We needed a quick place to land temporarily in Delaware as I wanted to spend some time with my uncle as well as be a bit closer to Maine than Texas was for my daughter.
So we chose the AFB here in Delaware, Dover AFB as they were renting to retirees due to the downsizing of the military and not having enough active duty to fill the homes. The rent was cheaper than what we were paying in Texas for our house payment. I was able to get a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath and 1 car garage on the corner towards the back of the housing area. I loved the location as it had a big yard that I could fill with my cemetery during Halloween.
Before even signing the rental agreement, I made sure they were going to be ok with what I was going to do not only out on the lawn, but also inside the garage for Halloween. They were excited to see this and eagerly welcomed us! I was so happy! Even more to not have to trim or mow the lawn nor weed the garden. WOW!
Luckily, our neighbors over the course of 2 years have been nice and quiet. Last year we had the big haunt for the 2nd time and it was even more fantastic than the first year.
Housing office was very friendly and accepting as well. As we signed the lease however for another year, our 2nd, we had been told at first that if we were to buy a house and had a year lease, they would be willing to work with us. But going in to sign for the 1 year, it was a completely different story, so sad, too bad. :( That was not good.
Having a tree in the yard and noticing that it had issues of something feasting on it, I went to the housing office to talk to them about it. They indicated they had the same issue with trees in the back of their building and the lawn maintenance didn't do anything about it, just let the trees die and then just planted new ones. I found this so incredibly sad that I was determined to help my tree. So I got some soaking liquid and spray and tried to save my tree. So far, it has not died. I will do the same again for it here soon and when the leaves come out.
We got told about the trash cans again. When you could put them down at the road for trash day and by what time you had to bring them in. This was not convenient at all and we just continued to do the same as we had before as it was close enough to the time at the very least the same days.
Last year during October when I had just finished putting up the entire cemetery fence, the housing office told me I would have to take it down due to the bad storm coming our way. I was like nooooo cause it took us so long and we had secured it quite well having learned from the high winds in Texas. They still said they were about to send out an email about taking down anything outside. But the email I got said to secure or remove and luckily the hurricane did not come near enough to us. It would have been such a pain to have to remove that fencing tho' I would have if the storm had come this way.
Then came the inspections. It started out as annual inspections, checking your fire extinguisher, the smoke alarms and radon I believe it is. That's fine. Then they wrote us a letter to say they were going to do quarterly ones instead of annual. The letters of notice for this were papers taped to the garage door which we ended up missing a lot of those.
This was a pain and very intrusive to where they said they could enter the apt with just giving us notice and whether we liked it or not basically. This really bothered me. 48 hour notice for this was a piece of paper taped to my garage?
So now, I am at the point where my 1 year lease is up again. Last year the rent price dropped if we agreed to another year lease or it would go up if we did month to month so we signed another year as we were not quite ready to move yet as we had not yet found property in PA that we wanted. By then, we were changing our mind for PA and looking to Maine.
This year, we got a nice letter saying how much they enjoyed us here in the base housing community but to sign a new 1 year lease, our rent would be increasing by $250. That was on the letter that was attached. In the email, it was stated it was to be even higher of an increase and yet even more if we wanted a month to month or a 7-9 month. This made no sense to us.
I wrote the housing office and got no reply as to the discrepancy in prices and then called only to leave a message and they are to call me back, which did not happen yet. :(
The pest issues here as far as ants were bad the first year. Their reply was to have someone come out only when needed. My answer was to have someone come out quarterly like the service I had in Texas. But as we didn't want to go that route, we got some ant bait ourselves and applied it around the house and have not had any ants since then.
I am getting tiny little roach like kinda bugs they are the size of the head of a pin however so not sure what they are exactly.
Of course spiders too now and then.
The other issue they have here is mold. So I am very vigilant about running the fan in the bathroom for a long while after a shower.
Inside the place, they had put laminate floors and this shag kind of dark rust carpet for the stairs and upstairs. They left the old cheapo tile linoleum stuff in the dining room and stuff in the kitchen. It is not nice tho' they thought it was all so pretty in the fake hardwood floors but laminate scratches super easy just moving furniture or a box around even. It's bad. Of course the carpets having cats is never a good idea.
The other issue I have about this place is the a/c unit. Several times it has frozen up on us. It has taken maintenance a while to fix it and yet still no one has given us a booklet on how to use the complex a/c and heating control panel. So we are forever toying with that to get the temperature just right. There is only one intake in the house, in the dining room and no filter on it. No filter on any of the outputs either. There is only one filter, locked up outside that we do not have the key for that sits in front of the unit itself. We have to ask maintenance to come out and change it if we want it done else they say they change it every quarter but when we moved in, it had not been changed since March and he thought it looked just fine and so never changed it. I finally broke down and got a very nice expensive filter for them to put in there instead of the cheapo ones they always use.
We keep sneezing in this house and my cats began to have asthma attacks. We believe it is allergies here in Delaware as well as the poor a/c unit here in the apt itself. Dust is horrible.
It has been nice however to hear TAPS play each night at 10 pm and then to hear reveille play in the morning at 7 am and retreat played at 5 pm. Going back to our days in the military brings a proud smile.
Also nice to have a gate guard to know we are secure but the bad thing is that any visitors or guests you have to go and sign them in at the visitor center with their driver's license and registration with them there as well. It's a huge task just for a visiting relative. :( More of a hassle.
Nice to be near the base for appts or going to the commissary or base exchange however, they charge a surcharge that goes to the military whereas there is no sales tax in Delaware so it's cheaper in Walmarts downtown.
And although Delaware has no state sales tax, they do have personal income tax and I was told that the food here is a bit more expensive to make up for that fact of not having a sales tax. Property taxes are also cheap here I've been told.
Every state will get you one way or the other however.
I didn't want to live here due to all the tourists and yes, humidity and it's crowded and it was the woods and mountains that beckon to me.
I had come here to be able to be closer to PA and take my time to look there for land and/or a home to move to. But the problem with PA is that it is becoming one big sand mound septic system. That's ashame. Plus it's expensive and you don't get much for your money in PA. It was hard to let go of PA and look to another state as I am from Pennsylvania. But I will not do that to the land, rip it up and drop a bunch of crap sand and muck onto it. I applaud the EPA in not wanting the waste to hit the water table, but their solution is not good for the land itself, you kill the land, the trees..the soil...no. Absolutely not!
We had gone to a Log and Timber show in PA as we had wanted a log home built for us if we found the right land. This was huge and a great education if you are looking for a log home, you will learn a lot! I will probably make a blog post about that later on. But if you get a chance to go, do so if you are thinking of getting a log home. Lots of vendors there and classes and you will get a lot of information on it. Just be sure you don't sign up for anything or else you will be bugged to death via phone all the time saying you won some trip or other and just have to sit thru their presentation and blah blah blah.
Unfortunately, it scared us away from it. Not only financially but how involved and how long it would take for us to move. The longer we've been here in DE, the more antsy we became to move.
After looking in two areas in PA and finding out about the septic systems, on top of my daughter having a car accident last year, that did it.
So I began to look to Maine....
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