How likely?

Quite difficult? In October? I think he's over stating. Find temporary lodging for a week or two and then look when you get here. I know that sounds scary, but it's really the best way to find something. Do you have a job lined up? Do you have some extra cash to tide you over?

Keep us posted.

Colleen,

The MLS are worth checking into -- they can give you a great sense of the range of features you can find in homes, general location, styles of houses you'll find here, the going prices in different areas of the island, etc. The problem that we found is that some of the MLS descriptions didn't adequately describe the property (at best) or were downright misleading about the home's current condition (at worst).

One of the problems I found when we toured houses we found through MLS were that entries were not updated as often as they should be. My standing example of this (that I'm sure folks here are sick of hearing about by now) is a house located at 56 Tipperary. It came on the market in 2001, and the listing has not been updated since except to lower the asking price by $25k. The photo in the listing is exterior only and from a distance, and shows a nice looking home in a large, well maintained yard. It is described as being in good condition overall. You can imagine our surprise when we pulled up and found that the lawn was 4' tall, there were large holes in the roof where someone had fallen through areas already damaged by termites, the unit smelled of urine because squatters had taken up residence there, fixtures and countertops/cabinets were damaged, etc.. We estimated it would take at least $100k in repairs to make this "good" condition house habitable on top of its $150k asking price. This was the most egregious lack of updating we encountered, but it certainly wasn't the only one.

The overall condition descriptions for the MLS listings were also wildy inconsistent -- 56 Tipperary's listing of good was our very poor, while another house in that same estate said its condition was only fair but we rated it as good (even excellent, if compared to the other house).

Ask your realtor to pay a visit to the places you are interested in on MLS -- have them take digital pics of the interior and evaluate the MLS description for accuracy , then email that info to you. Be sure to ask them to include their impressions of the neighborhood, too. That should help you narrow down the houses you really want to tour when you come on your premove visit.

Happy house hunting -- I'm sure there's something out there that will be perfect for you.

HC

Thanks for the info. We'll know in mid-October if St. Croix is a go - I think I'll just keep doing more research until then and hopefully I'll be somewhat prepared when we actually go to visit.

Thank you very much!

Colleen