Moving to a new city - buying a home that's not geo-blocked

[+CheekyBrit]

In the next 3-8 years we're moving to a new city for the in-laws and we have our criteria for the home. Biggest of all, is I need to be able to build a geocache on the front lawn, so it cannot be geo-blocked. Hopefully it's gonna be a big one with a K2 British phone box mini free library and a dedicated phone line to call for the clue; this really has to be on my property. If we can't hide a geocache on our property, it's a deal breaker.

SO, with literally thousands of puzzle caches in the destination it is hard to know if a spot is available. I see 2 main options:
1) When we pick the house that is clear of known waypoints, build a cache page and submit it with a note "it isn't ready for full on publishing", so we can see if that spot is available. Then hope it is fast enough for us to still buy the house before it's gone.

Option 1B) Get friendly with a reviewer and message them the coordinates for a real-time yes or no without building a cache page.

2) Buy any house and wait for existing waypoints to archive. This is super risky and we might never get un-geoblocked.
OPTION 2B) This could be sped up by speaking with/bribing cache owners to move or archive their existing waypoints. I don't like this one since it is mean, disrespectful to existing cache owners, and encourages an attitude toward geocaching I don't want to see in the world, vying for territory like squabbling countries.

3) Work with a reviewer directly, maybe even seeing the mythological map showing all waypoints (unlabelled without GC codes to avoid cheating hard puzzles). I don't think this is feasible but it would be so cool.

 

 

 

Is there some other option I'm missing?
Also, am I a weirdo on my own for thinking like this? I'm a weirdo for sure, no question, but does anyone else have this thought process when considering moving?

 

 

BTW, I'm focusing on the geo-blocking side of things, not the maintenance for old caches part. If that's what you came for, may I recommend this thread: 

 

[+niraD]

5 minutes ago, CheekyBrit said:

1) When we pick the house that is clear of known waypoints, build a cache page and submit it with a note "it isn't ready for full on publishing", so we can see if that spot is available. Then hope it is fast enough for us to still buy the house before it's gone.

Option 1B) Get friendly with a reviewer and message them the coordinates for a real-time yes or no without building a cache page.

My understanding is that the tool the volunteer reviewers use to check the saturation guideline requires a cache listing, not just a set of coordinates. So the only difference between your Option 1 and your  Option 1B is who creates the cache listing for the saturation guideline check.

 

If I were a volunteer reviewer, then I'd consider it more friendly if someone provided me with a cache listing, rather than just a set of coordinates.

 

But if this really is a deal breaker for you, then I would definitely give the local volunteer reviewer(s) a head up, letting them know how quickly you need a response to these saturation checks. For example, when we bought our home a couple years ago, we had to make an offer within 7 hours of first seeing the house. Or maybe you're in a real estate market where you've got 24 or 48 or 72 hours. That's the kind of thing you should probably sort out with the local volunteer reviewer(s) before you start sending saturation checks in earnest.

[+GeoElmo6000]

1 hour ago, CheekyBrit said:

Is there some other option I'm missing?

 

For any cache I plan to hide, I first check with the reviewer to see if the hiding space is free by creating a listing (dummy title and planned final coordinates are the only things necessary) and messaging the local reviewer about it.  The side benefit is that the space is also then reserved for your cache for some amount of time, and you may be able to extend that time by posting notes on the page with updates.

[+Smitherington]

The simplest way is to buy property big enough (.2 miles min width & depth) that you can place one without fear of encroachment. Of course that may eliminate densely placed housing like most subdivisions and most cities/towns.

 

I love living in the country.

[+Viajero Perdido]

I'd go with #1, which is the standard way of requesting a coord check.

 

This essentially reserves the spot for you, and you have some time to create the listing.  How much time?  I don't know, but I imagine it depends on circumstances and the reviewer.

 

I'd explain in your reviewer note what you're doing, the house purchase angle, and that you may need some time to complete the purchase, and put up the cache.  I think a reviewer would find this most interesting, and would be happy to give you the time you need.  Usually there's some back-and-forth, do you still need this spot?

 

This is from observing reviewers in the wild.  I am not a reviewer, but one or three may swoop in here to make corrections as needed.

