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Greg Who Cooks

Greg Who Cooks

Executive Chef
Joined
Jan 13, 2011
Messages
3,794
Location
in my kitchen
I imagine many of the forum members have wondered what happened to me...

I was house hunting. I had to quit the Internet and put my full focus on my problem. The Southern California real estate market has gone crazy! For every house on the market there are dozens of buyers fighting over the properties. There are psycho bidding wars. No house sells for anything under thousands over the asking price. If the seller asks 300 they get 350, if they ask 350 they get 400...

I finally found my dream home and I offered a peremptory amount over the asking price, and I got the house! I'll be moving in early June! I'm moving to Valencia, CA, in the pretty Santa Clarita Valley in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County.

As soon as I get established in my new home I'll resume an active participation in the forum. I can't wait to get my kitchen back!!! :)
 
welcome back gwc.

good luck in your new house.

does it have a nice kitchen?

we need pics.
 
Hi Greg, nice to have you back :)

Good luck with move into your lovely sounding new home :)
 
Thanks all!!! :)

The kitchen is nice but it will take a little work to make it great. It's got a very nice white tile counter in the kitchen but it's screaming "I want granite!!!" :) Part of the kitchen counter comes out in an L-shape with two bar stools so my guests can chat with me while I cook. Double sink, dish washer, electric oven and gas cook top. (Somebody tell me if I can get a gourmet quality cook top to drop in, I'm game to go into the steep prices to get something fantastic!) Refrigerator spot is sized for double door refrigerator.

My kitchen looks out over the family room, the dining room is diagonal (both FR and DR at back of the house, MBR upstairs at back). Vaulted ceilings, it's a great house and a very large yard (for my dog), at least large in LA County terms. Beautiful community with all my favorite restaurants and stores, all within several minutes drive. (Okay Trader Joe's is 4-5 miles away.) Everything considered it's the best house I could ever get and its the best house I'll ever have, and probably my last house too. I expect to live there for the next 20-25 years or however long I'm granted on this planet.

I should be well on my way to rejoining the cooking community in late June.
 
Welcome back Greg! Glad you finally found a house you like, but too bad for you it hit you hard in the pocket book as in such recent times the housing market tanked so badly here. They were nearly giving houses away, including mine that I had to sell after I was widowed. Sorry for you, but it's good to hear first hand how the housing market has bounced back. Thankfully my son was finally able to afford a home here a couple of years ago because of the terribly depressed market at the time.
We'd love to see pictures!! I can nearly wave at you now! (Ventura County)
 
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Welcome back, and congratulations.

But that reminds me of the fact that I need to move to and it is totally crazy. Not only the price. We need to literally move into an area that is no more than 2 miles in Diameter, actually lot smaller. I mean thwe area of the city where we need to be (the walking distance from the synagogue, I do not want to walk more than a mile)
 
Kayelle said:
Welcome back Greg! Glad you finally found a house you like, but too bad for you it hit you hard in the pocket book as in such recent times the housing market tanked so badly here. They were nearly giving houses away, including mine that I had to sell after I was widowed. Sorry for you, but it's good to hear first hand how the housing market has bounced back. Thankfully my son was finally able to afford a home here a couple of years ago because of the terribly depressed market at the time.
We'd love to see pictures!! I can nearly wave at you now! (Ventura County)
Click to expand...

I was always here, in LA County, you could have always waved, still can! :)

Just to make it clear, the housing market here in L.A. is that there are almost no houses on the market, and I'm fortunate to find my dream home, although I had to leave a few dead bodies behind... Specifically, for every choice house there are dozens of buyers bidding in a feeding frenzy to get that house! I finally adopted a new strategy: I paid far more than the house was worth. I pushed the other buyers out of the way and now I'm moving into my new home, and they're crying.

They're looking at houses this weekend and I'm packing! :)
 
Andy M. said:
Hi Greg. Congrats on your home purchase. I can imagine your excitement.
Click to expand...

Actually I'm not excited, I haven't quite connected the dots. I still can't believe this is real.

Yeah, the back yard need some work (and a Koi pond), the kitchen needs some work, particularly the counters are screaming "granite!" The MBR shower is plastic but aspires to be tile or granite.

The view from my bedroom is sublime!!! :D I expected this in New Mexico. I had never even dreamed that I could succeed in L.A. There was a disjunct aberration in the market and I snuck in and offered far more than my competition. Evidently none of them realized this place was "to die for" and :D I didn't have to die!

I've been house hunting back in L.A. now for a year and a half, I've seen about 500 houses. I've made offers on several, but glad now I always lost out. My new house is the best house I saw out of the lot, and I reached for the moon. In fact I bought the moon and the stars, because I realized that my competitors had probably not been reaching for the moon for a year and a half, and I realized that the stars cost a lot more than the moon.

So I'm packing up in Trailerville. I always wanted to avoid that topic on the forum because it made me feel so bad. I've been living in an RV park, and I'm moving out in less than 10 days, I'm selling my 5th wheel trailer, I'm moving back to civilization. In a month I'll be living in my new home and my 5th wheel trailer will be sold, and my days in Trailerville will be behind me.

I've been living in about 270 sq.ft. in a gravel slot not a lot larger. I'm moving to a beautiful house on a quarter acre. My dog saw the property for the first time early this week, and I'm glad he didn't have a heart attack! (Actually he took a dump on his new domain.)

I'll be moving in the early days of June. Hope to have the trailer sold before 4th of July!
 
I didn't want anybody on DC to realize how bad it was. I purposefully avoided the topic of where/how I was living. I mentioned my poor kitchen but I didn't say it was an RV kitchen because I was just too embarrassed.

In 2 weeks the trailer will be in a storage lot and up for sale, and I'll be living in my new home!!! :D
 
Greg Who Cooks said:
I didn't want anybody on DC to realize how bad it was. I purposefully avoided the topic of where/how I was living. I mentioned my poor kitchen but I didn't say it was an RV kitchen because I was just too embarrassed.

In 2 weeks the trailer will be in a storage lot and up for sale, and I'll be living in my new home!!! :D
Click to expand...

Sorry you were embarrassed, Greg. Many here are living in apartments, trailers, RVs, small homes, etc. Certainly nothing to be ashamed about! It is what it is.

We want all to feel comfortable posting, we don't care where you live, or what you live in! We all just like food!
 
No problema DL. :) It was on my end that I was bothered by living in "Trailerville." :) In two weeks I will be living in my dream house! :) I feel like the Beverly Hillbillies, moving from an RV to a prestigious neighborhood. I'm sure it will be a big shock to me! And I don't have to walk my dog anymore. He can walk his own damned self now in a huge back yard and he can commune with nature wherever he wants to roam. (The fence is dog proof.) I still have to pick it up but at least I don't have to follow him around with a plastic bag in my hand. :D

I just hope they have squirrels. My doggie loves chasing squirrels and cats. I'm sure any neighborhood has cats to taunt him from the wall, and for him to dare them to come down. :) I just hope he never catches either of them. A little dog is no match for a big cat, and definitely no match for a squirrel fighting for its life! Fortunately for my dog both species are smart enough to not venture where he could catch them...
 
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