Neighbors

 

A little over two years ago, our neighbor passed away. She and her husband had owned a lot of restaurants in a particular franchise that were quite popular back in the late 70's and 80's and were quite wealthy I think so they have a nice property which sort of dwarfs our modest house. Most people probably considered our neighbor sort of a snob from conversations I overheard but perhaps because we shared a physical property line denoted by those small bushes in a row, we got to know her a bit better. She was actually quite nice and often brought over chocolate chip cookies for our girls and I reciprocated with garden vegetables when they were in season. We occasionally talked over the "hedge" when we were out in our respective yards and any property line decisions we had to make were always made quite agreeably. But due to her economic status I guess, she was a private person and I respected that.

Unfortunately though, dementia took her mind and we drifted out of contact the last few years as she could no longer remember us. We stayed in touch with her daughter who was her mom's caretaker but then the daughter died tragically. I wrote a post when that happened of my wife going over to "help" and finding the daughter dead on the couch and her mom, our neighbor not understanding she was dead. Fortunately, she had enough money to hire live in staff until our neighbor died maybe four or five months after her daughter. 

She didn't have any living children and had only two nieces through a brother and I'm guessing they were the ones who inherited the estate. They seemed to be running the estate sale that happened two years ago when we met them for the first time. After the sale concluded, the house went up for sale on the market and has lingered there ever since. Whomever is running the estate has continued to pay some people to maintain the lawn so other than the house never having anybody around, it certainly hasn't made an impact on my life.

While the house interior looks nice and well cared for, the interior is a bit rough. It hasn't been updated since it was built in the mid 70's so is a bit dated. Due to dementia and lots of cats, the carpet was all but destroyed so whomever is managing the estate had it all ripped out down to the subfloor.  The real kicker though is that they were asking a couple hundred thousand dollars over what the market probably dictates it is worth in our area meaning it is out of the price range of 99.5% of the population. The other 0.5% of the population who might afford it are likely the same ones who couldn't live with the dated interior so would likely have to spend several hundred thousand dollars to remodel it to make it livable, putting it further out of reach of more people.

And so it has sat empty, and gradually the price has slowly started to come down. I personally know of a couple people who have made what I felt were reasonable offers, as late as last summer, but were turned down. A couple weeks ago though, I noticed that there was a pickup in the driveway, the first vehicle I had seen in 7 or 8 months and the for sale sign was gone. This morning when I stepped out on my front porch, I looked over and saw the above sight. It might be that the estate trustees are opting to put more money into the place to make it more modern inside, but since they have been comfortable enough to let it set vacant for two and a half years, I'm inclined to think that perhaps we are going to have new neighbors. 

I'll likely wait awhile to see what unfolds but will do as I have always done and go and introduce myself to the new neighbors and perhaps leave a loaf of freshly baked sour dough bread. The last couple times I have done that to new neighbors in our neighborhood, that was the last contact we have made other than the occasional wave as they drive by and we happen to be out in our yard. Neighbor to neighbor verbal and face to face contact has seem to gone the way of the rotary dial phone and VHS player. But maybe we'll hit the jackpot and there will be someone who likes to talk over "the hedge" from time to time and swap cookies for vegetables.