Cedar Hill Ranch

Joe got a job in the summer of 2023 at Tesla in Austin.  We decided that Nannette and Ellie and Nate would stay in Houston for Ellie's senior year and then we would all move to Austin for Joe to continue to work at Tesla.  Since we would no longer be in Houston, we decided to sell the ranch, the cows and everything to do with them.  Once we sold them all, we had some money that we didn't want to pay taxes on, so we found another property to invest in to avoid taxes.  The property that we found was on the southeast side of Austin, not far from the gigafactory and had 15 acres and three houses.  It had been previously used successfully as an Airbnb property for short term rentals, for one of the houses, long term rental for the second house and then the owners lived in the third house.  We decided to try to turn all three of them into short term rentals- as a property that you could rent individually or as a grouping to have a reunion or a gathering.  Once we closed on the property, it required a lot of work to furnish the three houses.  We had to find furnishings, update the current furnishings in the house that was being used as an Airbnb, change some of the tile/paint in the houses and get them ready to use.  I spent several weekends driving between Houston and Austin getting the furniture collected, and then we had a weekend in which we asked all the children to come from College Station to help us work on putting the houses together, including putting furniture together.  IT WAS SO MUCH WORK!  We had so many beds to assemble.  So many towels and sheets to wash and to fold.  We had to go to the store several times to buy small items that we just forgot.  We did get so much done with the help of the kids, and it was great to have them around to help! Here are some pictures of the houses.

The main house, the "cedar house":

The tiny house, the "creek house":

The double wide trailer house or "Hill house":