I would dearly love to live in the country but acreages around here are way too expensive. Then again, I’m a widow nearing retirement age so I don’t have much hope for financial growth right now. I’ve got a fixer-upper house in a small town, doing my best to bring everything up to code and make it work for my kids and grandkids to have time together here. But I’m hoping the property taxes don’t force me out. When I bought the house I couldn’t get a loan to do some of the fixing up because the assessor said that no matter what improvements I made, because of its location on a busy highway the property would never be worth more than $100,000. My last valuation was $242,000.