[+Goldenwattle]

I had a little library built for being placed in front of my house. The roof area was designed for a TB Hotel. Furnished, wallpapered, carpeted, artwork on the walls, a working clock (or will be again when I replace the battery), etc. It couldn't be placed anywhere else. I was worried someone might place a junk nano (😡👹this, as I think many people think of these horrible things) on a light post, etc and block me from placing a quality cache. Therefore I made a cache listing and submitted it, telling the reviewer what was planned and asking for the space to be reserved. They reserved the space for me. I think the reviewer might even have commented that my cache sounded good.

Unfortunately though for the geocacher two doors down the road from me, they have now been blocked from placing one in their front garden . They've never said they want to place one there, but sad they now can't.

[+CheekyBrit]

4 hours ago, Viajero Perdido said:

Usually there's some back-and-forth, do you still need this spot?

YES! Every reviewer I've worked with have been very understanding on the back and forth, allowing time to finish building a geocache and 'reserving' the spot.
My issue would be the housing market of Minneapolis understanding and asking, "do you still need this house?" while I'm waiting for the reviewer to let us know if those coordinates are blocked. Most of the time it is impressively within 24 hours but reviewers have a lot on their plate and some times it does take the 7 days it mentions on geocaching.com.

[+niraD]

9 hours ago, CheekyBrit said:

My issue would be the housing market of Minneapolis understanding and asking, "do you still need this house?" while I'm waiting for the reviewer to let us know if those coordinates are blocked. Most of the time it is impressively within 24 hours but reviewers have a lot on their plate and some times it does take the 7 days it mentions on geocaching.com.

Yep. Work with your realtor to get an idea of how much time you'll have to make an offer, and work with your reviewer to see whether you can get a saturation check within that time frame.

 

We heard that the Knoxville market was pretty crazy about a year ago, with houses selling within hours, with multiple offers above asking price, and with no contingencies. We've heard that it has settled down considerably since then, but in this day of electronic signatures, I would expect desirable properties to continue to sell quickly.

[Keystone]

Greetings from a Community Volunteer Reviewer who happens to be closing next Monday on my "dream house," complete with a dedicated "Cache Lab" room in the basement, and a salt water hot tub to relax in after an adventurous day of geocaching.  The nearest cache from my new home coordinates is a half mile away.  In a County with more than 2,000 active caches, that's great news.

 

As noted above, Reviewers have special mapping tools that show the hidden waypoints associated with Mystery Caches, Multi-Caches, Wherigo Caches and Letterbox Hybrid Caches.  This tool can be invoked either from a cache page, or on a standalone basis by directly entering coordinates in the tool.  For ongoing projects, like a series of cache hides or a move to a new location, using a "dummy" cache page is preferable because all correspondence between the Reviewer and Cache Owner is preserved in the Reviewer Note logs.

 

The mapping tool has a two-mile radius.  So, if a geocacher is targeting a particular park or a particular neighborhood (in the OP's case), the Reviewer can respond broadly.  My form letter template confirms that "there are no hidden waypoints within a radius of X miles," where X is a value just short of the actual distance to the nearest hidden waypoint.  In a special case like the OP's move to a new city, a favorably inclined Reviewer could also respond with a list of caches within the two mile radius of a given point, such as the middle of a residential subdivision.  For example:  "Before moving to the Sunnybrook Farms development, you would want to solve Mystery Cache GC12345 and complete Multi-Cache GCABCDE."

 

With the two-mile radius approach, some of the planning could be done without the rush of making an offer on a particular home.  In my own home search, there were maybe five or six different neighborhoods that I would have searched, had I wanted to place a cache in my new front yard.  If a house came onto the market in a neighborhood I hadn't searched already, I would have ordered a Geocaching database search right after speaking with my Real Estate Agent.  If a dialogue were already in place between the househunting geocacher and the local Reviewer, hopefully the response would come back prior to when an offer needed to be submitted.  For example, I learned about the new dream house on a Friday, toured it on Sunday afternoon, and submitted an offer on Sunday evening.

Edited April 28, 2023 by Keystone