It’s True. We Moved.

You may have heard rumors and yes, they are true. Lise and Chris have moved up river to Williamsville.

One might ask, and it is a reasonable question, why did we depart the town we love?

Many reasons, but the main one is that we could not find a good place to live within our budget within town limits. The places for sale in Brattleboro this summer were either gorgeous and expensive, or near-dumps. We couldn’t find anything in Brattleboro.

The secondary reason was new landlords. A money couple from Long Island purchased the building we rent in. They raised the rent by $475 a month, told us immediately we couldn’t use our washer and dryer, and had workmen “fixing up” one of the small upstairs units just about every day this summer, sometimes until 11 pm at night. And more. It was torture, and we have a long list of their violations of Vermont Landlord Tenant laws.

That’s behind us now. We found a nice, 1890’s farmhouse in need of some cosmetic fixes. Close to town, it comes with land, trees, wild animals in the backyard, a garage, a workshop, a sugar shack, an outhouse, and an extra cottage – all for less than what the new landlords expected to get for rent in Brattleboro.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to Helen Wachtel of BS&L for helping us escape. She was able to help us navigate the various loans and requirements, and was able to help us work around special circumstances, such as needing the house to return to a single family residence (it had been divided into three units.)

We began the process in early July and were able to be in the new place before September was over. It wasn’t easy – there are many hoops to jump through to buy a home – but after 240 some emails, an 8 hour online homebuyer workshop, a meeting with a housing counselor, inspections, appraisals, title searches, and negotiations, it all fell into place.

For the last week, I drove over 560 miles back and forth between the old place and the new, getting the last minute items packed up and the old place cleaned up.

So, what about iBrattleboro? It will, of course, remain in operation. Selectboard coverage will continue. Brattleboro is our hub town, after all, and we plan on using all of Brattleboro’s services without paying for them. (Ha! Hub town joke!)

So, assuming we aren’t eaten by bears, we’ll keep building websites, doing logos and animation, and running iBrattleboro.

One final note: a stray cat from the old neighborhood decided to come along with us. We’d been feeding him over the last few winters (trying our best to keep food from instantly freezing…), and he was making moves to come in this year. Not wanting to leave him to the elements for another cold winter, we made a deal and he accepted.