1.Our Story – A Foreword
A.Buying a Property in Orlando
Christina and I bought our first property in Davenport, on US 27 at Highlands Reserve, in 2004. There really wasn’t anything on the internet at that time and the first we really knew about the possibility of buying a home 3,000 miles away was via a Sunday newspaper, made from real paper!
We didn’t think much more about it until we were on holiday in Florida. I don’t even remember where we were staying, but we took a trip out to Highlands Reserve to see what was happening with that community. It was already more than half built at that point, so we could see what the community was like, and of course it had the golf course, a big draw. We went to the model homes and looked around. Much different to what we had back home in London, all with that new home smell and of course wonderfully decorated. Well long story short, we left, thought about it, came back, and bought one. Actually, we bought a sand lot on which the home would be built.
The builder’s sales rep advised us to use one of three recommended Realtors, something which is illegal now. I can speculate as to why that is, but I can’t write it in a book. We chose one of the three and got a heavy sales pitch. In reality though, we got very little value from them and were left in the dark for much of the time our home was being built. We learned a lot though about the builder’s contract (they are pretty much the same), the buying process and how closing works. We worked out the financing with our UK bank, which then left us a little at the mercy of currency fluctuations.
At the time, I was a Partner with a Construction Consultancy firm in London. I’m a Chartered Surveyor (MRICS) and have been in the property profession for over 35 years. Christina also worked in property, on the administrative side. Neither of us had experienced anything like this though.
We only had the property for two years and then sold it to someone else from the UK. The US was amid a boom in home sales and as more homes were being built down US 27, we thought that there were only a certain number of renters, and every additional home built was a direct competitor to ours. It was time to
