Touchdown in Tacoma, Washington and Joint Base Lewis-McChord!

We made it!

My family and I moved to Tacoma, WA from Stuttgart, Germany two weeks ago. I was born and raised in Oregon, but throughout my 20+ year military career was never stationed anywhere close to home. Now that my military career is gradually coming to a close, and my real estate business is taking off, we are super excited to be in the Pacific Northwest! 

11-Hour Flight, Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), Fast Food, and Expensive Minivans

The flight was 11 hours long, and we have three kids under the age of 5. Do I need to go in to a lot of detail here? It sucked...

Shortly after landing I rented a minivan to get around in until our car arrives. The cheapest minivan I could find that would fit three car seats and three suitcases was $600 a week. I even had one quote from an unnamed rental car company for $1800 a week! Who do they think is going to rent a MINIVAN from SEATAC? Certainly not Russell Wilson, especially after his epic contract extension! It's going to be a small middle class family, c'mon people $1800?

After getting settled in to our hotel on JBLM, which by the way is the nicest Army post I've been on, we began our search! We've been looking at 1-4 unit MFRs for the last few months using Google Maps, Realtor, Redfin, Zillow, and Zilpy to get an idea of where we would like to live and what the market looked like. Our internet research paid off, and we had a virtual cornicopia of MFRs to look at. Over the next two weeks we visited over 40 MFRs in person. For those of you who do not know, there are TONS of duplexes in the markets surrounding JBLM!

Honestly none of the 4-plexes we saw on the market where in neighborhoods that I would personally want to live in. They may have made decent rental units, but we were looking for a MFR that we could also live in as a primary for the next 1-2 years. Something in a C+ neighborhood. I have three little minions, and I wanted a decent backyard, a park nearby, and no fear of violent crime. I used Trulia's Heat Map to help us vector in on neighborhoods, and made sure to check crime rates and the sex offender registry.

After two weeks of searching, driving until 9 p.m., eating Chick-Fil-A and Chipotle EVERY day -- we had narrowed our list from 40+ down to just three duplexes. A FSBO rambler style 2/1 duplex in Puyallup for $300k, a smaller 2/1 duplex in Olympia for $275k, and a duplex with a 3/2 on one side, and a 2/1 on the other side, sitting on a 1+ acre lot in Puyallup for $270k. After thinking it over for a couple of days, and negoitiating terms we were able to lock the larger Puyallup duplex for $265k. I will definitely lay out all of the juicy details and my analysis in a separate blog post.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind two weeks for us, but as I mentioned before, we could not be happier here. We've met some great brokers, agents, and lenders in the process of putting the deal together on our duplex. @Timothy Grothuesmann being one of them. Tim is acting as our buyer's agent for this purchase, and he has been nothing short of amazing. It's been a pleasure getting to know him, and seeing his passion for helping people. Want to talk about work ethic and desire? The guy is an active duty soldier, a house flipper, and a real estate agent. Can you say respect?

Ok, it's 5 a.m. -- Time for some CrossFit!