Thoughts on another visit to New Orleans …

From our Cincinnati base we visit New Orleans 5 or 6 times a year, generally staying a week or so. Our latest visit was an unscheduled one, when my mother had a heart attack. She is just fine as of this writing.

One big difference on our latest visit is that we spent much of our time with Mom, and were not looking at real estate. The previous three visits were totally dominated by looking at houses that we might live in, or lots on which we might build when we move back to New Orleans. One visit was dedicated to looking at lots where we might build a version of a model home that we particularly liked.

We are still talking to the builder of the model home, Donny Natal. He has a couple of lots available in Lakeview, our current choice of neighborhood. We have previously also looked at houses in uptown New Orleans, and in Metairie.

Somehow we have never gotten sufficiently enthused to purchase any property. Our real estate agent, Eileen Wallen, has been absolutely wonderful. She did so much homework, knew our preferences, scheduled appointments, and accompanied us on just about every viewing. Use her if you need a realtor; call her at (504) 250-5656. This may assuage some of our guilt about working her so hard when we apparently could not make a move.

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm is toward whether we really want to return to New Orleans. We have some wonderful lifetime friends there, but our life in Cincinnati is very good. We are making some good friends, and are pleasantly busy.

One of our New Orleans friends keeps asking us to assess a probability, in percent, that we might move back to the area. When our real estate search started, we were quoting 80%. Now we are hopelessly stuck on 50%. We have a lot of soul-searching to do.

jbv's Competitive Edge