Greetings From Our Vacation Home in Mexico

The passing of my father-in-law on Tuesday and the subsequent events have suddenly thrust us in the position of having a 1/3 interest in a home in Santa Paula, CA. We jokingly refer to it as our "vacation home in Mexico", because Santa Paula is a lot more like Mexico than it is like the United States. My wife says "it's just like going to Mexico except the signs are in English".

Ideally we would have made some necessary repairs and then sold the house as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this area has been very hard hit by the mortgage crisis. Values have fallen over 50% in the past two years and the slide hasn't stopped. The home next door is in foreclosure, and another home on an adjacent street has been on the market for more than a year. It looks like we're going to become rental landlords for awhile (though we're going to hire a management company to do the dirty work). Life changes very quickly.

We have another long day planned with lots of stuff that has to be moved out. I'll be heading for the Amtrak station in Ventura to catch the 2:41 back home, and frankly after all that has gone on this week, I'm looking forward to spending 3 1/2 hours on the train.

What a week.