Here is a house for sale that is located in Corrales, which is a rural area on the west side of the river, north of Albuquerque, and south & east of Rio Rancho. The east side of Corrales, along the river, is very expensive. It becomes drier (and less expensive) as you head west away from the river. In this map you can see the river on the right, and the higher densities of Rio Rancho to the left. The house is where the red pin is, in the drier, affordable, half of Corrales.
In the next photo, you can see Corrales in the top left corner, compared to the north part of Albuquerque in the lower section of the photo. The airport and Sandia are off the map to the south.
The house is located at the end of a lane that services 4 houses. The google streetview camera didn’t go down the lane, but here’s the streetview for the entrance of the lane.
The house is on 3/4 of an acre. It starts with a very large circular driveway, which is a big waste of space in my opinion, but John is excited about camper van and boat maneuverability (and I have to admit he’s right about that).
That car, by the way, belongs to my real estate agent, Julie.
Julie, is a few years younger than me, quirky, and I like her a lot. She’s not the typical aging baby-boomer agent with the Mercedes. Julie is the one who helped me buy the first rental, the townhome on Academy Ridge, which is my favorite rental. Then she went on vacation to Greece and I had to go with a different agent for the two others, because I had a 45-day limit to execute the 1031 exchange last summer.
The front of the house is nothing special for this region. Very typical. Except since this one is not in Santa Fe, it’s way nicer and significantly less expensive than the piece of shit that I looked at on Friday in Santa Fe. This would be 500k-600k in the suburbs of Santa Fe, approaching a million dollars in central Santa Fe, and well over a million if it were right near the plaza. Out here it’s listed at $400k, and will probably sell in the high $300’s.
Here’s the entrance:
It’s a New Mexican style very common in the last few decades, including the 1990’s.
A majority of the homes out in Placitas are also this style. Sometimes people who are from out of the area really love this style, and I was super happy to see it again when we moved back to New Mexico from California because I missed it. But for most locals it’s considered outdated and has fallen out of favor. I think that’s why this house isn’t selling (that and the fact that the house is occupied and cluttered, rather than professionally staged).
I would remove some of the whitewashed mud brick. It’s a bit much.
We could leave one accent wall, because I don’t mind a small amount of it, and that section would be hard to remove (although easy enough to plaster over if we wanted to).
I would remove the pony wall at the entrance, which is just in the way. I would have to patch the saltillo tile under it, which would never be seamless, but that wouldn’t bother me.
That front door is like something from my childhood and would need replaced. That’s easy.
I would also redo the half-wall that separates the living room from the open hallway. At minimum, I would take the top few layers off, it’s clearly too high. I’m not sure if I can get away with removing it altogether and just leaving the wood columns. I think so.
If so, I wouldn’t want to put a couch there. The couch is currently orientated toward these nice big windows. I would reorient the seating to face the kiva fireplace instead. It’s a very small living room either way.
I would replace the windows with French doors opening onto an expanded courtyard. There’s already a header above the windows, so it wouldn’t be too hard to replace them with French doors. The issue is the hot-water baseboard heater under the windows. That would have to be removed/relocated, which requires plumbing work.
Currently there is a small courtyard out there with fake grass. Eventually, if we did end up retiring there, I’d expand the courtyard and install a small pool.
There is lots of space to enlarge the courtyard. The property goes all the way to that split-rail fence you can barely see out there in the sage. Also note the mountain view beyond.
There’s no sunset views, unfortunately. But west is the direction the wind comes from in this region, so sunset view = wind. Instead, it faces east, with a mountain view out of the living room and master bedroom. (No, I don’t know what that weird little statue is. Like I said, it’s still owner occupied.)
Typical kitchen & dining space, with a little bit of New Mexican styling on the cabinets. Gas stove, yay.
The master bedroom does not have a kiva fireplace, but it does have mountain views, two closets, and a decent sized bathroom. We’d take out the carpet and install wood.
John’s not particularly thrilled with the tile work. Tile colors are such a personal thing. I don’t particularly like the tiles we are currently installing in the kitchen in Placitas. We had a miscommunication confusion, and are ending up with more different colors than I originally anticipated. Oh well, doesn’t matter. Pretty soon you get used to it and don’t even see it anymore. The raspberry walls are easy enough to fix.
There’s also two other bedrooms and a very small office. All total, 3-bed, 2-bath, 2-car garage, and a small outbuilding, for a total of 2,100 square foot, on .75 acre.
A big potential issue with installing a swimming pool is we don’t know yet where the septic drain field is, and there’s a good chance they figured that on the other side of the courtyard wall was a good place to install it. I’m hoping to find out where the drain field is this week. But even if we know where the tank is, the extent of the field is just guesswork.
This is not only a perfect spot for a future swimming pool, it’s also a rather obvious spot for an existing septic drain field.
If we start excavating for a pool and encounter drain field, all work stops immediately. And we’ve then wasted a lot of money.
