Relocating to Lake Norman? I relocated from Portland, Or to Charlotte, NC 4 years ago..

Relocating to a new area is an adventure. I grew up in a small town called Sherwood, Oregon which is south of Portland about 30 minutes. In October of 2003 my wife, daughter and I decided to move across country with little to no money in hopes of a better life to raise a family. My wife has family in Panama City, Florida and Denton, Ohio and my family is in San Diego, California, Portland, Oregon, Austin, Texas but also my Dad in Charlotte, North Carolina. So, we did have family in Charlotte but they had recently moved there and they were known to move from state to state so you never knew how long they would be in one place. We had bought a 1945 home with asbestos siding off of a main hwy in Oregon in 2002 and made improvements but it was still in bad shape for $90,000. We moved to North Carolina before the home was sold. It sold Feb. 2004 but when selling the home the home inspection revealed $10,000 worth of dry rot that our inspector didn't catch. We had a great Realtor Joni Knight who worked out all the details and was able to sell our home. The way we moved from Oregon to North Carolina is we sold all our furniture then bought a old Truck for $2500 with a camper and between our Toyota Corolla and the Silverado we put all our sentimental items, clothes, etc. and drove across country. We found a cheap apartment to save money when we arrived and went under contract on a new construction home by DR Horton in Tanners Creek putting $500 down. While under contract we lived in the cheep apartment and saved money, spoke with a lender who helped get our credit score up and went with an adjustable mortgage to just get into the house and closed in August of 2004. We refinanced our home at 30 year fixed rate at 5.75% about 8 months later after they knew that we could afford the payment. Which at the time was about $1200/month and now it is under $1000/month. We never paid over $800/month to live in a home so at the time the $1200 was real scary. Almost too scary to even try but we did and we are glad we did! It has been 3 1/2 years now and our home is now worth close to $190,000 so we have made about $55,000 just by living in our home!! I also now with Keller Williams Realty in Lake Norman and helping and encouraging family's from all over the U.S. to take the leap of faith and invest in a home in North Carolina and watch there investment make money for them and create a life worth living. We love the Lake Norman area and being apart of a booming area! Everybody is from somewhere else, new construction is happening everywhere you look and Charlotte is doing a great job of learning from other cities mistakes and building a great city! If would like to know more about the area and how to relocate visit my website at http://www.mattsarver.com or e-mail me at mattsarver@kw.com or call me at 704-506-2323.