences between my life on the easy west coast and the vigorous east coast.