So I have not been actively updating for a while, but that's because this adventure called life has been my main priority.
A quick recap of highlights:
Alex graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in NH. He was there for four years and we are so proud of him. He got to play some tennis, learn a new language (Chinese), learn new sports (squash and Crew) and he had the opportunity to learn both in and out of the classroom from peers around the world. After graduation he spent several weeks traveling around Italy with his friend Giulio (pictured below) from Milan.
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We added two new furry friends to our family - Clover and Bee. Clover is an English Cream Golden Retriever (couch potato), while Bee was in theory a Husky/ Golden Mix. The consensus in our house from all of us is that Bee must be part Saluki because she is the fastest dog on the planet. She loves and loves to run around our yard.
The kids have been incredibly busy playing tennis all over the country. They are making friends from around the world and are still really enjoying it. This picture below is Nicholas winning a gold ball (first place) in doubles at the National Championships (Easter Bowl).
We love when Alex comes home to visit from Chapel Hill. Always a little friendly competition.
After going through the homebuilding process, I have continued to love everything related to building, construction, design and real estate. I've exchanged my design books and binders of drawings and construction details with books on real estate investing, market updates and bookmarks of all of the publicly available real estate research tools. Digging into public records and using platforms like Zillow and OpenDoor, I've now filled notebooks and spreadsheets with real estate investing calculations. Armed with what I thought was all of the information available, we decided to purchase an investment property in the Raleigh area. We engaged an awesome broker in the area and working with her opened my eyes to just how many tools were not available to me.
The broker had tools and databases that I couldn't see. She found properties that were not on my radar. How could this be? I learned quickly that tools like Zillow and Realtor.com etc don't have everything... I had no clue. This made me crazy to not have access to all of these fabulous resources and prompted me to go back to school to get my Real Estate License. I am astounded by how much information I now have access to. In addition to all of the databases I can access, I have the best resource of all - my firm - Helen Adams Realty. I chose the firm because it is heavily marketing centric, extremely collaborative, and the agents have a reputation for being knowledgeable, diligent and most importantly, kind. I am so thrilled to now have access to all of those missing pieces, as well as the support of an incredible team. I am beyond excited to combine all of these resources to help others in their real estate search. I love the research, strategy, and the hunt.
Because I have spent quite some time learning about things like real estate investing, Airbnb, House Hacking, Kiddie Condos, etc etc, I have decided to create a new blog to share some of that info for those interested. The more I dig, the more information I find and I am excited to share it. Some of it I wish I'd known many years ago. You can find the new site at: www.homecarolina.blogspot.com
I hope you'll check it out!
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