Time Line

Checking out the property

Before I get into all the hidden costs as stated at the end of my last post, I would like to give a little time line from the past to the present. My parents have owned a cottage on the Muskoka River for the past 30 years. So knowing the area very well and hoping to retire here, we were keeping an eye open for land for sale. A few came up which we checked out and by the time we seriously looked into them, they were sold. Then on the Thanksgiving weekend in 2008, we were on a long walk, which is one of our favorite pass times, we saw a piece of land for sale ( The realtor was just putting up the sign). We walked the lot a few times and fell in love with it. The lot already had a driveway down onto the property with lots of nice trees, good water frontage, and it was high and dry. We had a friend who was a Realtor so we asked him if was interested in working for us, which he did. We made our offer and with a few counter offers and conditions the offer was accepted with a closing date of December 19th, 2008. Finally on November 6, 2008 we signed off on the condition of the offer and now all we had to do was wait for the closing day (Dec. 19th).

I'm standing in front of our lot and
 No, that's not Santa Clause. 

On the day of closing we decided to go to the lot so we asked a good friend  to join us for this special day.(this is the same friend who came up with the name "River Retreat") We headed up in the morning and we drove into a bad winter storm. Our lot is not located on a year round road, and the driveway is 200 metres from it. We started out  walking  to the lot while our friend stayed in the vehicle to attend to her new born baby. As we trudged through the deep snow, the cell phone rang and it was our lawyer calling to inform us that the deal just closed and the property was ours.

Winter Wonderland

My wife and I have gone to my parents cottage for New Years for as long as I can remember so while we were up, we walked up to the lot to see how it looked in the winter. It was magical, I can still remember walking (snowshoeing) around the lot and standing by the river and saying to my wife " I can't believe this is ours"

The year of 2009........