The Grown-Up's Guide to Running Away from Home, Second Edition: Making a New Life Abroad (16 page)

This solution works well if you know someone very responsible whom you trust with your home and belongings. Perhaps you have an adult child or a trusted relative or friend who would love to live in your home free or for a small stipend while you’re gone. Professional house-sitters are another option. The Caretaker Gazette helps to put houses and sitters together at
www.caretaker.org
.

One woman who ran away to the south of France had the bravery to turn her home over to her architect daughter, who used the house as her project and renovated it for Mom (with her permission, of course) while she was gone.

In any case, when you leave your home, be sure the person watching it is responsible, and leave explicit directions on operating the home’s mechanical systems. Provide names of your favorite maintenance and repair services and information on applicable warranties.

The person caring for your house should have your full itinerary in case of serious issues. Leave a small checking account in your name and your house sitter’s, in which you put a sum of money for utilities or repairs that can’t wait.

Some people turn the key in the front door and leave. Prior to that step, you’ll need to ensure that the home’s mechanical systems are in excellent shape and that it is secure.

Have a neighbor or two you trust keep an eye on things. If you don’t already have a burglar/fire alarm system, consider having one installed. Make sure the neighbor knows how to deactivate it to check on the house or stop the siren if it goes off accidentally. You can hire a professional house watch service to check the home regularly, but a neighbor will be able to see anything amiss in between the caretaker’s visits.

Put a few lights on timers. Outside lights can be fitted with motion detectors as a deterrent to prowlers. Hire someone to care for the yard on a regular basis and ensure that the mail and papers are picked up daily. You should stop the mail and papers, but marketers leave flyers and free papers on the door or the mailbox anyway, and you won’t want these cluttering up the front yard and proclaiming that the house is empty.

Unplug all appliances, including televisions and computers. After you clean out and shut off the refrigerator, leave the door ajar to keep it aired out. Shut the water intakes to your washer and dishwasher; the rubber gaskets in these have been known to fail. Many people recommend shutting off the water heater and the outside faucets. In fact, if you’ll be gone over the winter in a cold climate, consider shutting off all water to the house and draining the pipes to ensure they don’t freeze and burst.

Make sure that water is in the drains to avoid their drying out and allowing sewer gas or creatures to enter. That’s why it’s a good idea to have someone turn on the water to run water at all the taps, run the disposal, and flush all toilets at least once a month. They can then shut the water off again. Alternatively, you can seal off the sink drains with stoppers. Use bleach in the toilets, then cover them with plastic wrap to limit evaporation—this will also help ensure that creatures can’t enter your home if evaporation does occur.

Depending on where you live, you could leave the thermostat set at fifty-five degrees in the winter to prevent damage from freezing. If you live in an area that is hot and humid in summer, you may also want to ensure that someone adjusts the thermostat so the air conditioner will occasionally come on to keep the mildew out of carpets and furnishings. Or invest in a humidistat that keeps the humidity at a safe level.

Your homeowner insurance should protect you while you’re gone, though there may be a limit for an unoccupied house. Check this before you go to ensure that your protection doesn’t lapse.

One advantage of renting out your home while you’re not using it is that the rent can help support your adventure. If you’ve owned the property a long time, your monthly payments may be lower than what your home would bring in rent. Renting it for more than it costs you provides a nice little stipend every month to finance life overseas.

If you have a mortgage, you’ll continue to build equity in the home—and with the renter’s money, if the rent covers the payment. Plus, in case of inflation, you’ll have a home to return to that you can afford. If property values go up drastically while you are gone, an equivalent house could be out of reach when you return. Or interest rates could rise, also pricing you out of the market.

Renting is a compromise solution that gives you an “out” if you decide to return to the house. It made a nice transition for us, because I couldn’t bear selling our home—until we knew that we’d found something we preferred overseas.

Take plenty of time to find responsible tenants. Do a thorough background check. You can find renters by placing an ad in your local paper, or you can check with the personnel departments at large companies nearby. They may be transferring someone in who is looking for a home to rent.

You could also work through a real estate agency that provides rental services. Their fees depend on how much work they do, whether they simply find a renter or actively manage the rental by collecting rent, paying bills, taking care of repairs, and so on.

If you don’t go for professional management, at least have someone nearby—a friend, relative, or neighbor—collect the rent, check on the home occasionally, and be a local contact person for the tenants. Review all mechanical systems in the house with your tenants before you leave. Label the fuse box and tell them how to shut off the outside water in the winter. Don’t rely on their memories: write out special instructions, including a list of your preferred repair facilities, and leave the paper with them. People have a lot on their minds at moving time, and having that paper provides a refresher course months later, when they finally have to shut off the water or remember which repairman knows how to fix the balky furnace.

A lease is a necessity. It will protect you from a tenant’s sudden whim to depart while you’re thousands of miles away. Get copies of leases from office supply stores, real estate agents, or books on managing rentals. Be sure that whatever lease you use includes a security deposit of more than a month’s rent in case the renters move suddenly or damage the property. Also request the last month’s rent in advance and, of course, the first month’s rent.

