One thing we were thankful for was the keen eye for details from TTMF's legal team. I guess avoiding the issues that surfaced with our potential sale were better for the seller but for anyone looking to purchase property, I strongly advise you go through an agency of have a very experience legal team. This is because they need to ensure that they are giving you a loan or offering sound legal advice on a property and would therefore ensure it is any issues which in turn will help you avoid shady real estate transactions or identify serious matters to be resolved such as what happened to us here.
At the same time, Samurai really wanted to set a date for the wedding. He wanted an elaborate affair but I just thought that our savings would be better kept for our property purchase.
We began venturing outside of the areas we usually looked because we practically exhausted all available and affordable listings in Central Trinidad. I started to pay attention to the numerous La Lomas listings online and in the papers and decided to check out a few properties.
If the drive to our last potential purchase was long, the drives within Las Lomas were just a bit too much. We also had no friends in this area so it wasn't as appealing as Central. I wouldn't lie, this area had great real estate potential but without some sort of transport system, it seemed a bit too rural.
I saw one listing in this area for $400K+ but when we got there, the guy told us $1M!!! He was just crazy. Why would I pay one million for land in Las Lomas when I can get lots in more established areas for less. In addition, this type of dishonesty was a new low in the type of real estate behaviour that exists. We decided Las Lomas was not for us.
We then planned that year's (budget) vacation to Tobago and sat down to really think about possibly purchasing land over there. We toyed with ideas of quitting our jobs when the house was close to completion so we made arrangements to see a few properties, just to see how far we could run with this crazy idea.
The agent attached to the real estate company took us for lovely scenic rides to several properties all within the $400-500K+ range. It was a bit of a stretch for our budget but we saw it as an investment that would grow in value quickly because well, it was Tobago after all! One or two of the properties we saw really caught our attention but most of the others were a bit too underdeveloped for us. One significant difference from Trinidad though, was that even in the very far or rural areas, all the roads were well paved and well structured. In Trinidad we needed a 4x4 to get to some of the properties we viewed. In the end though, we ultimately decided, Tobago was not for us.
After this last viewing, we basically put the property search to a halt (not that there were much of anything to see again) and instead decided to focus our time and energy on the wedding. We set a date for 2010 and decided that we would probably wait on HDC and use our preperty-search savings towards having a wedding filled with family, friends and fun because hey, you only live once so why not celebrate such a big event in our lives.
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