Septic systems usually only last about 30 years. The house was built in 1993, so it’s getting up there. If the system fails during pre-sale testing, the current owners have to replace it. They cannot use the same drain field location twice. So we would want to have some say-so in where they put the new one. If they locate it poorly (like where I want to build a pool), then we wouldn’t buy the house. (Yes, this is starting to sound like last year’s septic field saga on Calle del Norte.) Although we’re less likely to hit bedrock here in the river bottom.
If this is all starting to sound too complicated, keep in mind that if we are going to retire in New Mexico, we will probably end up building a pool no matter what house we buy. There are not very many pools in New Mexico, and the likelihood we would find a house with the type of pool I want (small, curved, with waterfall, visible from the house) is very low. We could retire to Phoenix or Houston or Florida and buy a house with an existing pool. Or we could build a pool in New Mexico.
The other thing to keep in mind, is that John wants a rural house. That means well and septic, no matter what house we look at. So the issue of swimming pool vs drain field would become an issue at any house we look at. In fact, it is even an issue at our current house in Placitas, should we decide to stay here. The septic is old here, and almost all of our 2 acres is a significant slope. Siting a new septic and a new pool would be very difficult.
At any rate, we wouldn’t be building any pools anywhere until we are both retired, because we currently don’t have time to even use a pool, much less build one.
On the other side of the house, off the kitchen, is a beautiful shaded courtyard with large trees and a pergola.
Those were pictures I took yesterday. Earlier, in the spring, this pergola was covered with purple wisteria blossoms.
There are several other reasons why I like this house a lot better than the one in Placitas; less wind, closer stores, and near the river.
It’s down out of the wind, and there are trees and a neighbor’s house blocking the direction the wind usually comes from. 
The wind comes from the left side of these photos, blocked by the gray roofed and white roofed neighbors.
The brown roofed house is the one on the market that we’re considering. You can see there is a lot of room on the right hand side of it for a pool, which would be sheltered out of the wind. The well head is to the right of the driveway, which is why I’m afraid the drain field is further up nearer to the house. I wish it were the other way around.
The neighbor to the west has the white roof, and the smaller white roof is the neighbor’s casita (guest house). You can see the back of the neighbor’s guest house from the driveway, but can’t see their main house due to the trees.
The white piping on their casita is a mini-split system, that they apparently added after construction. Mini-splits are getting really popular. They should have painted the pipes, but there’s no HOA out here to force them to do it.
The small square to the left of the driveway (in the birds-eye photo earlier) is an “art studio,” which is jargon for “useless outbuilding with no plumbing, probably not permitted”. This one is very small, at only 11′ x 11′. It’s finished on the inside, has electricity but no plumbing. I don’t see any use for it without plumbing. Most kinds of art need a sink. And it’s of no use for overnight guests without a bathroom. I guess I could banish John out there if I were really mad at him (lol). Here’s the front of it.
Here’s the inside of the “art studio.” The current owners appear to be using it as a meditation room (or it was staged). I guess we could install an enormous TV and make it a man cave. Otherwise John would fill it with piles of garage junk, and it’s too nicely finished for that. I could retire and claim it as my “writer’s studio.” Haha – no.
A big reason I like this house is that it’s rural but still very close to the stores I like, unlike Placitas. In fact, the stores are the same ones that I used to go to from Placitas, except they are a whole lot closer to this house. See Placitas in the far upper right, and the natural food stores in the lower left. Corrales (zip 87048) is just a few miles north of those stores. In addition to organic food stores, that same area has a big mall and all the major big-box chain stores. They are only about 5 miles away, instead of over 20 miles away.
Another great thing is it’s close to the river. There is a very nice bike path on the far side of the river that goes for miles and miles. There are also dirt walking/jogging trails on both sides of the river, as well as along the acequias (“ah-seh-kwa”, i.e. irrigation canals).
Also the house is single story, which is on John’s wish list. I don’t care too much about how many stories, but our current two-story on top of a hill is nose-bleed-inducing.
We both want down out of the stratosphere into something that feels more homey and cozy. We hope we don’t miss the views too much.
I did hope to move into whatever we buy sooner rather than later (and continue weekdays in the Santa Fe townhome, until I change jobs).
I have no idea when I will next change jobs or retire, but I’ve never worked at one place for more than 4 years in my entire 25-year career. So it would be fairly stupid to orient around any current job of mine (don’t tell my boss I said that). For example, there are also state jobs in Albuquerque.
This particular house is within commuting distance for John. But when I mentioned moving soon, the look of abject horror on John’s face has caused me to reconsider. If we bought it, we would probably rent it for a bit until he can contemplate the prospect of moving.
I think moving to Corrales would be apropos. It was our compromise first date location 13 years ago (it being midway between each of our houses back then), and it could make a great compromise retirement location. Full circle. Plus it’s just weird that I grew up in a town named Corvallis. I’d be saying the wrong town name for the rest of my life! (And John would have to continually correct me – “She means Corrales“)