.... and about that waterfront lot

So about that waterfront lot I coyly mentioned earlier.

Remember a long time ago hubby and I got some good news? Well, hubby's brother got the same good news, and piled onboard to join our longstanding pipe-dream plans for a waterfront place. After a bunch of excited emails, we came to the conclusion that it's best if we each have our own individual places, that way he can rent his when he's not using it (he lives in Austria), he can leave it to his son in his will, his friends (who live here) can use it if they want, and nobody has to worry about "well I want to buy that couch but so-and-so will be peeved if I throw out the old one....." you get the point. I have a clear vision of what I want our place to look like, and I suspect they do as well. And this way, we can all stay close to each other without sitting on one another, which sort of happens when they visit our (very small) place.

Then we got to talking to my brother and my neighbor, who are in cahoots, and they convinced us to go take a look at this chunk of land for sale an hour north of us. It's on a lake called Petit Lac Cayamant (not to be confused with Lac Cayamant, which is horrid) near the village of Otter Lake. Up until 10 years ago, it was all crown land, but I guess the municipality needed a larger tax base so they hired a developer to open it up. It's about 6 km long, and has 47 lots along the eastern shore only. That's the maximum number, set by the provincial government, so we expect that the western shore will always remain as undeveloped crown land. There are islands, as well, which are also crown land. The lake is clean and there's no electrical service to the road leading in, which is gated. There's an association, of which we will soon be members, and there's a sort of caretaker guy who lives up near the gate. We went to look, had a boat ride, met some of the neighbors, and promptly put in our little deposit for two pieces of land, 3 acres each, side by side on a sort-of point. Now we have an empire.

The brother-in-law has yet to see these properties, of course, but was willing to trust us to buy it on his behalf, sight unseen.

Now we're wandering around calling ourselves wealthy landowners. The fact of it is, I'm not sure that we are wealthy landowners, as I'm not sure what monetary surprises lurk in the darkness. For sure there will be some costs involved in getting service to the lot - cutting a laneway, bringing in a composting toilet, a water system, solar panels, etc. - but I'm just not sure what it means in terms of investments and taxes. I'm wary.

Someone asked me: "why do you want a cottage when you live in the country?" It's a valid question, and certainly must seem a bit indulgent from an outside perspective. The truth of it is, even though we live a rural setting, we still only have one acre, and it's still a developed neighborhood. We have neighbors who we can hear through the trees. The dog has to be on a leash because there's moderate traffic. There's garbage pick-up and mail delivery. The house needs to be maintained, and clean, and contains all of the modern conveniences which also need maintaining. I like the furniture to seem as new as possible and the floors to stay relatively undamaged. You can't wander into the front yard and jump off a dock, and my hubby can't go fishing at 5 a.m., and be back before breakfast (let's not kid ourselves. That will never happen anyway). We can't sleep 8 in our house. The upstairs isn't a play loft for visiting kids or sleeping babies. I have a garden to maintain and a lawn that needs mowing. I suppose our house could do all of those things, but the fact is I don't want it to. I love having parties, but it sort of stresses me out to clean the entire house only to have it messed up again, and then to have everyone leave at 11 p.m. to go back to the city. I want to have weekend-long parties, let the place get filthy, track sand everywhere, play old board games and do old puzzles when it rains, and not worry about snowplowing or deck shovelling in winter. I want to bring up only the food I'm going to eat that weekend, and spend my days NOT worrying about what needs to be done around the house before Monday. I want to be able to say to friends, "hey, why don't you use the cottage this weekend?"

Another factor is that with the markets the way they are, we really couldn't think of another way to invest our money than in waterfront land, which never goes out of style.

This mythical cottage is a long way away. We're not that rich. We got out of debt, paid a bit down on our mortgage, and bought this piece of land and we will be in debt again once the transaction is done. Once that's paid off, we can start thinking about building something. In the meantime, we have big plans for the brother's place, which will be built next spring. And we are certainly enjoying the idea of being wealthy landowners.