Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Friday, July 16, 2010

Elusive Edens

People have their dreams. They work hard, and anticipate their recreational release. In the sense that they look forward to opportunities to relax, to engage in restful retrospection, looking back on their lives in retirement. As they sit comfortably in the confines of a home overlooking a lake, with a garden they tend outside, and beneficent woodlands surrounding this Eden of theirs.

This is where they have planned to spend their retirement years. This is the cottage they bought, and which they spent almost two hundred thousand of their hard-earned savings to winterize, modernize. And they have indeed enjoyed that dream of their golden years, together, comfortably ensconced in a place of their own devising that satisfies all their aesthetic longings.

Their wonderfully-ideal four-season home. Away from the accursed hustle-and-bustle of city life. They had their fill of that. Back to the land. Their land. Upon which sits the home of their dreams. A lake beyond and the forest abounding about. What more could anyone ask for to complement and complete the years of their lives?

A little bit of caution, perhaps. For while the home that they have grown to love, the house that they have spared little cash to transform, and which now reflects their needs and aesthetics is most certainly the reflection of their proud ownership. The land, the land is not. The land is rented.

Owners of land may do as they will with their land, they have the legal right to do so. They may rent out portions or the entirety of their land, or they may not, as the wish takes them. And if the land is rented but not on anything resembling a long-term lease arrangement, but based on simple trust; alas.

The current owners of the land upon which the retired couple live alongside Mississippi Lake have decided they no longer wish to rent out their land to the handful of city-dwellers who make the property their summer residence. Apart and above from the retired couple who have planned to make the property their final residence.

They are disbelieving about this turn of events, and they feel bereft of what had such great value for them. They have few options left to them. Abandon the cottages and the four-season home they have invested their dreams and holidays in, or pay the exorbitant fees it would take to move them.

In other words, buy land of their own, clear it, build a foundation, hire a trucking company specializing in moving homes and set themselves up elsewhere. Some of those cottages, unfortunately are in no condition, despite the loving care and upgrades given them, to be moved. All will be forfeit.

The moral of this unfortunate story? Have a care, alongside the carefree emotions of living your dreams. Read the small print. Take nothing for granted. Do not invest your life or your life-savings in someone else's property. Or, perforce, upon property owned by others.

Unless taking risks represents part of the allure of comfortable residency. And yes, most certainly, sometimes life can be dreadfully unfair.

Caveat emptor, good people.

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