The lease should limit the number of people living in your home and indicate whether smoking, redecoration, or pets are permitted. Note who is responsible for paying the utilities—such as gas, electric, water, garbage pickup, pest control, cable TV—and who must do the yard care. If you prefer to ensure that any of these are managed to specific standards—for example, the yard care—then charge a rent that’s large enough to cover these extra costs. We left our lawn-care equipment for our renters, but they chose to hire a professional lawn service. I must say, our lawn never looked so good.

Make it clear how repairs are to be handled. Your renters may be able to handle these up to a certain dollar amount, perhaps $50. After that, have them contact you or your representative. Be reasonable, however. The hot-water heater died for our tenants two days before Thanksgiving. Our son-in-law in charge of the house had already left for the holiday. So the tenants had the water heater repaired and charged it, providing the bill to our son-in-law. He checked it over, and we reimbursed them.

Renting out your house may entitle you to write off certain expenses: among other things, the advertising required to find a tenant, insurance, mortgage interest, property taxes, management fees, and repairs are all tax-deductible. You can even depreciate the house and the furniture in it.

However, if you depreciate the house, the depreciation can be taxable as capital gains when you later sell the house. Definitely consult a financial advisor; considering the paperwork or the expense, depreciation may or may not be worth taking, depending on how long you intend to be gone, what your house is worth, and other factors.

In our suburban area, it was recommended that we rent our home unfurnished, as most people wanting that type of home were business people who already had their own furnishings. The opposite may be true if you’re in a college town (still, don’t leave your best things there).

If you rent furnished, you’ll cut down on outside storage costs, as the home itself will store your belongings. Store valuable or personal items in a lockable closet or room or a rented storage locker, or leave them with family or friends.

Whether you rent your home furnished or unfurnished, make a complete survey and inventory of the home, noting its condition and its contents. You and your tenants should sign it. Then keep a copy and give them a copy.

You may be able to arrange a home exchange with someone who lives where you want to go. You each will have someone in your home, plus the situation is cost-effective because neither of you will have any housing expenses in the new location. Homeowners usually agree to give each other access to their car for local transportation. The situation provides a built-in entrée to the new neighborhood as well, as the homeowners can provide information on local shops and amenities; friends and family may become involved in welcoming the visitor. Home exchanges are typically short-term arrangements for vacations, but the time period is up to the people involved. Even if you have to arrange a short time, it’s an inexpensive way to actually live in a real-life situation to determine if you like the area. One way to explore options is the International Home Exchange Network at
www.homexchange.com
.

Selling your home is the ultimate move. It means breaking all ties with your neighborhood and determining once and for all that you will not be returning to that house. You may return to the States, but not to that exact home.

This is one decision to make with a clear head. Don’t let the excitement of your adventure carry you overboard. However, if you’ve considered selling your home anyway, then this may be the ideal time to divest yourself of the responsibility of a home that is thousands of miles from where your adventure takes you.

There are many reasons to sell at this stage of your life. The home could be far too large now that the kids are all gone. The yard may be more work than you want. You may want something in a different part of town—or plan to eventually retire to a resort community.

Don’t sell your home to pay for the getaway itself. Investing the money instead can provide peace of mind, because you’ll have the money to purchase another home when you return. But be aware that selling may incur a capital gains tax, so consider how the tax laws will apply to your situation. Whatever you do, consult with an accountant or tax advisor before committing to selling your home.

Leaving on an adventure means leaving behind your favorite armchair, a different outfit for each day, and your collection of antique widgets. Console yourself with the fact that you’ll collect experiences far beyond the material things you left behind. Do you really want to reach the end of your days and say, “I sat in my chair” or “I looked like a fashion plate”? Chances are you’d rather say, “I lived an interesting life and still remember that year in Tuscany.”

Once you face the fact that you can’t take it all with you, your job is to consider what you will take and what to do with the remainder.

Starting several months before departure, your mind should be buzzing with the possibilities for all the things you own. The options for any item break down to taking it with you (or shipping it later), storing it, or getting rid of it by selling it or just plain giving it away.

Some decisions are easy. The worn-out rug the dog threw up on goes in the garbage. Other decisions are more difficult. Will you really use that massive armoire, and is it worth the money to either store it or ship it somewhere overseas?

In our case, we weren’t sure how long we’d be away, because we had decided to try our adventure for a year, then reevaluate. If we returned, we’d need furniture, and replacing it would be costly. However, we knew we would downsize eventually, so we compromised by getting rid of furniture for the den, a grown daughter’s room, and the guest room. As it turned out,
we guessed right, because what we kept later fit nicely into our (smaller) home in France.

What you’re doing with your home will affect your decisions. In our case, we gave our kids some things (televisions and the VCR proved popular), and our tenants agreed to let us store the remaining furniture in one section of the basement. That eliminated storage fees. We later moved the belongings when we bought our house overseas.

Decide what you will do with everything early in the planning process. It takes longer than you think to arrange sales—even longer to get the kids to pick up the moth-eaten varsity jackets that they don’t wear but won’t let Mom throw out. You won’t want to be picking through all this at the last minute. If you do, the decisions will be forced on you, increasing the chances of making a mistake and later regretting what you’ve kept or not.