Over time, Teri and Kevin Love discovered loads to understand about life in Henderson, Nev. There was the close-knit subdivision the place they raised their 4 youngsters. There have been the careers they’d constructed there: Mrs. Love works as a licensed skilled counselor; Mr. Love is a civil engineer. Then there was the great thing about the desert and the candy odor of creosote bush after a rainstorm.
Nonetheless, Mrs. Love, who had spent most of her life within the Las Vegas Valley, longed for a change of surroundings, a spot that supplied greater than the rows of equivalent stucco tract properties with gravel yards.
“I actually needed to maneuver to the inexperienced,” she mentioned.
It was a pull she had felt for years, particularly after visits to prolonged household on the East Coast. There could have been extra innate causes, too. “I later discovered my organic household’s there,” mentioned Mrs. Love, 54, who was adopted. “I’ve a good friend that’s like, ‘Properly, perhaps you knew.’”
After the three oldest Love youngsters — Joseph, now 23; Cayna, 21; and Bethanie, 19 — left residence for faculty, a cross-country transfer started to appear possible. When Mr. Love’s firm opened an workplace in Philadelphia, the timing, and the placement, felt proper.
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The Loves’ 16-year-old son, John, was on board. Mr. Love, 48, wanted some convincing, however in the end got here round. “To not sound too sappy, however I simply needed her to have the issues she was actually wanting,” he mentioned.
There was one hitch: They didn’t know a lot about Philadelphia. The final time they visited, throughout a household highway journey in 2016, “probably the most we did was get a cheesesteak,” Mrs. Love recalled.
“We didn’t even keep,” Mr. Love added. “We drove previous the Liberty Bell.”
So the couple put aside a protracted weekend in June to scope out properties for round $500,000. They needed one thing close to public transit so Mr. Love might commute to his workplace (Mrs. Love can take telehealth appointments from residence), in a spot with a faculty district that supplied a powerful mixture of teachers and athletics for John, set to enter his junior yr. In addition they needed sufficient bedrooms to accommodate their youngsters, together with Bethanie, who’s taking a spot yr from faculty.
And Mrs. Love had yet another field to examine: “one thing just a bit quirky.”
The couple contacted Brian Griffin, an actual property agent with Keller Williams Fundamental Line, in Ardmore, Pa., who warned them that $500,000 may very well be a difficult quantity. “It’s proper in the course of the highway,” he mentioned. “There’s extra folks trying in that vary.”
Along with Mr. Griffin and his colleague Chelsea Lamb, the Loves toured 18 properties in 11 cities, most in a C-shaped array round Philadelphia.
“They’d some humorous questions,” Mr. Griffin recalled. “It form of blew their thoughts that, like, not each home has an irrigation system right here.”
Amongst their choices:
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