Life's Hiccups

Welcome spring! In California spring and fall are my favorite seasons. When I was growing up in Ohio, fall was my favorite season. Spring in California usually means the return of green foliage with warmer temperatures - perfect mornings to sit on my back patio and forest bathe. Of course tomorrow it is supposed to start raining at 1:00am and continue until around 6:00 am on Wednesday morning. No patio sitting tomorrow!

I got a bit of a shock today when I was talking to my mortgage company about the change in the homeowners insurance to a rental insurance. The customer service person told me, “You have to get our permission to rent out your home. So send us a copy of the lease and we will send it to our legal department to have it reviewed.” I am pretty good about reading fine print and do not recall ever reading that I cannot rent out my home. It seems this is true if you even rent a room out in your house. I probably didn't register the rule becuase it would not have meant anything to me at the time we bought the house.

Any way I sent the formal request and a copy of the lease by email, and they have acknowledged receipt of the request. My thought is that this must be a formality as why would they require a signed lease from someone if they didn’t intend to approve the rental? No worries though, if they decline to give us permission, I have a plan B and a Plan C as I do not want our house sitting empty. I did Google the lender having to approve the rental plan. According to what I read, approval should not be an issue as we have lived in the home since 1993 (our home is almost paid off) and the rental is considered short-term. It is obvious we did not buy the house as a rental investment but as our primary residence.

We are in our final week of getting everything in place for the big move. One week from today we will have everything loaded on a moving van and on its way to Minnesota. In 9 days, we will be on the road traveling the United States.